Podcasts about Pocs

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Best podcasts about Pocs

Latest podcast episodes about Pocs

The Tech Trek
Scaling Enterprise AI Beyond the POC

The Tech Trek

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2026 28:35


Enterprise AI is easy to demonstrate. The real test begins when a promising POC meets production costs, security requirements, data movement, latency, and internal adoption.Shimon Ben-David, CTO at WEKA, joins Amir to discuss the gap between experimenting with generative AI and operating it at scale. They explore how classical AI differs from generative AI, why production exposes problems that demos hide, and how companies with limited AI maturity can start building useful internal capability.Practical Takeaways• A successful POC proves that an outcome is possible. It does not prove that the system will be affordable, secure, reliable, or fast at scale.• Enterprise AI adoption reaches across infrastructure, engineering, data, security, and business teams. It cannot be owned by one group in isolation.• Adding more GPUs will not fix slow data access, poor utilization, weak pipelines, or an experience users do not want to use.• External support can help, but the person or firm involved needs to stay through implementation and production, not stop at recommendations.• Companies that are behind should begin with proven use cases, build internal experience, and quickly stop experiments that fail to show value.Key Moments00:00 Why moving enterprise AI into production remains difficult01:55 The difference between classical AI and generative AI adoption07:05 How companies can use AI without having a formal AI strategy11:35 Why successful POCs often struggle when they reach production17:35 Competitive pressure, AI FOMO, and the need to calculate real ROI22:00 Why AI adoption requires cross organizational change33:10 Where a company with limited AI maturity should beginOne Line That Stuck“The promise is there. It is possible. You just need to do it properly.”Subscribe to The Tech Trek for more conversations about how technical teams are building, operating, and adapting around AI, data, product, platform, and engineering execution.

Ep.393 - Ethnicity Pain Gap & Palestinian Archives

"What's Good?" W/ Charlie Taylor

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2026 65:59


In a week where:IOC lifts suspension on Russia, paving way for them to compete at LA 2028 Olympics.Bonnie Tyler, 80s pop legend, dies aged 75.The US-Iran ceasefire collapses.Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna is kidnapped by Israeli settlers during West Bank visit.Actor Sam Neill dies aged 78.In Health: (10:05) We know that Whiteness is a constant in everyone's lives, but from cradle to grave?! Literally affecting the health of POCs from beginning to end?! (Article By Tobi Thomas) In Society: (25:50) South Africa has gone through a lot as a country and its native Black population haven't been given what they were promised when Apartheid ended. But how have they resorted to xenophobia towards fellow Africans? (Article By Nesrine Malik)In Tech: (37:35) We know very well that smartphones have done a lot of damage to our lives. But one less-touted element of that is our increasing lack of tactility, something that we humans love on a foundational level. (Article By Sara Herschander)In Culture: (56:25) As Gaza continues to get bombed daily, in the West Bank, Palestinian archivists are hurriedly accounting for their rapidly deteriorating history with a digital archive that's built to last. (Article By Tamara Davison)Thank you for listening! If you want to contribute to the show, whether it be sending me questions or voicing your opinion in any way, peep the contact links below and I'll respond accordingly. Let me know "What's Good?"Rate & ReviewE-Mail: the5thelelmentpub@gmail.comTwitter & IG: @The5thElementUKWebsite: https://the5thelement.co.ukPhotography: https://www.crt.photographyIntro Music - "Too Much" By VanillaInterlude - "Charismatic" By NappyHighChillHop MusicOther Podcasts Under The 5EPN:Diggin' In The Digits5EPN RadioBlack Women Watch...In Search of SauceThe Beauty Of Independence

ChannelBuzz.ca
Xerox IT Solutions’ Curtis Dery on HPE’s financing moves, channel-only expansion, and why AI is a ‘digital goldmine’

ChannelBuzz.ca

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2026 21:24


Curtis Dery, executive vice president at Xerox IT Solutions Canada Curtis Dery, executive vice president at Xerox IT Solutions Canada (doing business as Powerland), has been living the HPE GreenLake story since before most Canadian partners knew what as-a-service infrastructure meant. At HPE Discover 2026, he joined In The Channel to talk about what this week’s announcements look like from the practitioner’s desk. Dery’s team won HPE’s Canada GreenLake Partner of the Year in 2022 and has kept the streak going, but he’s clear that the barrier to adoption was never the technology. “Customers are facing constraints financially,” he says, citing tariffs and geopolitical pressure. That’s why he sees the 90/9 financing offer and 150% credit line expansion as genuine deal-closing tools. “It helps open more doors and close deals even sooner.” He also sees the channel-only expansion of Private Cloud and Zerto as a deliberate strategy his team was ready for, thanks to deep ties with HPE’s advisory councils. The real differentiator, he says, is operationalizing customer processes so they can move from 20-30 projects a year to 50-70. Where Dery gets animated is AI. He calls the current moment “the most exciting time in any of our careers” and describes AI as a “digital goldmine.” His team runs internal hackathons to build reps with large language models, work that has already helped Powerland close four of the largest infrastructure deals in the world – all out of Winnipeg. But he’s also blunt about tokenomics: “The burn is real.” On sovereignty, Dery points to the Anthropic government oversight incident as validation for private AI. “If I’m a customer and I’m all in on that model, what would happen?” He sees HPE’s network optimization and Private Cloud AI stack as the hedge. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. We’ve been on a bit of an unscheduled hiatus, but we’re back. We’re going to get back into the swing of things right now, and we’re going to start that off by finishing our coverage of this year’s HPE Discover 2026. Today’s guest is Curtis Dery, executive vice president at Xerox IT Solutions Canada, which most of the channel still knows as Powerland. Curtis is based in Winnipeg. His team covers the country. He’s been living the HPE GreenLake story since before most Canadian partners knew what as-a-service infrastructure meant. His team won HPE Canada’s GreenLake Partner of the Year back in 2022 and has kept that streak alive. They were the first partner to sell a GreenLake deal in Canada, the first to sell VM Essentials, and the first to sell a cyber vault. But Curtis isn’t just a sales exec. He’s genuinely hands-on with emerging technology, running internal AI hackathons with his team, and has a perspective on the announcements from Discover that come from actually closing the deals, not just reading the press releases. He joined me on site at Discover to talk about what the new financing tools, the channel-only expansion, and the AI story mean for partners on the ground. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Curtis Dery. Robert Dutt: Curtis, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Curtis Dery: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Robert Dutt: Before we get into this week, I have to acknowledge – just having been in this industry a while, you’ve got Xerox and what is formerly HP at a conference here. Slightly unexpected combination on the surface. Most people’s mental model of Xerox is still copiers, but you were running Powerland as one of the leading HPE infrastructure providers in Canada long before that. What does the Xerox relationship mean in practice for the IT business? Has it changed how you go to market with HPE, or does Powerland essentially operate in its own lane? Curtis Dery: You know what, that’s a great question. The way the market’s changing, the industry is changing, businesses are needing to change. That was the reason why Xerox looked at acquiring us – to help go through the realignment and the changes that they’re making as a business. Obviously, from a print perspective, looking at the industry challenges it was going through through COVID and post-COVID and just the market shift around that, having a focus around infrastructure and technology and driving those outcomes with our customers helped them amplify the customer base that they have across North America. Robert Dutt: You were doing GreenLake before a lot of Canadian partners knew what it was. You won the Canadian GreenLake Partner of the Year back in ’22, closing deals in the as-a-service model when it was still a pretty hard sell to customers used to buying it outright. Now HPE’s on stage talking about 90/9 financing and offering 150% expansion of credit lines. For someone who’s been engineering these deals since the beginning, what do these tools mean specifically? Do they change what’s possible for you, or are you already doing – you already have your system set up and ready to go? Curtis Dery: Yeah, I mean, being fortunate to be a little bit on the front edge of GreenLake, we’re fortunate to be Partner of the Year four years in a row, and from a North American perspective, Partner of the Year to make it five. What that created was just validation that how we’re going to market and how we’re executing it is a little bit more uniquely than others, and how we’re prepared to understand the customer, the outcomes that they want, and wrap that around operationalizing it through a GreenLake model. Having flexibility in some of these announcements helps with the challenges that we’re all entering – some of it unknown, some of it shortages, all these changes, and then you wrap that around obviously the disruption of AI. So having these flexibilities of what they want to do around credit is definitely needed because customers are facing constraints financially – just with the cost of, from a geopolitical impact perspective, tariffs, all these things are real. So HP coming to the table with new offerings helps open more doors and close deals even sooner than expected sometimes. So we’re always looking at making sure, yes, we have a foundational core that we can execute on with a rinse and repeat with a proven track record, but always making sure we’re aligned with the changes that they’re making and making sure we’re enhancing our offering with them, a walk and step together. Robert Dutt: It feels like they’re acknowledging that one of the barriers to GreenLake adoption isn’t the technology, the concept, or anything like that. It’s the customer’s budget cycles. And it sounds like you’re saying that’s the right diagnosis from what you’re seeing in the Western Canada market. Curtis Dery: Yeah, and I think also people sometimes think it has to be OpEx. There’s a balance that you can still capitalize GreenLake as well too, and then do a term top-up depending on the utilization they have, but also operationalizing it from a financial [perspective]. So that flexibility is still there. I just think sometimes that message isn’t out there at the street level. So that’s where our value comes in as a partner, right? To understand where that noise and friction is and remove the friction. Robert Dutt: Three products went to channel-only at Partner Growth Summit this week: Private Cloud, PC 3000, PC 1000, and Zerto. Last year it was VM Essentials. It seems like it’s clearly a deliberate expansion of that strategy. From where you sit with that infrastructure-heavy book of business, is channel-only a meaningful strategic signal for you, or is it about filling the gaps for customers who need DR and private cloud but haven’t had a clean vehicle to buy it through you? Curtis Dery: That’s a great question. I think, fortunate to have a strategic partnership with HP, we sold the first cyber vault in the country. And so same with VME, we sold the first in the country, and same with GreenLake. So there’s a theme there, right? Being so strategically aligned with them from executive level down to technical level, I’m on their advisory council from a GreenLake perspective. My pre-sales engineer is the ambassador on the GreenLake program. Because of that exposure, we get line of sight a little bit earlier. So then we’re already preparing on how we’re going to market to augment some of these announcements that they’re doing, and then wrapping around our own little secret sauce to that to be able to expedite the sales and making sure that we’re taking down the logos together. Robert Dutt: What is that secret sauce, in whatever depth you wish to share in this forum? Curtis Dery: Well, I think sometimes getting down to the nitty-gritty of what GreenLake really does, and that’s operationalizing the customer’s process to be able to allow them to be more agile within their own business. So instead of going to a traditional market and doing a traditional way of getting quotes, going to an RFP process, all those things take time, money, and energy. And when you do that, you then don’t have time to focus on the business to drive the outcomes you can do. Now, with our customers from a GreenLake perspective, that agility of being able to streamline that process – we have our customers that are able to go from 20 to 30 projects a year to now 50 to 70 projects a year. So then they get to see the benefits of how fast we can make their business move, get the outcomes that they want so they can start to accelerate further. Robert Dutt: You heard the partner branded services announcement this week. Curious what you thought of that and how it kind of maps with what you do in terms of, are you already running that services-led model, or are you looking for opportunities to have HP back you up but still go under your brand? Just curious how it hit. Curtis Dery: For us, it definitely hit. But yes, we also do it as well that way. But again, it’s the right tool at the right place at the right time. And sometimes we may need them, they may need us, or it’s an augmentation of both. And that’s the beauty that I love about HP is the investment to the channel, always staying aligned at the street level and making sure it’s very predictable on how you can make bets jointly with them. So it’s a flexibility thing. Robert Dutt: A hundred percent. Curious what’s driving the HP business for you right now. What’s kind of hitting, what are customers talking to you about, what’s driving it forward? I have to imagine AI is part of that. Curtis Dery: Yeah. And I think AI was a little bit of paralysis in the market, right? People were frozen of like, “What do I do? Where do I start? What type of technology? Do I go to a public LLM?” Or you hear this word, “sovereign,” and what does that mean? And I think the perfect storm is brewing. But the beauty is that HP has made the right investments, right? Acquisitions to now truly be ready for what the market is going to be hitting with right now. Which is, you look at the announcement of what happened with Anthropic last week. Government oversight, they said shut down that model. Well, if I’m a customer and I’m all in on that model, what would happen? And so this created that validation of why private sovereign AI with HP wrapping around customers’ data and giving them real hardened AI outcomes within their environment, and then choosing if they need to go into the public LLM. And so getting ready for that market condition is what’s going to drive success and velocity with HP in the market. Robert Dutt: Along with the idea of tokenomics, that idea of AI projects getting stuck in, and maybe hand-in-hand with tokenomics in fact, that idea of AI projects getting stalled out in the implementation or the proof-of-concept phase and not getting to full implementation is a theme that we’re hearing from HP and from just about any vendor who’s playing in the space this year. It seems to be one of the big catches. I’m curious how you’re seeing that reflected in your customer base, if they’re kind of getting to a point of doing POCs and then starting to discover, “Well, wait a second, this could get real expensive, real fast.” Curtis Dery: I’m 1000% [there]. Right? The burn is real. We have customers that knew that they have to start getting their battle scars and learning from the AI and understanding how does it work, how do we integrate it, how do we make sure there’s no hallucinating, how do we trust it, how do we do all these different things? My analogy I like to use is, at the end of the day, we all need refrigerators. But a lot of people probably don’t remember who invented the refrigerator. They just know they needed one, right? That’s the same with the public LLMs, right? You need the refrigerator when you need to go into it. What we do with our customers is show them how to take a Coke can and put it in the fridge and bring it out of the fridge. And so we help them navigate it so then tokenomics is not exposed as much, right? They can manage their cost, manage their environment, and choose where they want to put their data. I think the tokenomics is definitely a real thing and I think we’re going to find out significantly what that means in the next 120 days. Why? Because these companies are going IPO and you now know where the math is mathing, right? And so that’s going to show us a lot on what the true tokenomics looks like. Robert Dutt: You touched a little bit on the importance of sovereignty in customer discussions, but can you tell me a little bit more about how that’s showing up in terms of what customers are asking about and how you see that trending and evolving as an interest and a care about, both on the geopolitical front and, as you say, on an issue like Anthropic suddenly having to pull access to the latest model? Curtis Dery: Yeah, a thousand percent. I think when you hear the word sovereign, I always ask people, “What does that mean to you?” Because when you look at the World Economic Forum, for example, in February, what did they announce as the next pandemic, the cyber pandemic? Why? You’ve got scale of agents running everywhere. People don’t know what is a good agent or a bad agent, right? And if you look at the internet bandwidth since December till now, it’s increased over 12x of volume. Do you know how much traffic is now coming down? So now people are going to need to get prepared about how do you control your network, your data, your access, and sovereign that so that you’re secure so that if a bad day occurs, you don’t have the public exposure. And that’s why you hear from Antonio Neri and the focus around the network. How do you optimize that network? How do you secure that traffic and have the access to where you need to go and ensure that it can handle the scale? So that’s why this storm is brewing in front of all of us right now. Robert Dutt: Looking at your background, it’s clear that you’re not just selling infrastructure. You’re genuinely interested in AI and emerging technology. And it seems like you like to get pretty hands-on. As you’re at an event like this and you’re hearing the announcements and seeing what’s coming and what they’re talking about, what are you really excited to get your hands on and play with, and beyond that to actually get in front of your customers either now or down the road as it becomes more concrete? Curtis Dery: You know, I tell people this is probably the most exciting time in any of our careers because it’s the first time in any of our careers that it’s a level playing field, where it’s up to you to grab the baton of AI and understand how do you use it, apply it, and get the outcomes and innovation that you want to do with people. The tagline I like to use with my team internally is, we’re not underpinned by anyone anymore. We have the opportunity to dream, to build, and execute, and we can use AI technology to do that. And so I call it the digital goldmine. We get to go inside these LLMs and mine what we want out of that and be able to take advantage of what we can do with our customers. And that’s the one thing I enjoy the most is understanding, okay, what tools can I use, whether it’s from PCAI and apply our own private AI strategy around that. I’ve worked with a lot of advisory around a lot of the latest LLMs that are out there, but also some of these private ones like [Mistral AI] and understanding how it’s a puppet master to the public AI and how to optimize white space within a customer’s environment to show them where they have inefficiencies, profitability, when they can take the market in a different way. And that’s what AI does – allow customers to be agile, at edge, on time, and be able to really disrupt if they choose to. And I think it sounds a lot daunting for a lot of people, right, to understand how do I get proactive now with AI and not get disrupted by it, because you don’t know if you can wake up and all of a sudden your competitor is something that you didn’t expect. And so I think being able to just dive in and learn. A lot of people say, “Well, I don’t know much about AI.” None of us do. This is all the latest technology. So I tell people to speak to it, learn from it, and just start understanding how it works. So then at the end of the day, you can now augment it because it ain’t going away. If you think about from a generational perspective, we have kids that are going to be born in AI. They don’t even understand what that means. So it’s exciting times. And I tell people embrace it, because like I said, it’s the first time in history that nobody’s really walking in a room saying, “I got 10 years in AI.” Everyone’s like, “Hey, I’ve been working with it for six months. Cool.” Just like all of us. It’s how many people are putting in the reps with it. Robert Dutt: What are you pulling out of that goldmine so far at Powerland? What are you doing in terms of both – how’s AI changing both what you’re doing customer-facing, and internally your own operations and how you think about AI within the org? Curtis Dery: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we were fortunate being ahead of it from an AI perspective and understanding our domain strengths, using AI to be better prepared for our customers and think through strategies with them. And with that, we were able to build out blueprints where we were fortunate to close out four of the largest deals in the world with four different vendors out of a city called Winnipeg. And a lot of people came to me and said, “Curt, I don’t get it. We’re not doing this in New York, Toronto. You were doing this in Winnipeg. How are you doing this?” And I’m like, using AI to get better prepared to understand how do we simulate an environment to say, “This is the customer. What can we do to drive out these types of outcomes? And what does this look like from a strategy?” We get the blueprint and now we go and see the customer and go, “Does this make sense?” And they go, “Yes. Well, let’s go execute that with AI.” And so that’s the advantage that we get to do. And then from an internal perspective, I love having our own internal roundtable hackathons. What’s something we want to do? Throw it on the whiteboard. Everybody has their AI account and go, “Okay, how would you approach that?” So then our team is learning how to put those reps in to say, “Well, I would approach it this way.” And it’s a cool exercise to see how everyone thinks differently. And that’s the beauty about AI. We’re all going to prompt it differently. We’re all going to work with it differently and then take those unified approach of everyone’s pieces, put it together and go, “Okay, now we solve the puzzle together.” So I really enjoy the ability to be able to scale so rapidly with it. It’s an exciting time. I feel like we’re built for this era. Robert Dutt: And I’d imagine a lot of those ideas that are coming out in the internal hackathons are eventually going to find their way into what you’re doing with customers as well. So that’s a nice plus. Curtis Dery: Yeah, absolutely. Robert Dutt: As you point out, you’re in Winnipeg, presence across Western Canada. I’ve talked to a couple of other Canadian partners this week, and I’m getting this consistent theme that Canadian customers right now are in their moment – between sovereignty, between AI infrastructure refresh, between really starting to get AI in play rather than playing with AI. Does that map with what you’re hearing from your customers in the prairies and the West? And where do you see HPE fitting into that story for the balance of the year and beyond? Curtis Dery: Yeah, I think we touched on it lightly, right? The changes that happened with the government oversight last week, I think opened people’s eyes on what their approach is to public LLMs. And then also understanding costs, constraints, all these things that have been hitting our markets and hitting customers’ budgets and challenges. It’s a difficult time to be a CIO right now. When you’re sitting there and you have to protect them from a cybersecurity perspective, you have to have a future of understanding where AI fits into this, and never mind constraints around cost and all that stuff. It’s a tough time to be an executive for a business right now and understand how you can be profitable, scale all these things while you’re facing all these challenges in the market. So being prepared in Canada of how we’re going to our customers is understanding how to package what HP has done effectively well on the overall strategy around GreenLake and saying, “How do we now enter the customer and say, ‘You can now do on-demand AI in your environment predictably, cost-effectively, compliance and govern, and now you can choose how you want to scale that rapidly?'” I think finally, we’re starting to see that curve get around the corner where customers are jumping into wanting to do it this way. It’s just such a learning dynamic exercise right now, right? Because at first it was ChatGPT and then it was Grok and then it was Claude and it just kept going and going. People are not talking about the disruption that happened out of China too with their LLMs. So if you look at DeepSeek, Kimi and all these models, they’re doing exactly what Claude and these others can do at 75% cheaper. So when people start to realize, “Well, I can run that SDK natively inside my environment way cheaper than going to a public API Claude license,” people are going to look at that and go, “Oh, what makes sense now? Because the math ain’t math.” Robert Dutt: That theme is coming up in a lot of different places, isn’t it? Last one for me, whether it’s something we’ve already covered off or something else, what’s the one thing that’s really caught your attention here at Discover this week, the thing that you’re going to take back to the team and on Friday or Monday or whenever you’re first in there saying, “By the way, this is what I heard. This is what we got to get ready for.” Curtis Dery: Well, a few things. One is truly being prepared on the foundation of the network and understanding what does that mean to have an optimized AI network both internally and externally for the customer. I think there’s a high, high value in that. I learned that on the journey with cloud. Everybody wanted to go to cloud. Love the destination. Nobody talked about the highway to the cloud. Nobody talked about the cloud tax of egress coming out of there. So there’s a lot of lessons and best practices that came from the cloud journey that we can now reapply to the AI journey. So focusing on that is huge. And then understanding the intelligence layer and understanding [NVIDIA] Morpheus is an extremely powerful tool and understanding how does that fit into the entire reference architectural stack with PCAI and understanding how do we build on top of that. And that’s some of our secret sauce of what we’re doing, being able to do our own private SDK on top of PCAI so customers can truly control their own AI platform. And so that’s the focus that we’re going to do. And we’re super excited to get velocity going into Q4 with HP so that in 2027, I expect a big year. Robert Dutt: All right. Well, good luck on bringing that back to the team next week and good luck on that big year. And thanks again for taking the time on what I’m sure has been a very busy week. Curtis Dery: Absolutely. And I welcome the time and being able to share this conversation with you. So we look forward to doing it again. Robert Dutt: There you have it. Curtis Dery from Xerox IT Solutions Canada. I’d like to thank Curtis for his time. If you’re finding value in these interviews, I’d appreciate if you’d follow or subscribe to the show. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most major podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always welcome. A few things that stood out for me from this conversation. One is Curtis’s framing that the real barrier to GreenLake adoption has never been the technology, it’s the customer’s budget cycle. The 90/9 financing and expanded credit lines aren’t abstract partner program benefits. They’re deal-closing tools for partners who are already in the room with constrained CIOs. Another is his digital goldmine metaphor for AI. The idea that for the first time in our careers, the playing field is level and what matters is who’s putting in the reps. But he’s also refreshingly blunt about the burn on tokenomics and the need for partners to help customers manage costs as AI moves from proof-of-concept to production. I appreciated his point about sovereignty not being theoretical anymore. The Anthropic incident gave customers a concrete reason to ask hard questions about public LLM dependence. Finally, it’s worth noting that the company is closing some of the largest infrastructure deals in the world out of Winnipeg. The Canadian channel is not a Toronto-only story, and this is a reminder of that. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

