Podcasts about Splunk

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/vEdq8rpBM3I In this data-rich keynote, Jay McBain deconstructs the tectonic shifts reshaping the $5.3 trillion global technology industry, arguing that we are entering a new 20-year cycle where traditional direct sales models are obsolete. McBain explains why 96% of the industry is now surrounded by partners and how successful companies must pivot from “flywheels and theory” to a granular strategy focused on the seven specific partners present in every deal. From the explosion of agentic AI and the $163 billion marketplace revolution to the specific mechanics of multiplier economics, this discussion provides a roadmap for navigating the “decade of the ecosystem” where influence, trust, and integration—not just product—determine winners and losers. Key Takeaways Half of today's Fortune 500 companies will likely vanish in the next 20 years due to the shift toward AI and ecosystem-led models. Every B2B deal now involves an average of seven trusted partners who influence the decision before a vendor even knows a deal exists. Microsoft has outpaced AWS growth for 26 consecutive quarters largely because of a superior partner-led geographic strategy. Marketplaces are projected to grow to $163 billion by 2030, with nearly 60% of deals involving partner funding or private offers. The “Multiplier Effect” is the new ROI, where partners can make up to $8.45 for every dollar of vendor product sold. Future dominance relies on five key pillars: Platform, Service Partnerships, Channel Partnerships, Alliances, and Go-to-Market orchestration. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Keywords: Jay McBain, Canalys, partner ecosystem, channel chief, agentic AI, marketplace growth, multiplier economics, B2B sales trends, tech industry forecast, service partnerships, strategic alliances, Microsoft vs AWS, distribution transformation, managed services growth, SaaS platforms, customer journey mapping, 28 moments of truth, future of reselling, technology spending 2025, ecosystem orchestration, partner multipliers. T Transcript: Jay McBain WORKFILE FOR TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Just up from, did you Puerto Rico last night? Puerto Rico, yes. Puerto Rico. He dodged the hurricane. Um, you all know him. Uh, let him introduce himself for those of you who don’t, but just thrilled to have on the stage, again, somebody who knows more about what’s going on in, in the, and has the pulse on this industry probably than just about anybody I know personally. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: J Jay McBain. Jay, great to see you my friend. Alright, thank you. We have to come all the way. We live, we live uh, about 20 minutes from each other. We have to come all the way to Reston, Virginia to see each other, right? That’s right. Very good. Well, uh, that’s all over to you, sir. Thank you. [00:00:35] Jay McBain: Alright, well thank you so much. [00:00:36] Jay McBain: I went from 85 degrees yesterday to 45 today, but I was able to dodge that, uh, that hurricane, uh, that we kind of had to fly through the northern edge of, uh, wanna talk today about our industry, about the ultimate partner. I’m gonna try to frame up the ultimate partner as I walk through the data and the latest research that, uh, that we’ve been doing in the market. [00:00:56] Jay McBain: But I wanted to start here ’cause our industry moves in 20 year cycles, and if you look at the Fortune 500 and dial back 20 years from today, 52% of them no longer exist. As we step into the next 20 year AI era, half of the companies that we know and love today are not gonna exist. So we look at this, and by the way, if you’re not in the Fortune 500 and you don’t have deep pockets to buy your way outta problems, 71% of tech companies fail over the course of 10 years. [00:01:30] Jay McBain: Those are statistics from the US government. So I start to look at our industry and you know, you may look at the, you know, mainframe era from the sixties and seventies, mini computers, August the 12th, 1981, that first IBM, PC with Microsoft dos, version one, you know, triggered. A new 20 year era of client server. [00:01:51] Jay McBain: It was the time and I worked at IBM for 17 years, but there was a time where Bill Gates flew into Boca Raton, Florida and met with the IBM team and did that, you know, fancy licensing agreement. But after, you know, 20 years of being the most valuable company in the world and 13 years of antitrust and getting broken up, almost like at and TIBM almost didn’t make payroll. [00:02:14] Jay McBain: 13 years after meeting Bill Gates. Yeah, that’s how quickly things change in these eras. In 1999, a small company outta San Francisco called salesforce.com got its start. About 10 years later, Jeff Bezos asked a question in a boardroom, could we rent out our excess capacity and would other companies buy it? [00:02:35] Jay McBain: Which, you know, most people in the room laughed at ’em at the time. But it created a 20 year cloud era when our friends, our neighbors, our family. Saw Chachi PT for the first time in March of 2023. They saw the deep fakes, they saw the poetry, they saw the music. They came to us as tech people and said, did we just light up Skynet? [00:02:58] Jay McBain: And that consumer trend has triggered this next 20 years. I could walk through the richest people