CXOInsights by CXOCIETY
PodChats for FutureCIO: Turning APAC's AI Pilots into Profits in 2026

CXOInsights by CXOCIETY

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 13, 2026 22:23


Across Southeast Asia, generative AI pilots are stalling—not from a lack of model power, but from broken retrieval. Agentic RAG bridges this gap: autonomous agents that verify facts, enforce governance, and execute end-to-end workflows. For CIOs in 2026, this turns fragile experiments into auditable, scalable profit centres. With Gartner warning that 60% of AI projects will be abandoned due to poor data and weak controls, agentic RAG is no longer optional—it is the only practical path from pilot to production. In markets like Singapore, where data residency and compliance are non-negotiable, retrieval intelligence is now the bedrock of ROI.In this PodChats for FutureCIO, Ed Keisling, Chief AI Officer, Progress Software, discusses how CIOs and heads of AI across Southeast Asia, can turn AI pilots and POCs into profit-generating initiatives for enterprises in 2026.What is RAG?Given that most regional AI pilots never scale, what specific architectural weaknesses does agentic RAG fix that traditional RAG or fine-tuning cannot?In markets with fragmented data landscapes—legacy systems, multilingual content, and disparate cloud storage—how does agentic RAG ensure consistent, high-quality retrieval at enterprise scale?What out-of-the-box governance and audit trails does agentic RAG provide to satisfy both local data residency laws (e.g., Singapore's PDPA) and board-level risk controls?For CIOs managing lean teams, how does agentic RAG reduce the operational burden of maintaining retrieval pipelines, monitoring hallucinations, and orchestrating multi-step agent workflows? How can agentic RAG help move beyond isolated use cases (e.g., customer support) toward fully autonomous, end-to-end processes spanning finance, supply chain, and compliance?As agents become more autonomous by 2027, what retrieval strategies will prevent cascading errors or unauthorised actions, and what should CIOs implement today to stay safe?(original 3) How should CIOs in Singapore and across Southeast Asia measure the ROI of retrieval intelligence compared to simply upgrading large language models?For regional enterprises without custom AI stacks, what vendor or open-source scaffolding for agentic RAG offers the fastest path from pilot to profit while preserving data sovereignty?What organisational, data, and leadership shifts must CIOs prioritise over the next 12–18 months to ensure agentic RAG transitions from a technical capability into a sustained source of competitive advantage?

Experiencing Data with Brian O'Neill
198 - Ship the Meter: Making Invisible AI Legible to Buyers with Rana Gujral

Experiencing Data with Brian O'Neill

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2026 49:16


Today, I'm talking to Rana Gujral, CEO of Behavioral Signals, which provides AI that interprets human behavioral cues in speech to help route call center conversations more effectively, improve customer service performance, and detect voice-based fraud. Their moat is a decade of voice data tied to real business outcomes, not the model itself, as Rana explains.   During our conversation, Rana shares his practical framework for making the value of their AI obvious to the various humans in the loop that the product needs to “touch,” and he argues that a one size [UI] doesn't fit all. In Rana's product, they discovered that customer service reps need ambient assistance, supervisors need aggregate patterns, compliance teams need audit trails, and executives need outcome metrics tied to business results.   He also explains why having measurable ROI isn't enough. Early renewals for Behavioral Signals suffered because the people signing the checks couldn't actually see the product's impact. Rana's solution? “Ship the meter” alongside the intelligence. If your AI works quietly in the background, you still need reporting UIs that clearly communicate the product's value.   For founders struggling with stalled POCs, Rana breaks down the three-stage evaluation journey his team developed after repeatedly seeing deals fail at predictable moments. By designing the customer experience around those milestones, his team transformed how buyers gained confidence throughout the evaluation process.   Finally, we explored why great B2B AI products don't succeed by becoming another dashboard. Rather, they succeed by closing the loop between decisions, outcomes, and learning. Rana also fills me in on his upcoming book, The AI Instinct, which focuses on how AI changes human judgment rather than simply advancing model capabilities. And his parting advice? Listen to find out!   Highlights / Skip to: Making “invisible AI” value clear (3:57) The four surfaces of visibility the product team dials into to ensure Behavioral Signals is indispensable to customers(6:26) Behavioral Signals' intentionality behind their three-phase model to address deals not closing (15:35) How Rana's team deals with AI moving downstream problems further upstream (19:56) Determining their product's boundaries: when do you stop building? (22:55) Why proprietary data makes for such a good moat (24:57) What Rana would do the same and differently if he were starting over (28:45) Rana's book: The AI Instinct: The Future of AI and Human Decision-Making (39:29) Rana Gujral's closing advice (44:35) Links Behavioral Signals  The AI Instinct: The Future of AI and Human Decision-Making  Rana Gujral's website   Rana Gujral's LinkedIn

Coffee Power: Tecnología, Desarrollo de Software y Liderazgo
#166 - De los POC al Impacto Real: Cómo Escalar la IA

Coffee Power: Tecnología, Desarrollo de Software y Liderazgo

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2026 40:53


¿Tu empresa hace IA o solo lo aparenta? Tito Neira retoma la conversación con Iván Herrero Bartolomé, Chief Data Officer de Grupo Intercorp (+30 empresas) y cofundador de CDO LATAM, dos años después de su primera visita. Hablan de la trampa de los pilotos eternos, el "teatro de la innovación", por qué la prueba de concepto siempre funciona (y producción es otra historia), la receta de construir carreteras — arquitectura, observabilidad, casos de bajo riesgo con resultados reales (+15-20% ventas, +10-15 NPS) — y las 3 decisiones que un CEO debería tomar en los próximos 90 días.00:00 Intro y regreso de Iván01:59 De Bilbao a Intercorp04:38 ¿Burbuja de pilotos? No: una trampa07:26 La tecnología está madura, nosotros no09:04 Licencias no son ventaja competitiva11:49 El teatro de la innovación15:24 POCs que no llegan a producción17:48 El gap del 85% al 98%18:46 El "AI Engineer" de dos meses21:04 Construye carreteras primero22:33 Arquitectura de IA y observabilidad25:55 Casos de bajo riesgo y resultados29:33 Del caso puntual al proceso completo32:14 Las 3 decisiones del CEO en 90 días38:42 Cierre✩ CURSOS DISPONIBLES

Cyber Morning Call
1038 - Pesquisadores de segurança são alvo de PoCs trojanizadas que roubam credenciais e arquivos

Cyber Morning Call

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2026 5:36


Referências do EpisódioWEBINAR: A CONFIANÇA COMO PORTA DE ENTRADA DO ATACANTEDon't Eat The ChocoPoCs! How Vulnerability Researchers Were Repeatedly Targeted By Trojanised ExploitsARToken: Inside an EvilTokens affiliate panel targeting Microsoft 365Browser-Only Ransomware: From LLM Hallucinations to a Practical Attack TechniqueCisco Catalyst Center Arbitrary File Read VulnerabilityClamAV Vulnerabilities Affecting Cisco Products: July 2026Progress Kemp LoadMaster Pre-Auth RCE Flaw Faces Active Exploitation AttemptsRoteiro e apresentação: Carlos CabralEdição de áudio: Paulo Arruzzo Narração de encerramento: Bianca Garcia

Driven by Data: The Podcast
S7 | Ep 12 | The Real Bottlenecks Holding Back Enterprise AI with Justin Borgman, Co-Founder & CEO at Starburst

Driven by Data: The Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2026 50:18


In Episode 12 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined by Justin Borgman, Co-Founder and CEO of Starburst, where they discuss why the biggest barrier to AI success is no longer about models.The conversation explores why traditional approaches to data architecture are struggling in the AI era, how enterprises can overcome fragmented data estates, the importance of context and semantics, why many organisations remain stuck in pilot mode, rising AI costs, build versus buy decisions, agentic AI, and what the next three to five years of enterprise AI adoption are likely to look like, which includes;Why the vision of centralising all enterprise data into a single platform has never truly reflected reality.Why the AI industry's obsession with model selection is increasingly distracting organisations from the real challenges.How advances in foundation models are rapidly commoditising model performance and shifting attention elsewhere.What the true bottlenecks to AI adoption actually are.Where the clearest examples of AI delivering measurable value are today.Why many organisations remain trapped in POCs despite significant investment and executive attention.How the lack of context and semantic understanding continues to limit the effectiveness of AI in enterprise environments.Why trust, meaning and business context matter as much as access to data itself.Why AI success depends on; data foundations, analytics performance, enterprise context and trusted agentic interfaces.Why rising AI costs are becoming one of the biggest concerns for enterprise leaders and CFOs.Why data products are emerging as a practical solution for creating AI-ready context across the enterprise.Why separating context from physical data location creates more flexible and scalable architectures.Why executives are increasingly expecting answers rather than reports and dashboards.Why organisations should be building differentiated business capabilities rather than core platform infrastructure.How businesses that feel behind are often closer to the market than they realise.What the next three to five years could look like as AI becomes embedded into every major business function.Thanks to our sponsor, Data & AI Literacy Academy.Data & AI Literacy Academy is leading the way in transforming enterprise workforces with data literacy across the organisation, through a combination of change management and education. In today's data-centric world, being data literate is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity.If you want successful data product adoption, and to keep driving innovation within your business, you need to start with data & AI literacy first.At Data & AI Literacy Academy, they don't just teach data skills. They empower individuals and teams to think critically, analyse effectively, and make decisions confidently based on data. They're bridging the gap between business and data teams, so they can all work towards aligned outcomes.From those taking their first steps in data & AI literacy to seasoned experts looking to fine-tune their skills, our data experts provide tailored classes for every stage. But it's not just learning tracks that they offer. They embed a deep data culture shift through a transformative change management programme.They take a people-first approach, working closely with your executive team to win the hearts and minds. We know this will drive the company-wide impact that data teams want to achieve.Get in touch and find out how you can unlock the full potential of data in your organisation. Learn more at www.dl-academy.com.

Ràdio Arrels
La Flama del Canigó surt de Catalunya Nord i recorre els Països Catalans - Reportatge

Ràdio Arrels

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2026 17:29


La Flama del Canigó ha baixat aquesta matinada del cim de la muntanya i ha començat el seu recorregut per encendre les fogueres d'arreu dels països catalans. Pocs minuts després de les 6 del matí, una primera flama ha arribat al Coll d'Ares, un dels principals punts de pas de la flama, que enguany celebra 60 anys. Des d'aquest punt, centenars de persones han recollit la flama amb quinqués i fanalets per portar-la cap a punts d'arreu de Catalunya, ja sigui corrents, en bicicleta o cotxe.

AI in Action Podcast
ServiceNow Series E218: 'Shaping the Future of AI, Google Cloud & ServiceNow' with Google Cloud's Chandra Sekhar Chappa

AI in Action Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2026 21:48


Today's guest is Chandra Sekhar Chappa, Global Head, Co-Innovation - ServiceNow at Google Cloud. Founded in 2016, Google Cloud is Google's enterprise cloud computing platform, providing organizations with scalable infrastructure, data analytics, AI, machine learning, security and application development services. Google Cloud helps businesses modernize operations, accelerate innovation, and securely build, deploy and manage applications and data at scale across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.Chandra is a technology leader with over 16 years of experience across product management, cloud operations, IT service management, infrastructure, and governance, risk and compliance. He specializes in ServiceNow, hyperscaler partnerships, cloud marketplace integrations, and enterprise service management. Chandra has led large-scale technology initiatives that have generated significant revenue growth and cost savings, while helping more than 1,100 enterprise customers improve cloud governance and operational efficiency.In the episode, Chandra talks about:0:00 His journey from IT tutor to leader in ServiceNow innovation at Google2:08 The importance of mentors in his career and giving back4:31 How the Google Cloud - ServiceNow integration/partnership combines AI with workflow transformation5:26 Enabling enterprise-scale workflows, execution and governance8:01 How their AI control tower provides full agent visibility and governance10:26 How the Google Cloud - ServiceNow integration/partnership enables real-time data and AI-driven CRM gains13:29 His advice to leverage AI ecosystems, avoid POCs and build faster15:51 The need to use trusted partners, align leadership and balance decision-making17:58 How mentorship, self-belief and persistence through uncertainty leads growthTo find out more about all the great work happening at Google Cloud, check out the website cloud.google.com

The Insurtech Leadership Podcast
What 50 Carriers Know That You Don't: Inside Sønr

The Insurtech Leadership Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2026 29:14 Transcription Available