in the world through those trends. I could walk through the most valuable companies. It all aligns. ’cause by the way, Apple’s no longer at the top. Nvidia is at the top, Microsoft. Second, things change really quickly. [00:03:17] Jay McBain: So in that course of time, you start to look at our industry and as people are talking about a six and a half or $7 trillion build out of ai, that’s open AI and Microsoft numbers, that is bigger than our industry that’s taken over 50 years to build. This year, we’re gonna finish the year at $5.3 trillion. [00:03:36] Jay McBain: That’s from the smallest flower shop to the biggest bank. Biggest governments that Caresoft would, uh, serve biggest customer in the world is actually the federal government of the us. But you look at this pie chart and you look at the changes that we’re gonna go through over the next 20 years, there’s about a trillion dollars in hardware. [00:03:54] Jay McBain: There’s about a trillion dollars in software. If you look forward through all of the merging trends, quantum computing, humanoid robots, all the things that are coming that dollar to dollar software to hardware will continue to exist all the way through. We see services making up almost two thirds of this pie. [00:04:13] Jay McBain: Yesterday I was in a telco conference with at and t and Verizon and T-Mobile and some of the biggest wireless players and IT services, which happen to be growing faster than products. At the moment, there is more work to be done wrapping around the deal than the actual products that the customer is buying. [00:04:32] Jay McBain: So in an industry that’s growing at 7%. On top of the world economy that’s grown at 2.2. This is the fastest growing industry, and it will be at least for the next 10 years, if not 2070 0.1% of this entire $5 trillion gets transacted through partners. While what we’re talking to today about the ultimate partner, 96% of this industry is surrounded by partners in one way or another. [00:05:01] Jay McBain: They’re there before the deal. They’re there at the deal. They’re there after the deal. Two thirds of our industry is now subscription consumption based. So every 30 days forever, and a customer for life becomes everything. So if every deal in medium, mid-market, and higher has seven partners, according to McKinsey, who are those seven people trying to get into the deal? [00:05:25] Jay McBain: While there’s millions of companies that have come into tech over the last 10 to 20 years. Digital agencies, accountants, legal firms, everybody’s come in. The 250,000 SaaS companies, a million emerging tech companies, there’s a big fight to be one of those seven trusted people at the table. So millions of companies and tens of millions of people our competing for these slots. [00:05:49] Jay McBain: So one of the pieces of research I’m most proud of, uh, in my analyst career is this. And this took over two years to build. It’s a lot of logos. Not this PowerPoint slide, but the actual data. Thousands of people hours. Because guess what? When you look at partners from the top down, the top 1000 partners, by capability and capacity, not by resale. [00:06:15] Jay McBain: It’s not a ranking of CDW and insight and resale numbers. It is the surrounding. Consulting, design, architecture, implementations, integrations, managed services, all the pieces that’s gonna make the next 20 years run. So when you start to look at this, 98% of these companies are private, so very difficult to get to those numbers and, uh, a ton of research and help from AI and other things to get this. [00:06:41] Jay McBain: But this is it. And if you look at this list, there’s a thousand logos out of the million companies. There’s a thousand logos that drive two thirds of all tech services in the world. $1.07 trillion gets delivered by a thousand companies, but here’s where it gets fun. Those companies in the middle, in blue, the 30 of them deliver more tech services than the next 970. [00:07:08] Jay McBain: Combined the 970 combined in white deliver more tech services. Then the next million combined. So if you think we live in an 80 20 rule or maybe a 99, a 95 5 rule, or a 99 1 rule, we actually live in a 99.9 0.1 parallel principle. These companies spread around the world evenly split across the uh, different regions. [00:07:35] Jay McBain: South Africa, Latin America, they’re all over. They split. They split among types. All of the Venn diagram I just showed from GSIs to VARs to MSPs, to agencies and other types of companies. But this is a really rich list and it’s public. So every company in the world now, if you’re looking at Transactable data, if you’re looking at quantifiable data that you can go put your revenue numbers against, it represents 70 to 80% of every company in this room’s Tam. [00:08:08] Jay McBain: In one piece of research. So what do you do below that? How do you cover a million companies that you can’t afford to put a channel account manager? You can’t afford to write programs directly for well after the top down analysis and all the wallet share and you know exactly where the lowest hanging fruit is for most of your tam. [00:08:28] Jay McBain: The available markets. The obtainable markets. You gotta start from the community level grassroots up. So you need to ask the question for the million companies and the maybe a hundred thousand companies out there, partner companies that are surrounding your customer. These are the seven partners that surround your customer. [00:08:48] Jay McBain: What do they read, where do they go, and who do they follow? Interestingly enough, our industry globally equates to only a thousand watering holes, a thousand companies at the top, a thousand places at the bottom. 