Introduction Most insurers say they want to be innovative. Fewer have a systematic way to know what's worth pursuing, who's building it, and whether they should partner, invest, or simply wait. Matt Connolly has spent ten years building the answer to that problem. Connolly is the founder of Sønr, a global market intelligence platform that tracks over five million companies and helps insurers, reinsurers, and brokers make better decisions about innovation and technology. Working with fifty-plus tier-one carriers—from Travelers and Liberty Mutual to Munich Re, Allianz, and Tokio Marine—as well as brokers like Guy Carpenter and WTW, Sønr sits at the intersection of the startups changing the industry and the incumbents that need to understand them. In this conversation, Josh Hollander and Connolly dig into where innovation intent breaks down inside large carriers, the four points where value leaks out of a corporate innovation process, why POC purgatory is a symptom not the disease, and how Sønr 2.0 is bringing market intelligence to operators who've been tasked to innovate but not given the tools to do it. Guest Bio Matt Connolly is the Founder and CEO of Sønr, a global insurtech market intelligence platform used by fifty-plus tier-one insurers, reinsurers, and brokers worldwide. Founded ten years ago, Sønr tracks over five million companies and has built a proprietary data set on insurance innovation unavailable to general AI platforms. He also hosts his own podcast interviewing innovation leaders from major global carriers. Sønr now generates half its revenue from North America and recently made its first US hire. Key Topics • Where innovation intent breaks down — At the CEO level. Without clear sponsorship and direction from leadership, innovation functions become disconnected from real business priorities. Ten years of data backs this up. • The four value leaks — Not understanding trends, poor scouting discipline, year-long POCs that should be three weeks, and failing to move from POC to pilot to scale. Each is a distinct failure mode with a distinct fix. • POC purgatory — Mature innovation programs are running more POCs than ever but scaling fewer. The root cause is almost always people: wrong sponsors, wrong internal champions, or wrong startup for the actual need. Sønr's fix: a one-day workshop to build a mini business case before a three-week POC begins, with KPIs and go/no-go criteria agreed upfront. • The decentralization of innovation — Carriers that once had centralized innovation functions have spread that mandate across underwriting, claims, and distribution—but capability hasn't followed. Operators have been tasked to innovate with no networks, no tooling, and no experience. This is the gap Sønr 2.0 addresses. • Sønr 2.0 and the Emerging Trends Academy — A simple front-end into ten years of proprietary insurance innovation data, priced for operators not just innovation teams. The Emerging Trends Academy goes deeper: cross-industry groups going deep on specific trends with startups, carriers, consultants, and academics in the same room. • The data moat — Ten years of tracking every company, trend signal, and client engagement within insurance innovation. Data that Connolly notes even Anthropic or OpenAI simply can't access. That compounded intelligence sits behind both the platform and the research offering. Notable Quotes "Don't go with the startup that is the best salesperson. Do the scouting properly—where are they based, what's their culture, who are their people, does the technology align to your needs?" "POC purgatory. We're seeing mature innovation businesses doing more POCs than ever but not moving beyond them. The answer is often the people." "The data we sit on is not available to anybody else. It's compounded intelligence from ten years. Anthropic or OpenAI simply can't get to it." "If you don't get your direction right from the top, the value leak is going to be huge later on. Just start in the right place." Resources Guest: • Sønr: https://www.sonr.io • Matt Connolly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wearematt/ Host & Organization: • Joshua R. Hollander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarhollander/ • Horton International (USA): https://www.horton-usa.com/ • Insurtech Leadership Podcast (LinkedIn Showcase): https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insurtech-leadership-show Subscribe & Review If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. The Insurtech Leadership Podcast is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Paraules de vida
Paraules de vida, de 5.30 a 6 h - 07/06/2026

Paraules de vida

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2026 30:00


In Numbers We Trust - Der Data Science Podcast
#95: GitOps: Deployments mit Ruhepuls

In Numbers We Trust - Der Data Science Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026 27:57


GitOps ist ein DevOps-Ansatz, bei dem der Betrieb von Services als Code in Git abgelegt und versioniert wird, statt Deployments manuell über Oberflächen zusammenzuklicken. In dieser Episode erklären Mira und Andreas, was GitOps ausmacht, wie sich der deklarative Ansatz vom klassischen imperativen Vorgehen unterscheidet und wo die Abgrenzung zu Infrastructure as Code verläuft. Sie sprechen über die Vorteile – etwa Nachvollziehbarkeit, Versionskontrolle, Automatisierung und geringere Fehleranfälligkeit – ebenso wie über Herausforderungen rund um Secrets-Management und das nötige Umdenken. Außerdem ordnen sie ein, wann sich der Einsatz lohnt und wann manuelles Vorgehen sinnvoller bleibt. Den Abschluss bildet ein Hands-on-Teil mit konkreten Einstiegsschritten und Werkzeugen wie ArgoCD.   **Zusammenfassung** Was GitOps ist: Betrieb von Services als versionierter Code in Git, inklusive Konfiguration und laufender Versionen Beispiel API-Deployment: früher alles in der Pipeline, heute ein separates Repo, das den gewünschten Zustand beschreibt und von Tools wie ArgoCD mit dem Cluster abgeglichen wird Abgrenzung zu Infrastructure as Code: GitOps fokussiert die laufenden Services statt der Infrastruktur und gleicht Änderungen aktiv und kontinuierlich an Vorteile: Dokumentation, Rollback per Versionskontrolle, Automatisierung, weniger Fehler, Review-Möglichkeit und gemeinsame Verwaltung mehrerer Service-Versionen Herausforderungen: Umstieg von imperativ auf deklarativ, schwierigeres Debugging, alles muss in Git liegen, Secrets brauchen ein zusätzliches Tool Wann sinnvoll: ab MVP fast immer; bei kurzlebigen PoCs ruhig manuell oder per Pipeline Einstieg: mit neueren, einfacheren Projekten starten, ArgoCD installieren und schrittweise komplexer werden (dev/prod, mehrere Services) Fazit: kurze Einarbeitung, dann lohnt es sich – inzwischen etablierter Standard und "Deployments mit Ruhepuls" **Links** ArgoCD: https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io FluxCD: https://fluxcd.io ArgoCD Image Updater: https://argocd-image-updater.readthedocs.io Sealed Secrets: https://github.com/bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets External Secrets Operator: https://external-secrets.io Helm: https://helm.sh Kustomize: https://kustomize.io Kubernetes: https://kubernetes.io

El matí de Catalunya Ràdio

Pocs moviments entre els socis del govern S

Govcon Giants Podcast
How to Find Prime Contractors and Pitch Tribal 8a Firms for Subcontracts

Govcon Giants Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2026 10:27


How to find prime contractors and pitch them for real subcontracting work is one of the most overlooked skills in federal contracting, and most small businesses get it completely wrong. In this episode of the Federal Help Center podcast, Eric Coffie sits down with Zach Golden to break down a step-by-step research method for stalking primes, profiling tribal 8(a) firms, and writing outreach that actually gets a response. If you've been chasing contracts you can't win solo, this is the workflow that opens doors. Here's what you'll learn inside this episode: Why large 8(a) primes like ANCs, tribal entities, and Native Hawaiian Organizations operate more like Amazon than Walmart and how to position yourself inside their partner network The exact research workflow Zach uses inside OpenCube IQ to pull a prime's financials, NAICS codes, contract history, and government POCs before sending a single email How to write a short capability statement email that doesn't over-explain and triggers a real reply from busy CEOs and business development leads How to use NAICS code spending data and state filters to surface the right primes when you don't yet know who's holding the contracts in your space The talking points strategy that lets you sound like an insider in conversations with primes even when you're early in your govcon journey EPISODE CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Why large 8a primes work like Amazon partners 1:25 - How to approach tribal entities with capability statements 2:50 - Sending capability statements into the network 3:30 - Researching tribal primes inside OpenCube IQ 5:00 - Reading contract history and finding government POCs 6:30 - Using NAICS code spending to find the right primes 7:45 - Filtering by state to narrow down vendor lists 8:45 - Building talking points that prove you know the game Market Intelligence gives you the federal opportunities, agency signals, recompete intel, and pursuit briefs that tell you not just what contracts exist, but which ones to chase and how to win them. Sign up for free Daily Alerts and get opportunities delivered to your inbox before the day starts.

ChannelBuzz.ca
Dell moved 10k partners to distribution-led buying – and says they’re growing faster for it

ChannelBuzz.ca

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2026 25:24


Anthony Tanoury, senior director of distribution at Dell Technologies Distribution doesn’t get a lot of editorial love. It’s easy to treat it as the background infrastructure of the channel – the warehousing, the credit lines, the logistics layer that keeps product moving. But as anyone who’s been paying attention knows, that picture is well out of date. At Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas this week, In the Channel sat down with Anthony Tanoury, Dell’s senior director of distribution, to talk about what distribution actually looks like in 2026 – and the conversation ranged from supply chain strategy to AI-assisted deal registration to the shifting economics of the partner ecosystem. The headline number: Dell moved approximately ten thousand partners to a distribution-led buying model last year. Partners who previously purchased direct from Dell now route exclusively through distribution. The more interesting data point is what happened next – those partners are growing faster than the ones who remained on a direct model. Tanoury attributes it to the enablement depth that distributors can offer at a scale that Dell simply can’t replicate directly. On the Modern Partner Platform rollout – one of the bigger announcements at DTW this week – the conversation came down to speed. Deal registration that today takes two to three days is being redesigned, with AI-assisted automation in the pipeline to bring that down to two to three hours. The plumbing involves integrating Dell’s systems tightly with distributor platforms, streamlining the multi-system, multi-email-thread process that currently slows everything down. And when asked for the single most underutilized resource available to partners through distribution, Tanoury didn’t hesitate: the AI accelerator programs that distributors have built to help partners get started in the AI practice space. With every partner asking “where do I begin,” the answer may already be sitting in the distributor’s enablement catalogue. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor at ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. We’re continuing our coverage from Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas this week, and I wanted to close the series of Dell execs with a conversation that I think will resonate with pretty much anyone who moves Dell product – which, let’s be honest, is a lot of you. Distribution is one of the topics that often gets taken for granted. It’s the plumbing, it’s the logistics, it’s the credit line. Except that’s not really what distribution is anymore, and Anthony Tanoury has about as good a vantage point as anyone to explain why. He spent 30 years in the industry on both the vendor and distributor side of the table, and he’s now Dell’s senior director of distribution, which means he’s the person responsible for making the relationship between Dell and its distributor partners actually work at scale. This week at DTW, Dell announced some significant changes to how it’s thinking about its partner ecosystem, and distribution’s right at the center of that. We talked about the evolution of distribution from warehouse and financing shop to AI enablement engine, what it actually means for partners that Dell moved 10,000 of them to distribution-led buying last year, and what the promise of deal registration in hours rather than days actually requires to make real. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Anthony Tanoury. Anthony, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.Anthony Tanoury: Thanks for having me. Robert Dutt: To kick things off – the definition of distribution, and the definition from distributors themselves of what they do, has changed so dramatically over the last few years, as you’ve been party to on both sides of the fence, vendor and distributor, with your background. Sitting where you are now as senior director of distribution, how do you define the core value proposition for your distribution partners today compared to the way it may have looked a few years ago if you were in the seat, or in a previous seat managing distribution? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, I think 30 years in distribution – dating myself here. The idea of a distributor was warehousing, finance, so on. Really, the way that that’s evolved – and still evolving, because not everyone fully understands distribution and the value of distribution – but it’s really become the engine for all of us OEMs to really dive deep into the mid-market, and as lead generation for all of us. So SMB, mid-market, and then really leveraging their enablement platforms for our partners. So as an example, this week here at Dell Technologies World, we’ve launched our full AI portfolio. And really at the end of the day, it’s a platform to build off of. And our distributors, through our partners, are really enabling those partners – especially in the mid-market. The enterprise partners have hired data scientists and so on. And those mid-market and SMB partners, they need our help. And we really rely on our distributors, who have AI accelerator programs and can really take a partner through the journey of how to look at AI, how to start, and then how to implement and really get started in this space. We’ve met with multiple partners at this show and we’ve had our partner advisory boards. And that’s the number one takeaway when we’re talking to our partners: “How do I get started?” And I think Jeff Clarke and Michael Dell talked about that on stage – it’s really, we’ve got the platform to build off of, and then really rely on our distributors to go enable all of our partners out there to have those conversations, and then to build the proof, the POCs for us with their customers and take it to the next step. Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about this moment in time and managing distribution right now. Whenever I think of running a hardware vendor, running distribution, or being on the purchasing side of the solution provider right now – boy, that’s an interesting challenge – with the supply chain issue, with the pricing issue, with all of that. I guess it boils down to, from your perspective: how are you leaning on distribution differently to help you guys and your partners ultimately, especially the smaller ones, handle this issue of availability, of supply chain, of capacity, as we’ve seen the component price challenges across the industry? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, so that’s not unique to Dell. We’re all challenged with the supply chain challenges, and it’s really about having a consistent message to our partner community, to our customers, on how – or why – to partner with Dell in these times. And our distributors have really leaned in with us right now and are getting that message out to our partners that “Dell’s got a plan. Here’s the plan.” And this is how we want you to message that and relay that to your partner community. So as an example, I did a keynote speech at one of our large partner events recently, and my talk track was based on how to navigate those supply challenges with us. I spent a lot of time on that, and had multiple partners come up afterwards, catching me outside. And the comment was, “That’s what we need to hear. That’s our challenge today, and you’re tackling that head on.” So to get back to your question from a distribution perspective – they enabled me to take that message to them, and then they’re expanding on that to their 20,000 partners in their ecosystem. Robert Dutt: As you bring up an interesting thread there – I don’t have time obviously to go through the whole keynote, but the elevator pitch, boiled-down version of it – what’s the advice to partners on tackling it from where you sit and from where Dell sits? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, really leaning in with us and going deeper with your customers. And so that’s where you’re going to work with Dell and get priority allocation – looking long-term versus short-term, “I just need this product in the next week to get through this phase.” Now, let’s look at a long-term solution together and let’s plan two years out. Let’s plan longer in some cases, and then we’ll take it from there. Robert Dutt: And that’s something we heard also from Jeff Clarke in Q&A – that idea of build out those long-term plans, put your hand up as early as you can. Because it sounds like if you’ve got your hand up early, you’ve obviously got the best chance of getting that list fulfilled. Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, whether it’s a customer or a partner – I mean, that’s a true partnership and we’ll lean in when customers want to lean in with Dell. Robert Dutt: I wanted to touch on the changes that are coming to the partner program, specifically as it involves your interactions with distribution. The Dell portal is getting redone and the Dell program is getting redone with the modern partner platform rolling out this year. You guys are baking agentic AI into your partner platform. Meanwhile, your distributors are doing the same thing with their partner platforms. I’m curious – obviously very early in the game – but how are you and your distribution partners thinking long-term about how those various platforms interact with each other, in terms of delineating who covers what base, when it comes to serving the partner and what you may be able to do down the road as a result of having those platforms? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, so the key is cutting down on SLAs. How do we take getting pricing out to a partner, out to a customer, from two to three days down to a matter of hours, right? And we’ve worked closely with all of our distributors over the last year or two, because our partners rely on our distributors’ platforms. And how does that integrate with ours? But the key is speed. How do we do things faster? And that is, as you stated, embedding AI into that. And so again, can’t get too far ahead, because we’re still going down this path and things sometimes get pushed out. But we’ve been working on this for a long time with them. We’ve had a lot of meetings with them here. We’ve gone deep into their platforms. They’re all rolling out new platforms as well. So making sure we’re doing it all at the same time, and together, has been key. Robert Dutt: One area I did want to double-click on there. One of the big promises of the new platform is deal-reg approval in minutes, AI-generated demand signals, those kinds of things. As Dell is accelerating its own systems, how does distribution plug into that? How does the distributor help manage and act on those AI-driven demand signals and facilitate a faster quote-to-deal-reg? Anthony Tanoury: Without getting too deep into deal-reg, there are a lot of nuances there. But yes, today where you’ve got multiple partners of record and you’ve got multiple partner IDs – simplifying that down to one or two partner IDs versus 20 today that we have – and then with deal registration, having partner of record is key in that mix, and we do have that today. But the distributors are really where it starts. So a partner comes to the distributor, says, “Hey, I need pricing on this and I want deal registration.” Today it might take the full SLA – the two to three days we just talked about – to get deal registration approved, with multiple systems flowing back and forth. In the future – and when I say future, we’re close, we’ll get there – is having that one stream go, starting from the distributor, through AI, plays into that, where it’ll do the work of looking in and making sure: here’s the partner of record. Is there a partner on record? Does the end user qualify? And without multiple people, multiple email streams going back and forth, it locks it in. And so now you’ve got an answer back in two to three hours versus two to three days. Robert Dutt: A lot of MSPs prefer to consume technology as a service, because it’s kind of in what they do – the name’s kind of on the tin – and bundle that with vendors like Microsoft or security or what have you. How are you working with distributors to make APEX and infrastructure solutions seamlessly consumable within distribution, and particularly on their marketplace? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, so that’s a good question. So there’s APEX, right? We have Dell APEX, and our competitors have their own, but we have Dell APEX. But our distributors also have their own versions of APEX, or as-a-service models. And at the end of the day, we leverage theirs just as well as we do our own. And it depends on the customer, depends on the contract situation, but there are multiple vehicles to get an as-a-service deal done today that didn’t exist a year ago, didn’t exist two years ago, right? And then there’s – moving to another topic, and really the same topic – device as a service, right? And that was something we’ve been talking about for a few years now and hasn’t really taken off, but that’s all part of this now. Because the device at the edge is co-mingled now – especially in the new AI world – with your server infrastructure. So it could all become part of a recurring revenue stream for MSPs. Robert Dutt: And I think it makes potentially hardware more compelling to the MSP. When you’ve gotten that tie-in – I know it’s early days and it’s a way off from being fully operationalized – but what you’re talking about, and what Jeff Clarke was talking about today about basically acting as the arbiter, sort of an open orchestration layer, saying “all right, this particular bit is best handled in the infrastructure and the data center, this particular bit is best handled right here on the machine sitting by the desk side.” Anthony Tanoury: Absolutely. Robert Dutt: We’ve heard a lot this week about the focused accounts incentive, rewarding partners for selling across lines of business. And it’s kind of a cliche almost, in that vendors such as yourselves who have multiple lines of business are always looking for great ways to get partners to sell across those businesses. And certainly incentives are a classic way of doing that. How are you using distribution to train, enable, and facilitate partners making that leap across the portfolio – especially as this seems to be something that Denise Millard and the team are putting a lot of the wood behind? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, so you mentioned the partner program – and that’s really what we leverage with the push coming from distribution. You typically focus where you can earn the most dollars. And so we’re putting the dollars on driving all lines of business for us. So today you may have a lot of infrastructure-focused partners – like MSPs, they don’t want to sell the client the edge device. But again, with AI driving from both ends now, it’s become an imperative that they don’t ignore the edge devices anymore. So really leveraging distribution both ways. We’ve got CSG partners that don’t sell storage and infrastructure, and then we’ve got partners that are trying to move in that direction. And then we’ve got other partners saying, “Hey, I’ve got to get on board too,” that are in the infrastructure space and have got to move in the other direction. And that’s where we leverage distribution – they have multiple enablement engines, all of our distributors, to enable those partners to do that. So for us – and again, to the partner program – we’ve announced some changes here at this event, with our partner advisory board meeting coming up. Partner programs, you want to keep them simple, predictable for partners, with tweaks along the way. And AI is one of those tweaks where we’ve got to pull the levers in different directions to get partners and distributors moving in that motion. So yeah, it’s an exciting time to be at Dell with this opportunity in front of us. Robert Dutt: That’s a big tweak – or more accurately, a big series, whole family, whole universe of tweaks to be made. But you don’t want to pull a whole program apart. You’ve got partners that have invested and distributors that have invested in that program. So you’ve got to make sure you do those incremental tweaks when you need them, but not blow up the whole program. Anthony Tanoury: Absolutely. Robert Dutt: You mentioned off the top the classic framing of distribution as the warehouse and the bank kind of structure. Let’s touch on the bank side of things a little bit there. In light of everything that’s going on today, in light of the infrastructure refresh opportunity that’s out there, the constraints in the marketplace – financial engineering is probably more critical than ever. Dell Financial Services is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but how do you view the role of the distributor when it comes to PO financing, terms, bridging the financing gap for complex projects, and helping partners manage this whole multiple-balls-in-the-air situation? Anthony Tanoury: You can’t look at a partner just through the lens of what they do with Dell. The business they have with Dell – partners procure from many places. We love them to only sell Dell for us, but they have other options, other solutions, other areas of the business that we’re not focused on. They procure through distribution. Distributors have huge businesses with a lot of these partners. They have financial terms through the distributors that maybe we can’t offer them through Dell – and leveraging our partner programs to deliver extended terms in this environment. With the supply shortages and lead times getting pushed out, really leveraging distribution with terms that we can’t give them today. There are multiple levels, and they have much higher credit lines with the distributors than maybe we have with them. And then going back to the as-a-service model – really leveraging distributors who have all those options in place for them today, that maybe they don’t have with us. Robert Dutt: When you’re looking at distribution, what’s the one metric you look at first to judge whether a distributor is meeting the bar – is delivering net new value to Dell? Anthony Tanoury: New partner recruitment, right? Multiple lines of business – not just focused in one area of our business, but selling across all lines of business. Then we rely on distribution. We just moved 10,000 partners last year over to distribution-led. Where those partners could procure direct from Dell in the past, now they can’t, and they buy strictly through distribution. Those are our authorized partner community – and potentially in the future, expanding that to other levels of our business and offloading them to distribution. Dell is a more channel- and distribution-friendly company than we get credit for. I think that doesn’t always get seen, and we’re moving that way. Robert Dutt: How did that process go, and any learnings from moving those 10,000 partners that may inform what you do in moving the next group, if there is a next group to be moved? Anthony Tanoury: Exactly, a lot. A lot of that is in data transfer and making sure that the distributors have the right data to target those partners and give those partners the service they need. The distributors all had to ramp up their infrastructure to support those partners – credit line facilities with those partners – because they didn’t do business with those partners before. Onboarding some of those partners as net new to distribution, who had never bought from distribution before. And then again, really letting those partners know the value of distribution. Since we’ve moved those partners over, those partners that have embraced distribution are growing faster than the partners that haven’t. It’s sometimes a lot easier to get that additional support, that additional attention from a disti, than it is to try to navigate that directly. In some cases, they can support them better than we can, and it’s proven out in the last year. Robert Dutt: What’s the single most underutilized resource that you guys have through distribution, in terms of what partners are using? Anthony Tanoury: I would say the AI accelerator programs I spoke about earlier. That’s key. Going back to the enablement piece – I just don’t think a lot of partners understand the value. They come to these events, they make the statements, “Hey, we need help here. We need to leverage distribution for that help.” Especially when you come to a Dell Technologies World, or you go to one of our competitors’ or peers’ events. Our distributors have that enablement piece for you to get started, that you need to leverage, because it’s not just a point-solution type of conversation, it’s broad. Really leveraging them to help. Robert Dutt: Along the same lines, but a little bit different – obviously we’ve touched on the idea of cross-selling, and the idea that, surprise surprise, Dell would like partners to sell more of the portfolio, better together, all that kind of stuff. For an MSP or VAR whose primary look at Dell to date has been selling end devices – laptops, desktops, et cetera – sourced through distribution, what do you see as the most likely next logical step to expand that relationship? To get thinking across lines? What are some of the common threads for the best ways to approach that? Anthony Tanoury: Yeah, that’s a tough question. Common ways to approach how to sell across lines of business – take it back to the customer level. Your customer is buying these products, and they may be buying them from somebody else or they may be buying them online, depending on the size of the organization, so on. Again, the service model – going back to it, it’s another service revenue stream that they can leverage. But I think when you look at the distributors, they have a lot of talk tracks with the partners on how to do that, and frankly do it better than we do. So that’s why we really leverage them. When we say, “Hey, we want to sell more of our client and peripheral devices,” we start with distribution. We start with the partner community, and it’s paid off. I think it’s just – really, don’t leave revenue on the table. We’ve been saying it for years and I think it’s starting to resonate, and leveraging distribution to push that message forward. And I think partners are starting to catch on. Robert Dutt: All right, great insights. Anthony, I thank you for taking the time. I’m sure it’s been a busy week for you here. Thanks for joining us. Anthony Tanoury: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Robert Dutt: There you have it, Anthony Tanoury from Dell Technologies. I’d like to thank Anthony for carving out some time in what I’m sure was a very busy week on the show floor here at DTW. Few things from the conversation that I thought were worth pulling out. First, the 10,000 partners that Dell moved to distribution-led buying last year – that’s not a small number, and the fact that those partners are outgrowing the ones who haven’t yet made that transition should be a data point for anyone still on the fence about how they structure their Dell relationship. Second, when Anthony named net new partner recruitment as his primary metric for judging distributor performance – not revenue, not attach rate, net new – that tells you something about where Dell thinks its distribution channel still has room to grow. And third, if you haven’t looked at the AI accelerator programs your distributor is running, that came up twice as the single most underutilized resource available to partners right now. Probably worth a phone call. I’d like to thank you as always for listening to the show. Please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts – Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, most directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated as well. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

The Segment: A Zero Trust Leadership Podcast
Cybersecurity Has Hit a Brick Wall — Andrew Rubin on What Comes Next

The Segment: A Zero Trust Leadership Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2026 48:23


In this episode, Raghu Nandakumara sits down with Andrew Rubin, Founder & CEO of Illumio, for a candid conversation about the next phase of AI-driven cybersecurity risk. Just weeks after a major AI breakthrough sparked shockwaves across the security industry, Andrew shares his immediate reaction — from the sobering implications of machine-speed vulnerability discovery to a frank assessment of why the cybersecurity industry's fundamental model may already be broken. The conversation explores what actually changes in an era where vulnerabilities could be discovered and exploited faster than any human-driven operation could manage. Andrew argues that while segmentation as a concept is decades old, its role as a critical backstop has never been more urgent. If attackers begin operating at machine speed, defenders must rethink not just their tools, but their entire operating model — from how they assess risk to how quickly they can respond. Raghu and Andrew discuss: Why the cybersecurity industry has spent more every year while outcomes have gotten worse How AI creates an asymmetric threat unlike anything defenders have faced before Why patching alone won't solve the problem — and the COVID vaccine analogy that explains why The shift from prevention to resilience as the new security north star What the SolarWinds story reveals about how organizations miscalculate tail risk Why segmentation becomes one of the few reliable backstops in a model-driven world How the era of 12-month RFPs and POCs may be coming to a swift and necessary end Stay Connected with our host, Raghu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghunandakumara/ For more information about Illumio, check out our website at illumio.com    Resources Mentioned: Hard Truths in Cybersecurity: Fear, Liability, and the Industry's Biggest Lies | RSAC 2026 Panel:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88XjfZBYIw0

ChannelBuzz.ca
Dell pre-sales leader on agentic AI, the AI Factory, and 13-to-1 server consolidation

ChannelBuzz.ca

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2026 26:38


Alan Ashby, senior director of Americas data center presales and specialty sales at Dell. Today’s episode of In The Channel comes to you from the floor of Dell Technologies World 2026, where the expansion of the Dell AI Factory has been dominating the headlines. But what does that mean for partners who aren’t selling multi-million dollar deployments to the Fortune 500? To find out, we sat down with Alan Ashby, senior director of Americas data center presales and specialty sales at Dell. Ashby breaks down the practical realities of the AI infrastructure boom, explaining how partners can start small by deploying “AI supercomputers” like the Dell Pro Max GB10 directly to SMB desktops to unlock local, highly secure agentic AI workflows. We also dive into the economics of on-prem AI versus the public cloud, how partners can help customers escape “prototype purgatory” by narrowing their focus, and the massive opportunity remaining in traditional data center modernization—including the staggering claim that Dell’s new 18G platforms can consolidate 13 legacy servers into one. We also touch on how Dell is leveraging its Customer Solution Centers to help partners de-risk these complex deployments before the customer signs the PO. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In the Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. We’re coming to you today from the floor of Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas where the expansion of the Dell AI Factory and new agentic AI capabilities have completely dominated the Day 1 headlines. But as we know, the keynote hype doesn’t always translate immediately to the loading dock. To understand how partners are supposed to actually size, architect, and sell these new AI infrastructure solutions, I sat down with Alan Ashby. He’s the senior director of Americas Data Center pre-sales and specialty sales at Dell. We dig into the economics of on-prem AI versus the public cloud, how partners can get mid-market customers started with an AI supercomputer right at their desk, and why the traditional data center refresh is still a massive and highly lucrative play for the channel. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Alan Ashby. Alan, thanks for taking the time. Appreciate it. Alan Ashby: Absolutely. Thanks for having us. Robert Dutt: Americas Data Center pre-sales and specialty sales. That’s a broad title. A lot of ground to cover there. To set the stage for MSPs, solution providers, folks listening to this, what can you tell me about what your team actually does kind of day-to-day when it comes to working with partners around infrastructure and AI solutions? Alan Ashby: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve got a handful of folks that, you know, we’re aligned and dedicated to the partner ecosystem focused across the Americas. We have a couple of primary roles. So from a pre-sales perspective, helping support our partners from a technical enablement, understanding our product portfolio, understanding how to position the products correctly, both amongst the portfolio itself, but also kind of competitively in the marketplace. We also run what we call a technical account plan with our partners. So, you know, supporting them on their certifications, their enablement motions, etc. And then we also run what we have a program we call Heroes for our partners. So Heroes is our foundational enablement motion for partners. We run in the Americas somewhere between 15 and 30 regional face-to-face sessions every single quarter. Those we’d love to see partners participate in, try to do them all over the country. And those are deep dive sessions, you know, going through products and roadmaps and futures and how to position products, etc. And, you know, those have been an enablement motion for the last several years and been incredibly successful. Robert Dutt: All right. We’re hearing a lot this week, obviously, about the expansion of Dell AI Factory and the idea of bringing AI on-premise to the edge, closer to the enterprise itself. And from an infrastructure perspective, you’ve got PowerRack, the pitch there being you go to live customer workloads from kind of the box to deployed in six hours and change. For a partner who’s trying to sell into the mid-market or the enterprise, you know, how does that kind of speed of value fundamentally change the conversation that they’re having with their customer, whether that’s the CEO, CIO, or the business leader? Alan Ashby: Yeah, I don’t think there’s been a more exciting time for our partners with what the market’s putting out there for us. You know, when we look at, you know, you mentioned the mid-market space, I actually think there’s a massive opportunity for partners to go support those customers, especially with some of the agentic workflow processes that we announced today with some of the platforms. You know, it may not be those 100 million, 200 million dollar opportunities, but almost every single small business and medium business, you know, you start with maybe a product like the Dell Pro Max GB10, and you start there and you start building out that agentic workflows, you know, building out automated dashboards with AI assistance built into it. You know, a lot of great things that a partner could go deliver that everybody can see value in. Sometimes in that mid-market space and small business space, it’s easier to get started on some of these agentic flows because they don’t have data that’s kind of messy. They don’t have legacy debt from a data center infrastructure perspective. And then from a larger enterprise or commercial customer, you know, we have seen a number of very good successes across our partner ecosystem with delivering services and value to our customer sets collectively, you know, to help customers really try to find value through their AI journeys. Understanding and identifying key use cases or workloads that they think they can get value out of it, understanding the infrastructure, the architecture that’s designing it right. You know, early days, you know, we had a lot of times where, you know, customers and partners struggle with just, you know, how do we deploy this thing because power and cooling needs are maybe bigger than what I was expecting and, you know, managing through that challenge. So partners have a phenomenal opportunity, I think, to help provide that value to our customers collectively together. You know, every one of our partners, they bring a unique skill set and differentiators on their own to the marketplace and help support those customers to that kind of their own journeys together. Robert Dutt: What is that infrastructure pitch down to that, especially that mid-market or even SMB customer? In the past, there was interest in doing it, I think often they would end up, if they were going to do it, doing it on public cloud, because the alternative was a big old infrastructure solution that doesn’t really fit them, unless maybe a partner can bring it on and kind of do a multi-tenant kind of situation there. But where are we at in terms of having right-fit infrastructure to make that work? Alan Ashby: Yeah, I think, you know, even the stuff that we announced today on stage, you know, products we announced at GTC, I think really helped kind of build out that situation and story for a small customer to be able to scale. You think about going back to the Dell Pro Max GB10, you know, you can take that device and you can, you know, run a small business basically off that depending on the concurrent users and be able to move up from that to some of our Pro workstations all the way up to the GB300. You know, we can run a model as big as a trillion parameters, it’s kind of crazy what you can do on a desktop, you know, and that doesn’t require any unique power requirements, I can plug that into a normal outlet. And then I could scale into, you know, actual infrastructure depending on the size of what the need is. And that’s where I think there’s a lot of opportunity for partners to think through, you know, how do they help customers scale through that. And so we talked a lot today at the show around, you know, the economics of everything. And in the long term, it’s going to be very challenging economically to run things in a public cloud. Yeah, on-prem is going to be a massive opportunity. And the fact that Michael today even talked about things about running foundation models and open source models on-prem, you know, your data is fully secure, you manage it all yourself. You know, it’s a lot easier to think about how I actually, you know, pull and extract value out of those different solutions. Robert Dutt: Well, and that’s the pitch right for the desk-side agentic AI solution is the idea, I think that the number was 87% reduction in token cost and in terms of comparing the cost of acquiring, deploying, running the solution on-prem. I think the break-even was three months or something like that against running the same kind of solution in public cloud. Alan Ashby: Yeah, I think that’s where customers are challenged today is, you know, you can have a lot of different, you know, foundational models and, you know, some of the agentic tools that are out there today that are subscription-based, cloud-based. And you can run through usage real fast without getting a lot of value out of it. When you start thinking about deploying stuff on-prem, you know, you know exactly what your output per day could be, and you can scale accordingly. Robert Dutt: How does that change how a partner approaches both selling and thinking about running, maintaining that infrastructure as opposed to something that’s all outsourced to the cloud and has those significant question marks of cost attached? Alan Ashby: I think there’s a lot of stuff we’re still figuring out, to be honest. You know, I think a lot of partners are trying to understand that and every customer is going to be a little bit in a different spot in their journey. And I think, you know, that’s where some of our partner ecosystems have tremendous value to help meet them where they are and help them take that first or second step forward to try to be able to deliver overall value to the company. Robert Dutt: Do you see that kind of time to value, that reduction in overall costs being something that can get unstuck some of those classic cases of AI workloads that are getting put into prototype, into test phase, but never quite see the light of day, partially perhaps because of that economic headwind that you discover when you start trying to scale these things? Alan Ashby: I think there’s that. I also think sometimes some customers probably try to maybe bite off more than they can chew at one time. And I think when we start thinking about these AI use cases, sometimes we’ll talk with some customers and partners helping them through them. They have, you know, two, three dozen things they want to try to accomplish out of one solution or one opportunity. It’s how do we narrow that down a little bit to where we actually extract value out of that particular use case that you’re trying to drive value with. And we’ve seen some really great success with some of our partners being able to help, you know, negotiate and navigate partner customers through that journey. You know, I think it takes a skill set that’s unique, and we’re starting to see more and more of our partners, you know, invest in and put attention to building out dedicated AI practice teams, helping them understand the skill set. The market’s moving incredibly fast, unlike ever before. And so, you know, it takes somebody who has a real passionate interest and a lot of curiosity to understand how these things all work together and all the pieces fit together and how do you take advantage of everything as you go forward. Robert Dutt: How do you see the co-delivery model evolving over time as you say, things are moving fast. When it comes to deploying AI factories, I think we heard earlier that, you know, the model is sort of Dell handling deployment and management of the overall environment while partners are being asked to focus on the application, the vertical, those kinds of things. How do you see the role of the channel, I guess, especially professional services and advisory-type partners evolving? Alan Ashby: Yeah, I think that to your point, I think it’s evolving. And I think that, you know, there’s a lot of opportunities here from an educational services perspective, consulting services perspective, services for our partners, you know, very few customers, especially when you think about, you know, a traditional commercial customer, mid-market customer, know exactly what to do and what to do next. You know, they might have started a pilot out in the public cloud. And then they’re trying to figure out where to go from here. And like, there’s a lot of service opportunity for our partners there. When it comes from, you know, other deployment services, I think there’s opportunities there for our partners, you know, depending on the solutions. When you look at post-delivery of the product into the customer, I think that there’s even more opportunity for partners of how, once things are deployed and installed, what’s next? And how do you help customers really extract value out of the infrastructure they spent a lot of money on, and have pretty high expectations of the ROI and the benefits they get out of it? I think there’s a massive opportunity for partners to help those customers through that journey. I think there’s a big opportunity for partners to take a product like our GB10, GP300 products and say, how do I go show you how to build an agentic workflow on those systems that can deliver value for your customers? You know, those are all going to be partner-delivered opportunities. Robert Dutt: All right. It sounds like even though it’s relatively early in the process, we are at the point where some of those next steps are becoming clear then. Alan Ashby: Yeah, I would say so. I mean, the question is, how fast do things change? You know, and it’s one of those things like I look at the agentic opportunities, probably one of the biggest things that can bring value for our partners. We’re really looking for a partner ecosystem that has the skill sets to deliver those for customers. Robert Dutt: Speaking of things changing, moving from traditional virtualization workloads to AI is a pretty big shift in how you think about structure, infrastructure, especially around storage, IO, networking, GPUs, needless to say. How’s the pre-sales team helping partners to figure out what the right size is for these solutions, both for current state and future state, so that you’re not either over-provisioning or under-provisioning customers? Alan Ashby: That’s a great question, actually. I mean, we’ve done a lot of things internally at Dell to get better ourselves and have the right talent and resources to support the partner ecosystem. You know, we have teams that can help support partners, both from a sizing, scoping of the opportunity, all the way down to configuring and deploying that solution if the partner needs that help. We’re also trying to help up-level our partners to be able to do it on their own. It’s kind of self-service and building the tools to help them through that motion. A couple of years ago, we started launching AI workshops, the different skill sets to help up-level and help that motion for a lot of our partners. The partners that have participated in those have seen a lot more success than those that didn’t. We do those multiple times a quarter and encourage partners to participate through those motions. We have an AI workshop multiple times a quarter in North America, and we go through every step of the phase from how do you have a conversation with a customer all the way through, how do you narrow down use cases, to all the way to how do you actually develop, design, and build the systems for what you need. Robert Dutt: Along those same lines, but a little bit more customer-facing and kind of looking at the economics of it, AI projects carry a lot of financial and technical risk for CIOs. What resources are there, whether it’s proof of concept, technical validation, or specialty engineering teams that partners can tap in to kind of prove the math and de-risk a solution such as AI Factory for customers? Alan Ashby: Yeah, there’s a couple of them actually, and I encourage all partners to kind of look at the options. We have at Dell, we have what we call our Customer Solution Centers, and those Customer Solution Centers have the ability to be able to work with a pre-sales specialist, a pre-sales expert on various different solutions. We have data centers where partners can take advantage of and leverage to be able to do proof of concept for customers, proof of value with those folks, and that can vary from any size of the architecture, from small all the way up to very large, and help support them through that. Also encourage partners to reach out to their Dell teams and how do you take advantage of those CSC resources. It’s a very simple process, but work through Dell teams. Same thing would be to go spend time with us in our labs. We have a great lab up in the Hopkinton area where AI factories are manufactured and built, and love to take partners through that facility to be able to see what’s possible there. We have an AI lab down in Austin to help them through that as well. So there’s a lot of opportunities. I would say the other one is we have a lot of partners also building out their own capabilities, their own labs, and we’ve helped support them through that as well. I think that they’re providing some amazing value to their customers, being able to do their own POCs and demonstrations and whatever it might be to help support that customer throughout the process. Robert Dutt: AI obviously gets the big headlines because it’s the 2020s as it is. But customers still have traditional enterprise apps and aging infrastructure that is going to need a refresh. I guess, how does your team handle guiding partners around going after the new shiny thing, the big opportunity that’s out there versus the kind of day-to-day operational challenge of standard data center modernization and refresh? Alan Ashby: Yeah, it’s hard when they have two of these really big shiny objects out there that have a lot of potential value for customers, both with AI but also just traditional data center modernization. We’ve seen a really great success over the last year of helping customers, I would say, clean up the data center, think through what they’ve got today in there and how to modernize it and right-size everything. When you look at some of the things that we’ll announce here at the show, it’s pretty exciting, honestly. There’s some great announcements we had in the Day 1 keynote, Day 2 keynote will be just as exciting, more from an infrastructure perspective of things. I’m really excited what we’re doing just with traditional servers and we’ve seen a lot of great success by our partner ecosystem over the last several quarters with them going in and helping customers look at consolidation of those environments. Our 18G server platforms, which we’ll announce, can consolidate 13 legacy servers into one. That’s kind of crazy math when you think about that. It’s easy now to think about how do I help customers free up space and modernize things that makes it so AI is possible in their own data centers; consolidating racks in the servers is kind of a crazy concept. Then you think of how we’re looking at modernizing just traditional architecture with HCI architecture and the disaggregated architecture providing real value for customers with right-sizing, both compute capacity and storage capacity to be able to extract as much value as possible across the ecosystem of the portfolio. Robert Dutt: Along those lines, any other, I guess hidden opportunities for partners, things that maybe don’t get the big attention of the desk-side AI or PowerRack or some of those things, but still represent—sort of along the lines of the data center example you just gave—opportunities that are worth pursuing, that are worth looking at, but maybe not quite the highest profile? Alan Ashby: I mean, 100%. It’s easy to get excited with what we’re doing in AI. The market’s obviously kind of dictating a lot of that, but there’s a lot of opportunity, a lot of money to be made for our partners to be able to focus on classical data center architecture. We’ve got some great solutions. Our Dell Private Cloud is one that’s extremely exciting for partners, the opportunity to be able to help those customers through that process and think through that. I also am extremely excited with what we’re doing around the security front with our data protection portfolio, our PowerProtect product lines. Security is one that I think in the age of AI, we need to think through security differently. There’s some additional opportunities for partners to think about how do they provide those services, those extra value pieces to help make sure all of these customers are ready for what could be an AI security threat. Robert Dutt: I assume there’s a better together story to be told there between the hardware, the infrastructure, and the cyber protection. Alan Ashby: 100%. That’s one of the biggest values that we have at Dell. There’s inherent value between the products themselves being able to support each other differently, but also they have the large Dell value prop with the Dell supply chain, our security chain, how we build products. Everything provides value across the entire portfolio. Robert Dutt: What’s the single biggest misconception you see customers have around the idea of deploying on-prem AI in particular? Alan Ashby: That’s interesting. The big one I would say is where do I get started and how big do I need to get started? I think that we saw early days, a lot of customers thought initially you had to just get in line for supply on large GPU systems when you could run a lot of workloads, really interesting and exciting AI workloads on a server with a PCIe-based GPU, and now even more so with some of the other platforms with workstations or GB300, GB10. The biggest misconception is just thinking about how big I have to get started. I would encourage almost every executive, every leader of every company to start thinking differently about you probably should have an AI PC in your office and on your desk. You should have one of our, I always call it an AI supercomputer on your desk with the GB10. It’s about who’s going to be the most curious. There’s nothing that limits you from capabilities with what the models can do today. We really just need people to start using and playing and practicing and helping support the overall value to the customers and to our partners. Robert Dutt: It’s an interesting concept that a computer with a better NPU or GPU on board can unlock that curiosity towards AI and ultimately drag to infrastructure refresh down the road, I think. Alan Ashby: I think the key thing is you don’t have to be a coder. You don’t have to be a developer. Really today, anybody could be a developer. You could build your own application if you wanted to. You can build your own dashboards if you wanted to. You can run it 100% on-prem if you wanted to. You can use a coding assistant to help you manage through that. All you have to do is understand how to talk to it. How do you manage it like an individual and how do you manage it like an agent? It’s a secondary employee that helps you basically give you superpowers. Robert Dutt: If an MSP wants to get serious about the data center and AI with Dell, what’s the first step if they’re already in terms of certification, competency, that kind of thing that they should be looking at? Alan Ashby: Yeah, again, the portfolio is changing very quickly. I would say that table stakes obviously is having a good understanding of our compute platforms with what we’ve got put together with NVIDIA. That’d probably be step one. Step two would be thinking about what you can provide from a storage perspective and how you take advantage of both PowerScale and ObjectScale and all the way up through our lightning file systems, having good understanding how you can deploy that for your customers at scale. Then the other one would be how do you work closely with the Dell teams? That’s one of the things that is always encouraging for partners to think through is Dell has this incredibly large sales force that can help give them scale, give them opportunity. How do you share as a partner? How do you share your value back to the Dell teams? Make sure that they understand where you can be supportive of their customer experience. How do you work collaboratively with the Dell teams across the ecosystem? So forth. Tons of opportunity. We’re always looking for partners that have the right skill sets and the right capabilities. Our Dell teams want to bring them into customer accounts because we need their support. We need their help. Robert Dutt: Acknowledging this might be a wide range, what are some of those common threads that make for a good partner for you in terms of skill sets, areas of focus, that kind of thing? Alan Ashby: Yeah, I think it’s evolving over time. Today, I look at partners that have unique skill sets are incredibly important. Partners that have a competency across our portfolio. Table stakes of having competencies around our compute platform, our storage platforms, but then thinking even deeper, how do you have competency around some of our more isolated platforms like what we do in our unstructured storage space with PowerScale and ObjectScale and access scale that we announced today? Same thing with our data protection portfolio, our cyber resilience platforms, our SRP platforms, like partners that have deep technical specialty expertise in those areas, they’re always going to be needed and valued in our partner ecosystem. AI is one other area to differentiate a partner from, but there’s a lot of those opportunities. Even today with our Dell Private Cloud, I always tell partners that whenever you see a pivot change in our portfolio, like we did when we launched the Dell Private Cloud, this is an opportunity to differentiate yourself as a partner from other partners. To jump in early and be able to build the skill sets that our Dell team is looking for out of a partner to support their customers. Our Dell teams are always looking for those partners that can help lead the charge, especially from a technical perspective with the customers to validate the solution themselves to be able to provide that extensive value to the customer themselves. Robert Dutt: All right. Last one for me, without naming any names or with naming names, should you feel like doing so? What’s the most creative, unexpected, surprising use case for a Dell AI factory that you’ve seen a customer deploy thus far? Alan Ashby: Wow, that’s a hard one. I mean, there’s a lot of really interesting ones I’ve seen. I mean, early days, some of the ones I thought was some of the most exciting stuff that we did with Amarillo County in Texas. It’s a county that there’s a lot of languages natively spoken there and the community there needed to provide basically language services to a very large broad-based set of individuals in the community in their native tongue. And the Dell team worked closely with those folks to make that happen. All the way down there to where we got a number of partners helping small entities, both commercial and public entities, really think about how they can drive agentic workflows and some of the things that are dealing around that with dashboarding. Chat, agents, obviously is an easy one. And then helping customers through kind of how do you do code assist models. Those are probably the really big ones that we see from a use case perspective from our partners. Robert Dutt: No shortage of opportunities. Alan Ashby: Oh my gosh, it’s unbelievable how many there are today. Robert Dutt: Thank you for taking the time. Alan Ashby: Absolutely. This is great. Thank you. Robert Dutt: There you have it. Alan Ashby from Dell. I’d like to thank Alan for his time, carving out a few minutes for me amidst the chaos of day one here at DTW. My big takeaway from that conversation is that you don’t have to be deploying a multimillion dollar PowerRack system to get into the AI game with Dell right now. Between the new desktop workstations running localized agentic workflows and the massive 13 to one server consolidation plays they’re seeing in the traditional data center, there’s a very practical immediate path towards revenue here for partners in the mid market. I’d like to thank you as always for listening to the show. If you’re enjoying our coverage from Dell Technologies World, please do take a second and follow or subscribe in the podcast app of your choice. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your audio. And if you have a moment to leave a rating or review, always hugely appreciated. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for channelbuzz.ca and I’ll see you in the channel.

The Six Five with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman
Anthropic at $1.2 Trillion, AMD's Blowout Quarter, and the PE-Backed AI Enterprise Play | Ep. 304

The Six Five with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2026 65:08


Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman dig into the week's biggest moves in enterprise AI: Anthropic and OpenAI launching PE-backed enterprise JVs on the same day, Anthropic filling its compute gap with SpaceX's Colossus, Cerebris filing for a $3.5 billion IPO, NVIDIA going deep on co-packaged optics with Corning, and a full IBM Think and ServiceNow recap. Plus, for The Flip, hosts debate whether Anthropic, at $1.2 trillion, is the most important company in enterprise tech. The handpicked topics for this week are: 1. Anthropic and OpenAI Launch PE-Backed Enterprise JVs on the Same Day — Both companies announced private equity joint ventures, with OpenAI backed by Bain, Brookfield, and Advent, and Anthropic partnering with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, and General Atlantic. Daniel's read is that this is fundamentally a distribution play, using private equity portfolio companies as a deployment channel for AI at scale. Pat sees it as the clearest admission yet that enterprise AI cannot be self-implemented at scale without specialized consulting support, and flags that mid-tier systems integrators (SIs) could get cut out of the middle. (The Decode) 2. Anthropic Signs Massive Compute Deal with SpaceX Colossus — Anthropic urgently needed compute and SpaceX had 300 megawatts and 220,000 GPUs sitting at Colossus One in Memphis without enough business to fill them. Pat's take is blunt: this move is pragmatic. Anthropic needs it, xAI has it. Daniel adds that Dario himself said they planned for 10x growth and got 80x, and this deal is the fast backfill that reality demanded. The side note both hosts flag: Anthropic is running on H100s, H200s, and B200s, which puts the whole "Anthropic only runs on Trainium and TPUs" narrative to rest. (The Decode) 3. Cerebris Files for a $3.5 Billion IPO at $26.6 Billion Valuation — This marks their second attempt at an IPO after pulling the first filing. The architecture is genuinely unique, a complete wafer with massive on-chip SRAM and interconnects built directly onto the wafer rather than copper or photonics. Pat calls it the first credible Western alternative for AI inference. Daniel's framing cuts through: you do not have to beat NVIDIA to sell right now. You just need to have availability. The more interesting headline, both hosts agree, is that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman are angel investors, which adds fuel to the ongoing OpenAI lawsuit. (The Decode) 4. NVIDIA and Corning Announce $500 Million Optical Partnership — Three new US factories, co-packaged optics for Vera Rubin, and a supply chain strategy that mirrors what NVIDIA did with Coherent. Pat's context: this is vertical integration through investment rather than acquisition. Daniel's observation is that the pace of movement toward co-packaged optics is accelerating faster than anyone expected, and his "rule of and" applies here too. Copper is not going away. Optics are being added on top because the data volumes moving across these racks are outrunning what copper alone can handle. US manufacturing in North Carolina and Texas is a strategic bonus. (The Decode) 5. IBM Think 2026: Day Zero, Sovereign Core, and the Quantum Plus AI Bet — Pat moderated on stage with CEO Arvind Krishna and calls this IBM's best showing in five years. Arvind opened with the AI divide, the gap between companies still running POCs and companies already in production, and framed where IBM sits as day zero, not because nothing has happened, but because enterprise AI deployment at scale is still so early. Daniel's biggest takeaways: watsonX Orchestrate updates, Sovereign Core going GA with policy at runtime, and the Confluent acquisition potentially being IBM's most important asset since Red Hat, given that 40% of Fortune 500 companies run on it and real-time streaming data is foundational to agentic systems. Both hosts land on quantum plus AI as IBM's next inflection moment. (The Decode) 6. ServiceNow Knowledge 2026: Enterprise SaaS 2.0 is Emerging — Daniel got there on day three of the event and noted the conference was densely packed. His observation: enterprises have not gotten the memo from Wall Street that SaaS is supposedly dead. His emerging thesis is that middleware could make a comeback for AI, with companies needing a layer that lets agents work across any infrastructure, any app, and within the rules of their specific business. Pat agrees and adds that the growth question is about mix, not survival. (The Decode) 7. The Flip: Is Anthropic at $1.2 Trillion the Most Important Company in Enterprise Tech? — Daniel took the affirmative citing that Claude Code is deeply entrenched in developer workflows. Anthropic went from $9 billion to $45 billion ARR in months. Every major hyperscaler is both a customer and an investor. The PE JVs are turning verticals into Anthropic engines. Dario said they planned for 10x and got 80x. Pat's counter: the enterprise trust gap is real after what Anthropic pulled on pricing and performance. Microsoft has 2 billion users across 365, Azure, and Copilot. NVIDIA is the infrastructure Anthropic runs on. And workforce replacement, which is how Anthropic extracts its terminal value, is not arriving as fast as the valuation suggests. In reality, both hosts admit their notes looked almost identical. (The Flip) 8. AMD — Lisa Su guided AI data center growth up from 60% to 80%. With OpEx growing 83%, net income up 95%, free cash flow ripping, and CPUs growing at nearly 40% without price increases, Pat reads this as unit market share gains coming soon. Daniel's framing: AMD is now a two-headed juggernaut with CPUs and GPUs for the data center. And Helios has not even started shipping yet. Both hosts take a victory lap for previously calling this one. (Bulls and Bears) 9. Palantir — Triple beat on revenue, EPS, and forward guidance. Rule of 40 at 145%. Government revenue up 84%, 47 deals over $10 million, and the largest guidance raise in the company's history. Daniel's take: Palantir is redefining the category entirely. It's not a software company in the Salesforce or ServiceNow sense. It's technology, plus ontology, plus people, deployed at the deepest layers inside governments and enterprises. Pat adds that the four deployed FTE model lets them stand up AIP POCs within a week, which is why they are winning business at this pace. (Bulls and Bears) 10. ARM — AGI processor demand doubled from $1 billion to $2 billion within 45 days. Record revenue, strong pipeline, royalty growth at 21% for the full year. The stock ripped after hours, then sold the next day when management confirmed only enough supply for $1 billion of that $2 billion demand. Pat's read: 50% CPU market share with hyperscalers at the core level is the most underdiscussed signal on the call. Daniel adds that the worry about ARM competing with its own customer base in custom silicon has been quietly swept away by the sheer volume of compute demand. (Bulls and Bears) 11. Supermicro — A board member allegedly used a hairdryer to remove labels from GPU boxes being shipped to China. Approximately 20% of their revenue has reportedly been illegally shipped to China. They beat on EPS and Q4 guide but missed Q3 revenue versus consensus. Stock still ripped 18%. Daniel's take: if you are selling picks and shovels during a gold rush and you are this messed up, he cannot imagine owning it with the overhang that is building. (Bulls and Bears) 12. Lattice Semi and Coherent — Lattice revenue up 42%, back into growth, guiding to 50% year-on-year at midpoint. The AMI acquisition at $1.65 billion doubles their serviceable market from $6 billion to $12 billion and puts them inside every AI server on the planet at the BIOS and platform firmware layer. Pat calls the timing right: core financials crushing it, time to make a move. Coherent printed 21% year-on-year growth, 55% EPS growth, margins expanding, debt coming down, entered the S&P 500, and sits at the center of the co-packaged optics trend that is accelerating. Pat's choke point note: Indium phosphide capacity is the constraint. Six-inch fabs are doubling capacity in 2026, a quarter ahead of plan, and competitors are still ramping their transitions. (Bulls and Bears) Want the full breakdown from IBM Think and ServiceNow Knowledge, and check out our on-the-ground coverage linked in the show notes. Be part of our community. Hit that subscribe button and let us know what you want us to cover next week in the comments. Intro Pat on Stage at IBM Think https://x.com/PatrickMoorhead/status/2051381046537601101?s=20 The Decode OpenAI and Anthropic Both Launch PE-Backed Enterprise Services JVs on the Same Day — The Palantir FDE Model Goes Mainstream https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-04/openai-finalizes-10-billion-joint-venture-with-pe-firms-to-deploy-ai https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/04/anthropic-and-openai-are-both-launching-joint-ventures-for-enterprise-ai-services/ https://www.semafor.com/article/05/04/2026/openai-anthropic-ramp-up-enterprise-push Anthropic and SpaceX Sign Massive Compute Deal — Full 300MW / 220,000 GPU Colossus 1 Memphis Data Center Plus Exploration of Multi-Gigawatt Orbital AI Compute https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/anthropic-spacex-data-center-capacity.html https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-06/anthropic-inks-computing-deal-with-spacex-to-meet-ai-demand https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/musks-spacex-has-rented-out-access-to-its-supercomputers-220-000-nvidia-gpus-and-300-megawatts-of-ai-compute-power-to-rival-anthropic Cerebras Files for $3.5B IPO at $26.6B Valuation — The First Major AI Chip IPO of 2026 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/04/cerebras-ipo-ai-chipmaker.html https://theaiinsider.tech/2026/05/06/cerebras-systems-eyes-3-5b-in-largest-tech-ipo-of-2026-on-strength-of-ai-chip-demand/ https://www.briefs.co/news/ai-chipmaker-cerebras-just-filed-for-a-3-5-billion-ipo/ NVIDIA and Corning Announce Game-Changing Optical Partnership — $500M Investment, 3 New U.S. Factories, and Co-Packaged Optics for Vera Rubin and Beyond https://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/about-us/news-events/news-releases/2026/05/nvidia-and-corning-announce-long-term-partnership-to-strengthen-us-manufacturing-for-ai-infrastructure.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/nvidia-corning-optical-factories-nc-texas-ai.html https://www.wsj.com/tech/nvidia-corning-form-partnership-to-expand-fiber-optic-manufacturing-17f525de https://kfgo.com/2026/05/06/corning-partners-with-nvidia-to-expand-us-fiber-optic-output-for-ai-growth/ IBM Think 2026 Boston — Watsonx Orchestrate Next-Gen, Confluent Real-Time Data, IBM Concert, and Sovereign Core Define IBM's Agentic Operating Model https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-05-05-think-2026-ibm-delivers-the-blueprint-for-the-ai-operating-model-as-the-ai-divide-widens https://www.ibm.com/new/announcements/ibm-announcements-at-think-2026 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DX42DlrglOs/ ServiceNow Knowledge 2026 Las Vegas https://www.servicenow.com/events/knowledge.html https://newsroom.servicenow.com/press-releases/details/2026/Cohesity-and-ServiceNow-Deliver-Real-Time-Recovery-for-Enterprise-AI-Agents/default.aspx https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/04/nvidia-backed-cohesity-eyes-2026-ipo-with-valuation-rivaling-17-billion-rubrik.html   The Flip: Anthropic at $1.2T Now the Most Important Company in Enterprise Tech — More Important Than NVIDIA, Microsoft, or OpenAI FOR: Dual-hyperscaler compute anchor (Amazon $33B + Google $40B = $73B) is structural — unmatched https://futurumgroup.com/insights/anthropics-gigawatt-scale-tpu-deal-with-broadcom-creates-a-structural-advantage/ Constitutional AI safety positioning wins regulated industries https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-nec-japan-ai-engineering-workforce $900B valuation surpasses OpenAI ($852B) at faster revenue growth and lower burn rate https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/30/anthropic-potential-900b-valuation-round-could-happen-within-two-weeks/   AGAINST: NVIDIA still controls the substrate — every Anthropic dollar of revenue requires NVIDIA inference at some layer https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/27/nvidia-just-hit-an-all-time-high-why-some-think-a-rally-is-just-getting-started.html Microsoft has the enterprise distribution — 365 + Azure + Copilot reach >2 billion users https://www.marketbeat.com/originals/microsofts-maia-200-the-profit-engine-ai-needs/ $900B valuation is venture marketing — the IPO will reset the number https://www.semafor.com/article/05/04/2026/openai-anthropic-ramp-up-enterprise-push   Bulls & Bears: AMD Q1 2026 — Revenue $10.3B (+38% YoY), MI300X Data Center GPU Demand Drives Stock +20% on the Print https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1284/amd-reports-first-quarter-2026-financial-results https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/05/amd-q1-2026-earnings-report.html https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/amd-q1-2026-earnings-revenue-203331768.html Palantir Q1 2026 — Revenue +85% YoY, US Commercial +133%, Rule of 40 Score Hits 145%; Largest Guidance Raise in Company History https://investors.palantir.com/files/Palantir%20-%20Q1%202026%20Business%20Update.pdf https://www.reddit.com/r/PLTR/comments/1t3t0me/palantir_reports_q1_2026_us_revenue_growth_of_104/ https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/palantir-technologies-inc-q1-2026-002218719.html https://semiconalpha.substack.com/p/palantir-q1-2026-rewriting-the-rule Arm Holdings Q4 FY2026 — Record $1.49B Quarter, Full-Year Revenue Crosses $4.92B, $2B AGI CPU Pipeline; Stock +16% After Hours https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/arm-q4-earnings-call-highlights-225942093.html https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/ARM/6-k-arm-holdings-plc-uk-current-report-foreign-issuer-7e9ca9ac7dda.html https://semiconalpha.substack.com/p/arm-q4-fy2026-record-quarter-2-billion Super Micro Computer Q3 FY2026 — Revenue $10.2B (+123% YoY), Strong Q4 Guide; Stock +18% AH on First Earnings Call Since Co-Founder Indictment Drama https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/05/super-micro-smci-q3-earnings-report-2026.html https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/SMCI/8-k-super-micro-computer-inc-reports-material-event-e70b2f8b3cb7.html https://www.instagram.com/reel/DX42DlrglOs/ Lattice Semiconductor Q1 2026 — Beat-and-Raise Quarter ($170.9M, +42% YoY) Paired With $1.65B AMI Acquisition That Doubles Lattice's SAM to $12B https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/LSCC/8-k-lattice-semiconductor-corp-reports-material-event-642a862b2bf9.html https://www.ami.com/resources/ami-announces-agreement-to-be-acquired-by-lattice-semiconductor/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/patmoorhead_lattice-semiconductor-posts-beat-and-raise-activity-7457411226944425984-xA8T Coherent Q3 2026 Earnings https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/coherent-cohr-tops-revenue-expectations-in-q3-as-ai-demand-accelerates-shares-decline/ar-AA22Bz24?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds  

Ràdio Maricel de Sitges
Olga, Sònia i Carla, històries de tres dones taxistes de Sitges

Ràdio Maricel de Sitges

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2026


L'Olga Angaril va ser la primera dona taxista de Sitges, ara ja jubilada repassa els seus inicis en un món d'homes. Pocs anys després es va incorporar la Sònia Bages que ja suma quinze anys portant el taxi a Sitges, i aquesta darrera setmana s'ha incorporat la Carla Delgado, propietària de llicència que ha decidit fer un canvi de rumb laboral i deixar la banca per incorporar-se al taxi. Amb elles conversem sobre com és treballar en un món altament masculinitzat on només el 10% dels treballadors són dones. L'entrada Olga, Sònia i Carla, històries de tres dones taxistes de Sitges ha aparegut primer a Radio Maricel.

Growthaholics
#310 – Fraude virou software: como empresas estão reconstruindo a confiança digital | Com Marcelo Queiroz, Head Product Innovation ID&F no Serasa Experian, e Pedro Ivo Lima, CEO & Co-Founder na PhishX

Growthaholics

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2026 58:38


Hoje, fraudes não são mais eventos isolados — elas viraram processos automáticos, digitais e orquestrados em escala, impulsionados por IA e pela perda do controle do perímetro tradicional de segurança. Como as empresas estão reagindo a essa nova realidade para proteger dados, reduzir riscos e, ao mesmo tempo, garantir uma boa experiência para o usuário?No episódio, converso com dois especialistas que estão na linha de frente desse desafio: Marcelo Queiroz, Head Product Innovation ID&F no Serasa Experian, que lidera soluções de identidade digital, prevenção à fraude e cibersegurança Pedro Ivo Lima, CEO & Co-Founder da PhishX, startup focada em transformar o comportamento humano em uma linha de defesa contra ataques digitais.Falamos sobre a importância da orquestração de múltiplos fatores de autenticação, os dilemas entre segurança versus experiência do usuário, e os riscos trazidos pela IA generativa que pode tanto proteger como facilitar ataques sofisticados.Também exploramos o conceito de identidade digital reutilizável, a mudança radical no modo como negócios vão se estruturar com agentes digitais autorizados e um olhar prático para startups — que precisam abraçar a segurança desde a concepção do produto, mesmo com recursos limitados.E por falar em oportunidade para startups: as inscrições para o Programa de Inovação Aberta da Serasa Experian estão abertas! Sua startup pode conquistar investimento de até R$ 50 milhões, mentoria com especialistas, POCs com investimento e acesso a dados e infraestrutura da maior datatech do Brasil — com escala real junto à Serasa Experian. Não deixe para depois: essa é a chance de construir o próximo padrão de confiança digital. Link nas nossas redes sociais.Se você quer entender como fraude virou software, por que o futuro da segurança digital passa por inovação constante e quais atitudes aplicar hoje no seu negócio para não ser mais uma vítima — dá o play e vem com a gente!Para conferir mais conteúdos,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠acesse nosso site⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@aceventuresbr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Linkedin:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ACE Ventures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠E-mail: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠contato@goace.vc⁠⁠⁠

YO TAMBIÉN VENDO A EMPRESAS
Cuando tu equipo técnico tiene que vender (y no sabe cómo) con Sancho Lerena de Pandora FMS

YO TAMBIÉN VENDO A EMPRESAS

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2026 41:07


Podcast de ventas B2B y prospección moderna Cuando tu equipo técnico tiene que vender, pero nadie les ha enseñado cómo, se llenan la agenda de demos, POCs infinitos y oportunidades que mueren en el comité de dirección. En este episodio, hablamos con Sancho Lerena, CEO y fundador de Pandora FMS, sobre qué ha aprendido en 20 años para que técnicos y comerciales funcionen como un solo equipo. Desde una empresa “de ingenieros” con venta inbound desordenada hasta un modelo estructurado con canal, preventas dedicados y equipo comercial puro, Sancho cuenta con detalle qué ha cambiado en su organización para vender soluciones técnicas complejas en B2B. En este episodio verás: - Qué carencias suelen tener los técnicos cuando les toca vender y qué ventajas traen a la venta consultiva. - Por qué no basta con que el técnico del cliente esté enamorado del producto si nadie habla el idioma del CEO y del CFO. - Cómo separar y coordinar los roles de preventa y ventas para no quemar al equipo ni cerrar deals mal encuadrados. - Cómo plantear POCs (pruebas de concepto) con alcance limitado, expectativas claras y sin regalar un año de trabajo. - Cuándo hablar de precio y cómo usar rangos para evitar sorpresas y forzar conversaciones internas en serio. Cómo entrenar al champion técnico del cliente para que venda el proyecto dentro de su organización. El papel de la cultura y de las diferencias entre venta “latina” y modelos más asertivos de Norte de Europa o EEUU. - Por qué muchos directores comerciales vienen del mundo técnico y cómo ver la venta como una ingeniería con método y creatividad. Invitado: Sancho Lerena – CEO y fundador de Pandora FMS. https://www.linkedin.com/in/slerena https://www.linkedin.com/company/pandora-pfms/ Presentan: David Navas y Eduardo Laseca – Outbounders, formación y consultoría en ventas B2B. ......................................................................................................................................... Y si quieres mejorar tu Maquinaría de Ventas Outbound o formar a tus equipos en #modernprospecting Pues lo tienes fácil: 699 45 85 82 Más en https://outbounders.es/

Driven by Data: The Podcast
S7 | Ep 3 | The AI Speed Trap: Why Activity Isn't Progress with Daragh Kelly, Chief Data Officer at The Economist

Driven by Data: The Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2026 45:54


In Episode 3, of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom was joined by Daragh Kelly, Chief Data Officer at The Economist, where they discuss why most AI initiatives are still failing, why there's not much measurable progress and how insight functions have become toolmakers and decision intelligence partners, which includes;Why most AI initiatives fail because they as a solution looking for problems.The importance of aligning AI use cases to strategic goals, KPIs and measurable outcomes.Why speed rather than velocity leads to very little measurable progress.Why compelling POCs create false confidence before the real production challenges begin.The deployment gap: why robust, scalable and commercially viable AI is still hard.Why disconnected tools and poor workflow integration stall AI value realisation.The simple test for prioritisation: is this problem big enough to matter?Why the best AI use cases act as building blocks for future capability.How AI and UX together are driving true self-service insight generation.Why insight teams are evolving from answer providers to toolmakers.The growing importance of data governance, quality and observability in an AI-first world.How distributed insight creation can weaken corporate memory and knowledge curation.The skills shift toward UX, enablement, storytelling and decision intelligence.Practical build vs buy criteria in fast-moving and rapidly commoditising AI markets.Why operating models matters less than discipline, purpose and capability building.

Open Tech Talks : Technology worth Talking| Blogging |Lifestyle
What I've Learned Helping Enterprises Adopt GenAI

Open Tech Talks : Technology worth Talking| Blogging |Lifestyle

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2026 18:16


80% of enterprise AI projects never reach production. After two decades helping enterprises adopt new technology, Kashif Manzoor breaks down the five failure modes killing enterprise AI initiatives, introduces the GenAI Maturity Framework, and shares three questions every CTO should ask before approving their next AI project. Episode #: 185 In this episode, you'll learn: The 5 failure modes killing enterprise AI initiatives The GenAI Maturity Framework (6 dimensions, 6 levels) 3 questions every CTO should ask before their next AI initiative Why the gap between perceived and actual AI maturity is where POCs go to die Practical actions you can take this week   TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - The POC graveyard (a real conversation) 1:30 - Welcome + Why this episode exists 3:30 - My journey: Oracle → Cloud → GenAI 7:00 - The 80% problem: Why enterprise AI fails 10:00 - Failure Mode 1: The Strategy Gap 12:30 - Failure Mode 2: The Architecture Gap 15:00 - Failure Mode 3: The Governance Gap 17:00 - Failure Mode 4: The Talent Gap 19:00 - Failure Mode 5: The Measurement Gap 21:00 - The GenAI Maturity Framework (6 levels explained) 24:00 - 3 Questions Every CTO Should Ask 26:30 - What's coming next 28:00 - Subscribe + Connect

The Product Market Fit Show
He launched a free product for enterprise customers—then grew to $12M ARR in 2 years. | Bhaskar Sunkara, Founding CTO of AppDynamics

The Product Market Fit Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 30, 2026 44:59 Transcription Available


DescriptionBhaskar was employee #1 at AppDynamics, which was sold to Cisco for $3.7B. He and co-founder Jyoti found a way to change how enterprise monitoring tools worked. From tracking low-level code metrics that ops teams didn't understand to monitoring what the business actually cares about.In this episode, Bhaskar breaks down how that one insight won them Netflix and Priceline as early customers, why they ran production POCs that no competitor would dare try, and how a free download called AppDynamics Lite generated over 60% of their leads—in an industry where getting started normally took weeks of professional services and six-figure contracts.Why You Should ListenWhy selling to developers is operating on hard mode.How one-day POCs became the killer enterprise sales weapon.Why freemium disrupted an industry that required weeks of professional services to get started.How they grew from $2M to $12M in revenue in just one year post launch.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, AppDynamics, application monitoring, enterprise SaaS, B2B sales, finding pmf, freemium strategy, Cisco acquisition, production POCChapters00:00:00 Intro00:11:33 Choosing the ICP00:20:37 Landing Netflix with Freemium00:28:44 Growing from $2M to $12M in Year Two00:30:10 The Free Download Strategy That Generated 60% of Leads00:32:04 Days from the NASDAQ Bell—Then Cisco Offered $3.7B00:41:28 The Moment of True Product Market FitSend me a message to let me know what you think!

Portfolio Checklist
10 éve nem láttunk ilyen pocsék adatot a magyar gazdaságban

Portfolio Checklist

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2026 26:56


Idén februárban hirtelen tíz éve nem látott szintre emelkedett a munkanélküliségi ráta Magyarországon. A témát Hornyák József, a Portfolio munkaerőpiaccal foglalkozó elemzője segített értelmezni. A második részben a szőlő aranyszínű sárgaság betegségével foglalkoztunk: Kovács Nóra, az Agrárszektor vezető szerkesztője arról beszélt, hogy a tavaszi munkák indulásával a veszély ismét aktuálissá vált. Főbb részek: Intro – (00:00) Munkanélküliség – (01:32) Aranyszínű sárgaság – (13:09) Tőkepiaci kitekintő – (22:14) Kép forrása: Getty ImagesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Category Visionaries
Why Nauta doesn't do POCs | Valentina Jordan

Category Visionaries

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2026 22:33


Nauta is building the data infrastructure layer for global supply chain, starting with mid-market shippers who manage 600+ suppliers across 40+ countries but lack a single source of truth. Co-founded by Valentina Jordan, who spent six and a half years at Rappi, Nauta targets the $200M-$2B revenue segment where companies face enterprise-level complexity without enterprise resources. In this episode of BUILDERS, Valentina shares how Nauta moved from Excel automation to building data pipes that connect 12-13 stakeholders touching a single product—and why they refuse to run POCs.Topics Discussed:Why shippers with ERP, TMS, and WMS systems still run operations in ExcelThe tribal knowledge crisis: 20-30 year operators retiring with undocumented institutional knowledgeNauta's no-POC policy and why it requires contract exit clauses insteadThe cost reduction vs. revenue generation framework that escapes pilot purgatoryBuilding familiar interfaces (Excel-like tables) over novel UX for conservative industriesThe shift from hiding AI capabilities (January 2025) to leading with them (eight months later)GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Distinguish symptoms from root cause pain in discovery: Most enterprise buyers surface symptoms, not problems. A client reporting penalty costs isn't revealing the root issue—just downstream impact. Valentina uses the five whys methodology to drill into actual pain: "A client can tell me, hey, I'm paying X amount of dollars in penalties. That's not necessarily the root cause, it's just a symptom of the actual pain." This prevents building features that address surface-level complaints while missing the structural problem. The real issue might be data fragmentation across systems, lack of visibility into supplier performance, or decision-making bottlenecks—each requiring different solutions.Structure POC alternatives that demand mutual commitment: Nauta kills traditional POCs entirely because "it implies that they are testing us and that it's not a collaborative process." Instead, they offer contract exit clauses if expectations aren't met while requiring upfront commitment. This only works when you have proven results and can confidently deliver value. The insight: POCs create evaluator-vendor dynamics where the burden of proof sits entirely on you. Paid engagements with performance-based exits create partner dynamics where both parties invest in success. For early-stage companies without case studies, this won't work—but once you have repeatable results, test this approach.Layer revenue generation on top of cost reduction: Nauta starts every engagement with 3-4 cost reduction KPIs—penalties, reconciliation time, manual labor automation—then transitions to revenue generation through fill rate optimization and cash-on-cash improvements. "You need to go beyond just cutting costs. That way you transition from a nice to have to a must have." Supply chain has historically been viewed as a cost center; proving top-line impact changes budget conversations entirely. This matters because cost reduction has a ceiling (you can only cut so much), while revenue generation creates expanding budget headroom. Map your product capabilities to both from day one.//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Microsoft Business Applications Podcast
Why Most AI Projects Fail to Deliver ROI

Microsoft Business Applications Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2026 31:18 Transcription Available


Get featured on the show by leaving us a Voice Mail: https://bit.ly/MIPVM  This episode reframes how leaders should approach generative AI, with insights from Justin Trombold. Instead of chasing use cases or tools, the focus is on fixing processes, incentives, and operating models. The conversation explores why many AI pilots fail, how ROI thinking can mislead, and why AI should be treated as a new way of working rather than a software upgrade. Practical examples show how small, disciplined changes can unlock productivity, innovation, and meaningful business impact without overinvesting or freezing in fear. 

Category Visionaries
How Qualytics Knew it had found product-market fit | Gorkem Sevinc

Category Visionaries

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 19, 2026 24:45


Qualytics is redefining enterprise data quality by positioning it as a collaborative business function rather than an isolated data engineering problem. Founded at the start of the pandemic by Gorkem Sevinc - a former CTO and CDO who spent years managing reactive data quality firefights - Qualytics emerged from a clear practitioner pain point: writing endless custom rules to catch data issues after they'd already broken dashboards and KPIs. The company raised pre-seed and seed rounds while building with beta customers, then closed a Series A as repeatability patterns emerged in their POC process. Now, as enterprises scramble to operationalize AI initiatives, Qualytics is experiencing explosive inbound demand from organizations realizing their data foundations aren't ready for democratized data access. Topics Discussed The practitioner insight that sparked Qualytics: reactive rule-writing doesn't scale Leveraging existing CTO/CDO networks and PE portfolio connections for beta customers The evolution from free POCs to paid POCs as a mutual commitment mechanism Identifying repeatability through week-by-week POC conversion patterns Building practitioner credibility into the sales motion while hiring for enterprise sales grit The decision to hire sales and marketing leadership simultaneously post-Series A Tracking in-product engagement metrics (DQ operations frequency, anomaly detection, rule editing) as churn prevention Positioning data quality as vertical-specific business problems (premium leakage, regulatory compliance) The timing advantage: AI adoption forcing enterprises to treat data governance as mandatory infrastructure GTM Lessons For B2B Founders Talk to 100 prospects before writing code—even with deep domain expertise: After burning 18 months building a radiology second opinion product that patients didn't want (they didn't even know radiologists were doctors), Gorkem adopted a hard rule: validate with 100 conversations before building. His advantage as a former CTO who lived the data quality problem created false confidence. Practitioners often assume their pain is universal, but buyer awareness and willingness to pay are separate questions. Start with NSF I-Corps-style problem validation: show rough sketches, probe what happened when they hit the pain point, understand how it hurt them financially or operationally. Repeatability appears in micro-conversions during trials, not just closed-won rates: Gorkem didn't declare product-market fit when deals closed—he declared it when he could predict POC behavior by week. "Week two, I'm expecting this. Week three, I'm expecting this." That predictability enabled ROI calculators and internal champion enablement materials. For technical founders, this means instrumenting your trial or POC to track leading indicators: specific features activated, data volumes processed, number of team members engaged, frequency of logins. When those patterns stabilize across prospects, you have a repeatable motion. Use paid POCs as a procurement front-loading mechanism, not a revenue play: Qualytics charges nominal amounts for some POCs—not for the revenue, but to get the MSA signed and force both parties through legal/security review upfront. This eliminates the pattern where free POCs succeed technically but die in procurement. Large enterprises often refuse to pay for POCs, which Gorkem accepts—but only if they commit equivalent effort (executive time, cross-functional teams). The paid POC is a qualification tool: if they won't commit anything, they're not a real opportunity. Hire sales and marketing leadership in parallel and hold them to unified GTM metrics: Gorkem regrets hiring early sales reps before leadership and delaying marketing investment. Post-Series A, he hired both leaders simultaneously and holds them jointly accountable to pipeline generation and velocity—not siloed MQL counts or quota attainment. This structural decision forces collaboration on messaging, ICP definition, and campaign strategy from day one. For technical founders who "figured out" founder-led sales, resist the urge to replicate your motion with more SDRs. Bring in strategic leadership that can build a scalable system. Instrument product engagement as your earliest churn signal—then intervene immediately: Beyond quarterly NPS and executive QBRs, Gorkem tracks granular product usage: how many data quality operations users run, how many anomalies they discover, how actively they're editing rules. When engagement drops, he doesn't wait—he jumps into the customer's existing weekly meetings to diagnose and course-correct. For B2B founders building complex products with long time-to-value, passive health scores aren't enough. You need active usage telemetry and a low-latency intervention process. Translate technical capabilities into vertical-specific business outcomes: Gorkem doesn't pitch "data quality for data engineers." He talks about premium leakage with insurance companies and OCC/SEC data controls with banks. This reframing works because buyers recognize their problem, not a vendor category. The shift requires research: understand each vertical's regulatory environment, operational pain points, and the business metrics executives care about. When you walk in speaking their language about their P&L impact, you're not another vendor—you're someone who gets it. Time your market entry to when "nice-to-have" becomes "must-have": When Qualytics launched, some enterprises called data quality a "nice-to-have." AI adoption changed that calculus overnight. Organizations planning to let 20,000 employees interrogate data through AI interfaces suddenly realized they need robust data governance, quality controls, and cataloging first. Gorkem's timing wasn't luck—he built during the "nice-to-have" phase so he'd be ready when AI budgets made it mandatory. Technical founders should identify the external forcing function (regulation, technology shift, economic change) that will transform their solution from vitamin to painkiller. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Hipsters Ponto Tech
Do LEAD à IMPLEMENTAÇÃO: como TECNOLOGIA e VENDAS caminham juntas? | Kuntuala Zeli – Oracle – Hipsters.Talks #22

Hipsters Ponto Tech

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2026


No episódio do Hipsters.Talks, PAULO SILVEIRA, CVO do Grupo Alura, conversa com KUNTUALA ZELI, diretora de vendas na Oracle, sobre como funciona toda a jornada de vendas em empresas de software, cloud e SaaS. Vamos explorar o papel do pré-vendas/arquitetos, que fazem a ponte entre as demandas do cliente e a tecnologia, e dos engenheiros, que mergulham na profundidade técnica e conduzem as POCs. Uma conversa que mostra como vendas em tecnologia deixaram de ser apenas comerciais e passaram a exigir profundo entendimento técnico, visão de negócio e colaboração entre times. além de revelar como carreiras híbridas entre tech e vendas estão se tornando cada vez mais comuns.

Comparative Agility
Winning with GenAI with Jason Molesworth

Comparative Agility

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2026 33:10


In this episode of the Comparative Agility Podcast, Dee Rhoda speaks with Jason Molesworth, CEO and Chief AI Strategist at Accelerated Innovation Group, about why 2026 will be a make-or-break year for organizations adopting Generative AI.They explore what it really takes to move from experimentation to impact, including the importance of strategic clarity, secure and responsible AI, data readiness, and people enablement. Jason also shares why agility, focus, and incremental value delivery are critical for scaling GenAI and avoiding the trap of endless POCs.

Experiencing Data with Brian O'Neill
187 - Can't Close the Sale? The Invisible Reasons Prospects Aren't Buying Your Technically Superior Analytics or AI Product (Part 1)

Experiencing Data with Brian O'Neill

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2026 20:39 Transcription Available


I'm digging into a frustrating reality many teams face: even technically superior analytics and AI products routinely lose deals—not because the KPIs or models aren't good enough, but because buyers and users can't clearly see how the product fits into their day-to-day work. Your demos and POCs may prove what's possible, but long time-to-understanding, heavy thinking burden on the user, and required behavior or process changes introduce risk—and risk kills momentum. When value feels complicated, sales don't move forward.     Adding to the challenge is that many sales efforts focus almost entirely on the fiscal buyer while overlooking the end users who actually have to adopt the product to create outcomes. This buyer–user mismatch, combined with status quo bias, often leads to indecision rather than change. To address this, I explore the idea of thinking about the sales challenge as a product problem—and I introduce the idea of achieving Flow of Work Alignment (FOWA). The goal isn't better persuasion—it's clearer value. Strong FOWA means transitioning from demonstrating capabilities to helping customers see themselves—and their workflows—represented in your demos and POCs. The result? Prospects understand your value quickly, ask deeper, contextual questions, and deals move forward.      Highlights/ Skip to: Data products must work harder to expose value clearly to avoid the dreaded “closed-lost” deal stage in your CRM (1:38) Making your data product's value instantly obvious (5:18) How the “old model” of selling based on capabilities and feature demos can lead to lost sales (7:22) What  Flow-of-Work Alignment is and how it can help you unlock deals (13:02) How to know if you have achieved FOWA or not in your product and sales process (13:58)

Category Visionaries
Why aiOla targets CFOs — not IT buyers | Amir Haramaty, Co-Founder at aiOla

Category Visionaries

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2026 28:53


aiOla is pioneering speech-to-data technology that transforms unstructured speech into actionable data for enterprise operations. As a serial entrepreneur on his sixth startup, Co-Founder Amir Haramaty built aiOla after witnessing firsthand how traditional AI implementations fail to deliver ROI in enterprise settings. The company has developed proprietary technology that achieves near-100% accuracy in challenging environments with heavy jargon, multiple languages, and difficult acoustics. With strategic investors including a major airline and partnerships with Nvidia, Accenture, and USG, aiOla is addressing the fundamental challenge that 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail to show value by focusing on immediate, measurable ROI through speech-based data capture. Topics Discussed: The genesis of aiOla from consulting work revealing AI's implementation gaps in traditional enterprises Solving the triple challenge of speech recognition: accuracy in jargon-heavy environments, separating signal from noise, and converting speech to structured workflow data aiOla's "jargonic" approach: creating hyper-personalized language models for specific processes without retraining Early customer acquisition through serendipitous encounters and demonstrating immediate ROI Vertical expansion strategy from food manufacturing to aviation, travel, hospitality, and retail Channel partnership strategy refined from previous startups to achieve scale The shift from convincing customers about speech technology to being pulled into diverse use cases Building the aiOla Intelligate orchestration layer to dynamically select optimal speech recognition models GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Make CFOs your best friend, not IT departments: Amir explicitly targets CFOs rather than IT as primary buyers because "it doesn't matter how small or big you are, you still have to do more with less." While IT serves as facilitators, CFOs control budgets focused on operational efficiency and ROI. B2B founders should identify which executive truly owns the pain point and budget authority, even if IT will implement the solution. Deploy capital strategically to remove obstacles before they emerge: aiOla convinced their airline investor to provide working capital specifically to fund POCs for prospects without existing budgets. This eliminated the "we don't have pilot budget" objection before it arose. B2B founders should proactively identify and neutralize common barriers in their sales process, whether through creative deal structures, proof-of-concept funding, or implementation support. Prioritize instant ROI over long-term transformation promises: Amir explicitly avoids "digital transformation" conversations, instead selecting use cases delivering "biggest impact within shortest period of time with minimum obstacle possible." The airline baggage tracking example saved 110,000 hours immediately, creating momentum for expansion. B2B founders should resist selling comprehensive transformation and instead identify narrow use cases with quantifiable, rapid returns that create internal champions. Replicate proven use cases across customers rather than customizing: Once aiOla achieved success with specific applications like CRM data entry or pre-op inspections, they "stop, print, replicate" rather than reinventing for each customer. This approach reduced a two-hour inspection process to 34 minutes in food manufacturing, then replicated across industries. B2B founders should document successful implementations as repeatable playbooks and resist the urge to over-customize for each prospect. Channel success requires speaking the partner's economic language: When working with telcos, Amir demonstrated that his solution increased ARPU by 34% and reduced churn by 17%—the only two metrics telcos prioritize. He built predictable models showing exactly how many units each channel rep would sell by geography. B2B founders pursuing channel strategies must translate their value proposition into the specific KPIs that drive partner economics and compensation. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

AWS for Software Companies Podcast
Ep187: Beyond Vector Search - How Neo4j Delivers Context for Intelligent Agents

AWS for Software Companies Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2026 16:50


Neo4j's Ajay Singh discusses future shifts in AI and why knowledge graphs may be the missing layer in your Gen AI strategy.Topics Include:Ajay Singh from Neo4j discusses graph intelligence platform serving 80+ Fortune 100 companies.Financial services firms use Neo4j knowledge graphs to detect fraud rings and accounts.IT companies build digital twins of infrastructure to analyze attack surfaces and vulnerabilities.Knowledge graphs provide richer context for Gen AI agents beyond what vector search offers.Gaming company achieved 10x faster insights and 92% reduction in analyst data gathering.Transportation company improved tariff code workflow from 50% abandonment to 95% completion rate.Neo4j has partnered with AWS since 2013, running on AWS infrastructure and Marketplace.Customers combine Neo4j with AWS Bedrock and SageMaker to build agentic AI applications.Neo4j evolved from late-stage AWS collaboration to early-stage joint customer solution development approach.Success requires business-first mindset over technology-first to avoid POCs that never reach production.Effective Gen AI needs semantic layers and knowledge graphs, not just throwing documents at LLMs.Future agents will tackle outcome-based objectives requiring explainability, security, and proper LLM operations.Participants:Ajay Singh – Global Vice President, Neo4jSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Screaming in the Cloud
Avery Pennarun on Tailscale's Evolution: From Mesh VPN to AI Security Gateway

Screaming in the Cloud

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2026 44:19


Corey Quinn sits down with Avery Pennarun, co-founder and CEO of Tailscale, for a deep dive into how the company is reinventing networking for the modern era. From finally making VPNs behave the way they should to tackling AI security with zero-click authentication, Avery shares candid insights on building infrastructure people actually love using, and love talking about.They get into everything: surviving 100% year-over-year growth, why running on two tailnets at once is pure chaos, and how Tailscale makes “secure by default” feel effortless. Plus, they dig into why FreeBSD firewalls needed some tough love, the uncomfortable truth behind POCs, and even the surprisingly useful trick of turning your Apple TV into an exit node.About Avery: Avery Pennarun is the co-founder and CEO of Tailscale, where he's redefining secure networking with a simple, Zero Trust approach. A veteran software engineer with experience ranging from startups to Google, he's known for turning complex systems into approachable, user-friendly tools. His contributions to projects like wvdial, bup, and sshuttle reflect his belief that great technology should be both powerful and easy to use. With a mix of technical depth and dry humor, Avery shares insights on modern networking, internet evolution, and the realities of scaling a startup.Highlights:(0:00) Introduction to Tailscale and Security(00:52) Sponsorship and Personal Experiences(02:07) Technical Deep Dive into Tail Scale(06:10) Challenges and Future of Tail Scale(22:45) Building the Tail Net's API(23:54) Connecting Cloud Providers with Tailscale(25:22) Tailscale as a Security Solution(26:44) Innovations and Future of TailscaleSponsored by: duckbillhq.com

Microsoft Business Applications Podcast
From POCs to Production: Ship AI That Sticks

Microsoft Business Applications Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 28, 2025 32:15 Transcription Available


Chuck Yates Needs A Job
Collide AI 2025 Wrapped Part 2: Scaling AI From Proof of Concept to Production

Chuck Yates Needs A Job

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2025 55:40


Catching yourself rereading last year's VC emails while you're back in Silicon Valley is a pretty good way to realize how wild the last 12 months have been. Colin, Chuck, Canisius, and Todd break down how Collide AI is turning fast POCs into real production workflows, why change management is the actual moat, and how a stacked forward deployed team plus community driven distribution is setting up 2026 to be the year everything scales.Click here to watch a video of this episode.Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.Apply today at collide.ioClick here to view the episode transcript. 00:00 Product market fit jokes and kickoff00:28 VC email flashback and velocity01:29 Forward deployed model and AI first mindset02:18 Sam Texas and AI coding shift04:04 What AI first actually means06:18 Not just podcast bros anymore07:00 AI breaks silos across the business08:21 Doglegs example and incentives09:57 Change management is the advantage10:18 Client story and regulatory filings win12:42 Selling outcomes not hype13:36 Building the FTE team and faster delivery16:24 AI strategy as workflow ROI first18:26 Grok as a thought partner and GPU cluster20:15 Shale revolution mindset parallel22:29 Recruiting, software DNA, and stacked team26:16 Content and community as a recruiting engine29:11 Distribution flywheel in the real world30:22 Team distribution vs product debate32:32 2026 is the scaling year34:02 Community platform finally clicking36:09 Building the community platform the hard way39:20 Scaling clients, POCs, and production41:09 Why mom and pops matter41:55 Energy demand tailwinds and macro impact44:44 One word answer for next year: scale45:20 POC to production cycle time focus47:12 Scaling tech, sales, and financing49:45 Moving at AI speed story50:14 Raising capital and building serious software52:56 Collide as the operator layer vision54:02 Gratitude and community over everythinghttps://twitter.com/collide_iohttps://www.tiktok.com/@collide.iohttps://www.facebook.com/collide.iohttps://www.instagram.com/collide.iohttps://www.youtube.com/@collide_iohttps://bsky.app/profile/digitalwildcatters.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/collide-digital-wildcatters

Category Visionaries
How Datawizz discovered the chasm between AI-mature companies and everyone else shaped their ICP | Iddo Gino

Category Visionaries

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2025 29:10


Datawizz is pioneering continuous reinforcement learning infrastructure for AI systems that need to evolve in production, not ossify after deployment. After building and exiting RapidAPI—which served 10 million developers and had at least one team at 75% of Fortune 500 companies using and paying for the platform—Founder and CEO Iddo Gino returned to building when he noticed a pattern: nearly every AI agent pitch he reviewed as an angel investor assumed models would simultaneously get orders of magnitude better and cheaper. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, we sat down with Iddo to explore why that dual assumption breaks most AI economics, how traditional ML training approaches fail in the LLM era, and why specialized models will capture 50-60% of AI inference by 2030. Topics Discussed Why running two distinct businesses under one roof—RapidAPI's developer marketplace and enterprise API hub—ultimately capped scale despite compelling synergy narratives The "Big Short moment" reviewing AI pitches: every business model assumed simultaneous 1-2 order of magnitude improvements in accuracy and cost Why companies spending 2-3 months on fine-tuning repeatedly saw frontier models (GPT-4, Claude 3) obsolete their custom work The continuous learning flywheel: online evaluation → suspect inference queuing → human validation → daily/weekly RL batches → deployment How human evaluation companies like Scale AI shift from offline batch labeling to real-time inference correction queues Early GTM through LinkedIn DMs to founders running serious agent production volume, working backward through less mature adopters ICP discovery: qualifying on whether 20% accuracy gains or 10x cost reductions would be transformational versus incremental The integration layer approach: orchestrating the continuous learning loop across observability, evaluation, training, and inference tools Why the first $10M is about selling to believers in continuous learning, not evangelizing the category GTM Lessons For B2B Founders Recognize when distribution narratives mask structural incompatibility: RapidAPI had 10 million developers and teams at 75% of Fortune 500 paying for the platform—massive distribution that theoretically fed enterprise sales. The problem: Iddo could always find anecdotes where POC teams had used RapidAPI, creating a compelling story about grassroots adoption. The critical question he should have asked earlier: "Is self-service really the driver for why we're winning deals, or is it a nice-to-have contributor?" When two businesses have fundamentally different product roadmaps, cultures, and buying journeys, distribution overlap doesn't create a sustainable single company. Stop asking if synergies exist—ask if they're causal. Qualify on whether improvements cross phase-transition thresholds: Datawizz disqualifies prospects who acknowledge value but lack acute pain. The diagnostic questions: "If we improved model accuracy by 20%, how impactful is that?" and "If we cut your costs 10x, what does that mean?" Companies already automating human labor often respond that inference costs are rounding errors compared to savings. The ideal customers hit differently: "We need accuracy at X% to fully automate this process and remove humans from the loop. Until then, it's just AI-assisted. Getting over that line is a step-function change in how we deploy this agent." Qualify on whether your improvement crosses a threshold that changes what's possible, not just what's better. Use discovery to map market structure, not just validate hypotheses: Iddo validated that the most mature companies run specialized, fine-tuned models in production. The surprise: "The chasm between them and everybody else was a lot wider than I thought." This insight reshaped their entire strategy—the tooling gap, approaches to model development, and timeline to maturity differed dramatically across segments. Most founders use discovery to confirm their assumptions. Better founders use it to understand where different cohorts sit on the maturity curve, what bridges or blocks their progression, and which segments can buy versus which need multi-year evangelism. Target spend thresholds that indicate real commitment: Datawizz focuses on companies spending "at a minimum five to six figures a month on AI and specifically on LLM inference, using the APIs directly"—meaning they're building on top of OpenAI/Anthropic/etc., not just using ChatGPT. This filters for companies with skin in the game. Below that threshold, AI is an experiment. Above it, unit economics and quality bars matter operationally. For infrastructure plays, find the spend level that indicates your problem is a daily operational reality, not a future consideration. Structure discovery to extract insight, not close deals: Iddo's framework: "If I could run [a call where] 29 of 30 minutes could be us just asking questions and learning, that would be the perfect call in my mind." He compared it to "the dentist with the probe trying to touch everything and see where it hurts." The most valuable calls weren't those that converted to POCs—they came from people who approached the problem differently or had conflicting considerations. In hot markets with abundant budgets, founders easily collect false positives by selling when they should be learning. The discipline: exhaust your question list before explaining what you build. If they don't eventually ask "What do you do?" you're not surfacing real pain. Avoid the false-positive trap in well-funded categories: Iddo identified a specific risk in AI: "You can very easily run these calls, you think you're doing discovery, really you're doing sales, you end up getting a bunch of POCs and maybe some paying customers. So you get really good initial signs but you've never done any actual discovery. You have all the wrong indications—you're getting a lot of false positive feedback while building the completely wrong thing." When capital is abundant and your space is hot, early revenue can mask product-market misalignment. Good initial signs aren't validation if you skipped the work to understand why people bought. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Making Risk Flow | The Future of Insurance
Top Episodes of 2025: Practitioner's Guide: The Blueprint for Risk Digitization POCs | Zaheer Hooda and Richard Lewis, Cytora

Making Risk Flow | The Future of Insurance

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2025 28:24


Welcome to a special end-of-the-year series on Making Risk Flow as we count down the weeks to the end of 2025. Each Tuesday, we will re-release one standout episode as we build up to releasing our top fan favourite on the last Tuesday. In this episode, Juan de Castro is joined by his colleagues, Rich Lewis, Cytora's Sales Director, and Zaheer Hooda, Head of North America, for a deep dive into what makes proof-of-concept (POC) initiatives in risk digitisation succeed or fail.Drawing on firsthand experience from working with leading carriers, they break down five essential capabilities insurers need to get right when implementing digitisation initiatives, from extraction accuracy and full-spectrum intake handling to scalable deployment and human-in-the-loop exception management.They also provide a practical, inside look at how insurers structure effective proof of concept processes, including live workshops, data preparation, success metrics, and how to align POC design with measurable business outcomes.Whether you're revisiting the episode or viewing it for the first time,  this episode offers tactical guidance to ensure your technology investments deliver meaningful impact.Fan Mail: Got a challenge digitizing your intake? Share it with us, and we'll unpack solutions from our experience at Cytora.To receive a custom demo from Cytora, click here and use the code 'Making Risk Flow'.Our previous guests include: Bronek Masojada of PPL, Craig Knightly of Inigo, Andrew Horton of QBE Insurance, Simon McGinn of Allianz, Stephane Flaquet of Hiscox, Matthew Grant of InsTech, Paul Brand of Convex, Paolo Cuomo of Gallagher Re, and Thierry Daucourt of AXA.Check out the three most downloaded episodes: The Five Pillars of Data Analytics Strategy in Insurance | Craig Knightly, Inigo 20 Years as CEO of Hiscox: Personal Reflections and the Evolution of PPL | Bronek Masojada Implementing ESG in the Insurance and Underwriting Space | Simon Tighe, Chaucer, and Paul McCarney, Moody's

CDO Matters Podcast
CDO Matters Ep. 90 | Decision Intelligence at Scale

CDO Matters Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2025 38:46


Episode OverviewIn this episode, Malcolm sits down with Jeremi Karnell of InvestNet to explore how the company is transforming six trillion dollars of “digital exhaust” into powerful decision-intelligence capabilities for financial advisors. Jeremi explains how predictive models, knowledge graphs, and generative AI are reshaping advisor workflows, driving measurable revenue lift, and redefining what modern data products look like in financial services. This is a rare look at an AI success story in an industry where most POCs still fail, and a blueprint for any data leader seeking real ROI.Episode Links and ResourcesFollow Malcolm Hawker on LinkedInFollow Jeremi Karnell on LinkedIn

Hipsters Ponto Tech
Tecnologia precisa ENTREGAR VALOR pro negócio: da dev aos 13 anos à CTO | Anaterra – Dasa – Hipsters.Talks #15

Hipsters Ponto Tech

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 4, 2025 40:00


“Tecnologia pela tecnologia tem que morrer. Área de tecnologia que não pensa em entregar valor pro negócio ou pro usuário final, ela tende a morrer. Você não deveria gastar dinheiro por gastar dinheiro” No décimo quinto episódio do Hipsters.Talks, PAULO SILVEIRA, CVO do Grupo Alun, conversa com ANATERRA OLIVEIRA, CTO da DASA, sobre inovação aberta, parcerias com startups e por que experiência do usuário é mais importante que tecnologia sofisticada. Uma conversa sobre o dia a dia de quem lidera tecnologia em uma das maiores empresas de saúde do Brasil. Prepare-se para um episódio cheio de conhecimento e inspiração!

The Fraud Boxer Podcast
Stop Drowning in Dashboards: How to Deliver Actionable Insights with Deuna

The Fraud Boxer Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2025 46:11


"92% of all POCs today in the US are failing because they're trying to use bad data and LLMs that are standardized or generalized."   At Money 2020 I sat down with Deuna (www.deuna.com) co-founder Roberto Kafati (REKS) and their US head of GTM Chase Foster to explore the critical importance of leveraging high-quality, actionable data and intelligent systems to drive business value, especially in complex enterprise environments. The core challenge today is that while most companies possess vast amounts of data, a staggering 92% of AI pilot projects fail because they rely on data that isn't "AI-ready" that is lacking the necessary context, cleanliness, and standardization to be effectively used by large language models (LLMs). The key is transforming raw data, such as the 638 direct and indirect data points per payment transaction, into a strategically usable asset that goes beyond cost-cutting to unlock significant revenue growth across the organization.   The company's platform, Athia, is designed to solve this by acting as an agentic intelligence platform that utilizes merchant-specific data from massive commerce operations (like major airlines, movie chains, and retailers) to provide proactive, highly focused insights. Instead of forcing teams to manually analyze hundreds of performance dashboards, Athia surfaces the most critical information, alerting teams to revenue leakages and recommending direct, real-time actions, such as optimizing payment routing or detecting opportunities in developing economies. This approach allows businesses to embrace the future of "agentic commerce" by maintaining control over the customer experience and ensuring data-driven decision-making is implemented automatically and continuously across all critical functions, fostering a new era of cross-departmental collaboration between areas like payments and marketing.

The Tech Trek
How Data and Engineering Make the Impossible Real

The Tech Trek

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2025 27:15


Svetlana Zavelskaya, Head of Software Engineering for Data Platform and Infrastructure at Quanata, joins the show to unpack what it really takes to make the “impossible” possible in tech. From re-architecting a startup codebase to scaling innovation inside an insurance giant, she shares how her team turns complex R&D challenges into production-ready systems. This conversation dives deep into engineering discipline, AI tool adoption, and why the next wave of insurance innovation is powered by data and software.Key Takeaways• Real innovation often means balancing speed with long-term architecture decisions• AI coding tools are valuable for exploration but need governance and clear security guardrails• POCs fail when expectations aren't aligned, not because the tech doesn't work• Insurance tech is evolving fast through telematics and context-based data models• Well-structured, well-documented code is still the foundation for scalable innovationTimestamped Highlights00:33 How telematics is changing the economics of insurance and rewarding better drivers03:59 Cars as software platforms and what that means for data privacy and innovation06:02 The growing pains of re-architecting an organically built startup codebase08:38 Evaluating new AI tools and maintaining data security across teams11:08 Why most AI POCs never make it to production16:29 How Quanata's R&D work feeds into State Farm's larger technology initiatives20:40 Safe-driving challenges, behavioral change, and saving lives with dataA Thought That Stuck“If we can prevent just 1 percent of drivers in the world from using their phone behind the wheel, imagine how many lives we can save.”Pro Tips• Before starting a POC, define if it's an experiment or a potential product foundation• Let engineers explore new tools but build frameworks to govern how data and results are handledCall to ActionIf you enjoy exploring how data, AI, and engineering innovation come together to solve real-world problems, follow The Tech Trek on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share this episode with a colleague who builds at the edge of what's possible.

Predictable Revenue Podcast
411: The Challenge of Authentic Selling with Kunick Kapadia

Predictable Revenue Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2025 26:17


In this episode of the Predictable Revenue Podcast, Collin Stewart interviews Kunick Kapadia, co-founder of Anova, as they discuss the journey of building a data analytics platform. They explore the importance of product market fit, learning from past mistakes, customer acquisition strategies, pricing strategies, and overcoming imposter syndrome. The conversation highlights the importance of honest feedback, the challenges of scaling a startup, and the significance of standing out in a crowded market. Highlights include: Validating Ideas: The Importance of Customer Feedback (03:04), Navigating Customer Development and POCs (09:54), Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Entrepreneurship (11:23), Pricing Strategies: Finding the Right Value (14:41), Finding a Unique Go-to-Market Strategy Finding a Unique Go-to-Market Strategy (19:55), And more... Stay updated with our podcast and the latest insights on Outbound Sales and Go-to-Market Strategies!

Cables2Clouds
Monthly News Update: DNS Did That Thing Again...

Cables2Clouds

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2025 32:20 Transcription Available


Send us a textStart with a simple truth: when the platform breaks, your clever architecture won't save you. We dig into the AWS US‑East‑1 outage where DynamoDB's role in DNS planning for load balancers collided with a race condition, leaving empty records and stalled EC2 instances. Forget the finger‑wagging about “well‑architected” apps—this was a platform failure with limited customer escape routes. We weigh multi‑region and multi‑cloud trade‑offs with a sober look at cost, complexity, and operational burden.Security took center stage with two high‑risk stories you need to act on. First, a critical WSUS flaw enabling remote unauthenticated code execution against the very servers meant to protect fleets. If WSUS is still live, patch immediately or take it offline until you can. Then, the F5 source code theft: not a cloning threat, but a blueprint for discovering subtle bugs and crafting precise exploits. Attribution points toward Chinese state‑sponsored actors, which means targeted, quiet use rather than noisy mass exploitation. The risk isn't gone when headlines fade; it's just harder to see.We connect this to rising exploitation of vSock across hypervisors like VMware ESXi. With public PoCs and active abuse, vSock opens covert channels from host to guest, making segmentation and management plane isolation non‑negotiable. Patch aggressively, gate access through jump hosts, enforce MFA, and consider disabling vSock where viable on QEMU stacks. These are concrete steps that cut real risk.Then we turn to the elephant in the data center: AI ROI. Vendors keep shipping agentic assistants and copilots, but few can show durable returns outside a subsidized token economy. We share a pragmatic lens for measuring value—cycle time, MTTR, defect rates—while acknowledging the dot‑com‑style arc ahead: hype, correction, then durable wins that prioritize efficiency. As AI demand drives massive new builds, the physical footprint of the cloud is showing up in local power grids and skylines. Infrastructure choices now carry community and energy implications leaders can't ignore.Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns platform reliability or security, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or question—what will you patch, segment, or measure first?Purchase Chris and Tim's book on AWS Cloud Networking: https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Advanced-Networking-Certification-certification/dp/1835080839/ Check out the Monthly Cloud Networking Newshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkBWCGwXDUX9OfZ9_MvSVup8tJJzJeqrauaE6VPT2b0/Visit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cables2clouds.comFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatj

The Cloudcast
The 5-10-85 Reality of Enterprise AI

The Cloudcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2025 27:49


Three years since the launch of ChatGPT, what does the landscape of Enterprise AI look like today? What's working, what's struggling and what's still unknown?SHOW: 966SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #966 TranscriptSHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwCHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"SHOW SPONSORS:[TestKube] TestKube is Kubernetes-native testing platform, orchestrating all your test tools, environments, and pipelines into scalable workflows empowering Continuous Testing. Check it out at TestKube.io/cloudcast[Interconnected] Interconnected is a new series from Equinix diving into the infrastructure that keeps our digital world running. With expert guests and real-world insights, we explore the systems driving AI, automation, quantum, and more. Just search “Interconnected by Equinix”.SHOW NOTES:HOW ARE ENTERPRISES USING AI IN LATE 2025?5% have a clear vision of how to apply Predictive and Generative AI to a set of use-cases that drive differentiation, productivity improvements and cost reductions. They are keeping the details close to the vest.10% have allocated about 3-5% of their IT budgets to AI, typically from a C-level mandate, and have given it to Microsoft or Google. They have checked “the business is AI-enabled” and signaled to the market that they have fully embraced AI. The market is rewarding these companies at higher multiples. 85% aren't sure what use-cases to focus on, have unrealistic expectations during POCs, and are focused on the “no” areas instead of their own learning curves. Enterprises don't have great visibility into AI costs, and limited baselines of what AI should cost - pay for outcomes, pay for seats, pay for tokens, or pay for GPUs?Enterprises don't have easy access to GPUs outside of via SaaS services - makes it challenging for Private or Sovereign AI demand to be metRight now, there is no simple way for Enterprises to build AI AgentsRight now, there is no simple way for Enterprises to share AI experience / learning curve - AI is a very individualized experienceFEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netTwitter/X: @cloudcastpodBlueSky: @cloudcastpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @cloudcastpodTikTok: @cloudcastpod

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Pricing your AI product: Lessons from 400+ companies and 50 unicorns | Madhavan Ramanujam

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2025 71:43


Madhavan Ramanujam is the world's foremost expert on pricing and monetization strategy. As managing partner at Simon-Kucher, he helped over 250 companies, including 30 unicorns, architect their pricing strategies. He's the author of the definitive book on pricing, Monetizing Innovation. Now he's back with a sequel, Scaling Innovation, which reveals how to build enduring businesses by dominating both market share and wallet share. He recently left Simon-Kucher to launch his own fund, 49 Palms, focused on helping early-stage AI companies.In this conversation, we discuss:1. The 2x2 framework that identifies your optimal pricing model2. Why AI companies can capture 25% to 50% of value created, vs. 10% to 20% for traditional SaaS products3. Why popular AI coding tools may have already doomed themselves with underpricing4. The “give-and-get” framework top negotiators use to extract maximum value from every deal5. The negotiation strategy that helped one founder 4x their deal size overnight6. How to frame POCs as “business case creation” instead of technical demos (and why this changes everything)7. Why AI companies must get monetization right from day one—not “figure it out later”8. How companies like Intercom's Fin and Sierra pioneered outcome-based pricing (charging $0.99 per AI resolution)9. The single question that reveals if your pricing is too complex—Brought to you by:Enterpret—Transform customer feedback into product growth: https://enterpret.com/lennyDX—A platform for measuring and improving developer productivity: https://getdx.com/lennyPersona—A global leader in digital identity verification: https://withpersona.com/lenny—Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pricing-and-scaling-your-ai-product-madhavan-ramanujam— My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/168109183/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation—Where to find Madhavan Ramanujam:• X: https://x.com/madhavansf• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madhavansf/• Promo email for Scaling Innovation: promo@49palmsvc.com — If you're purchasing more than five copies, send a screenshot of your receipt to enter Madhavan's exclusive bundle raffle.—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Madhavan and his work(04:30) The core thesis of Scaling Innovation(09:20) Common traps founders fall into(12:06) Beautifully simple pricing(15:00) Mastering negotiations(26:51) Other strategies for effective pricing and monetization(27:35) How AI pricing is different(31:33) Handling POCs(36:25) The importance of mastering monetization(38:58) Choosing the right AI pricing model(43:13) Current trends in AI pricing(44:48) Strategizing for outcome-based models(50:23) Packaging strategies for scaling(51:37) Adapting pricing strategies over time(53:40) Key axioms for pricing success(58:00) Takeaways for founders(01:01:33) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• The art and science of pricing | Madhavan Ramanujam (Monetizing Innovation, Simon-Kucher): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-art-and-science-of-pricing-madhavan• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can't stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell• Sierra Finn: http://www.sierrafinn.com/• Chargeflow: https://www.chargeflow.io/• GitHub: https://github.com/• Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/• Warren Buffett's quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11478913-if-you-ve-got-the-power-to-raise-prices-without-losing• Sierra: https://sierra.ai/• Clay Bavor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claybavor/• Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9603208/• Delphi: https://www.delphi.ai/• Dara Ladjevardian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dara-ladjevardian/• Sam Spelsberg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-spelsberg/• Lennybot: https://www.lennybot.com/• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/• Simon-Kucher: https://www.simon-kucher.com/• Josh Bloom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuabloompricingconsulting/—Recommended books:• Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price: https://www.amazon.com/Monetizing-Innovation-Companies-Design-Product/dp/1119240867• Scaling Innovation: How Smart Companies Architect Profitable Growth: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119633060• Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417• Thinking Fast and Slow: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/• Contagious: Why Things Catch On: https://www.amazon.com/Contagious-Things-Catch-Jonah-Berger/dp/1451686587/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. To hear more, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com