35% of this audience we’re talking. Millions of people here love events and there’s 352 of them like this one that they love to go to. [00:09:13] Jay McBain: They love the hallway chats, they love the hotel lobby bar, you know, in a time reminded by the pandemic. They love to be in person. It’s the number one way they’re influenced. So if you don’t have a solid event strategy and you don’t have a community team out giving out socks every week, your competitors might beat you. [00:09:31] Jay McBain: 12% of this audience loves podcasts. It’s the Joe Rogan effect of our industry. And while you know, you may not think the 121 podcasts out there are important, well, you’re missing 12% of your audience. It’s over a million people. If you’re not on a weekly podcast in one of these podcasts in the world, there’s still people that read one of the 106 magazines in the world. [00:09:55] Jay McBain: There are people that love peer groups, associations, they wanna be part of this. There’s 15 different ways people are influenced. And a solid grassroots strategy is how you make this happen. In the last 10 years, we’ve created a number of billionaires. Bottom up. They never had to go talk to la large enterprise. [00:10:15] Jay McBain: They never had to go build out a mid-market strategy. They just went and give away socks and new community marketing. And this has created, I could rip through a bunch of names that became unicorns just in the last couple of years, bottoms up. You go back to your board walking into next year, top down, bottom up. [00:10:34] Jay McBain: You’ve covered a hundred percent of your tam, and now you’ve covered it with names, faces, and places. You haven’t covered it with a flywheel or a theory. And for 44 years, we have gone to our board every fourth quarter with flywheels and theory. Trust me, partners are important. The channel is key to us. [00:10:57] Jay McBain: Well, let’s talk at the point of this granularity, and now we’re getting supported by technology 261 entrepreneurs. Many of them in the room actually here that are driving this ability to succeed with seven partners in every deal to exchange data to be able to exchange telemetry of these prospects to be able to see twice or three times in terms of pipeline of your target addressable market. [00:11:26] Jay McBain: All these ai, um, technologies, agentic technologies are coming into this. It’s all about data. It’s all about quantifiable names, faces, and places. Now none of us should be walking around with flywheels, so let’s flip the flywheels. No. Uh, so we also look at, and I sold PCs for 17 years and that was in the high times of 40% margins for partners. [00:11:55] Jay McBain: But one interesting thing when you study the p and l for broad base of partners around the world, it’s changed pretty significantly in this last 20 year era. What the cloud era did is dropped hardware from what used to be 84% plus the break fix and things that wrap around it of the p and l to now 16% of every partner in the world. [00:12:16] Jay McBain: 84% of their p and l is now software and services. And if you look at profitability, it’s worse. It’s actually 87% is profitability wise. They’ve completely shifted in terms of where they go. Now we look at other parts of our market. I could go through every part of the pie of the slide, but we’re watching each of the companies, and if you can see here, this is what we want to talk about in terms of ultimate partner. [00:12:43] Jay McBain: Microsoft has outgrown AWS for 26 straight quarters. They don’t have a better product. They don’t have a better price, they don’t have better promotion. It’s all place. And I’ll explain why you guess here in the light green line. Exactly. The day that Google went a hundred percent all in partner, every deal, even if a deal didn’t have a partner, one of the 4% of deals that didn’t have a partner, they injected a partner. [00:13:09] Jay McBain: You can see on the left side exactly where they did it. They got to the point of a hundred percent partner driven. Rebuilt their programs, rebuilt their marketplace. Their marketplace is actually larger than Microsoft’s, and they grew faster than Microsoft. A couple of those quarters. It is a partner driven future, and now I have Oracle, which I just walked by as I walked from the hotel. [00:13:31] Jay McBain: Oracle with their RPOs will start to join. Maybe the list of three hyperscalers becomes the list of four in future slides, but that’s a growth slide. Market share is different. AWS early and commanding lead. And it plays out, uh, plays out this way. But we’re at an interesting moment and I stood up six years ago talking about the decade of the ecosystem after we went through a decade of sales starting in 1999 when we all thought we were born to be salespeople. [00:14:02] Jay McBain: We managed territories with our gut. The sales tech stack would have it different, that sales was a science, and we ended the decade 2009, looking at sales very differently in 2009. I remember being at cocktail parties where CMOs would be joking around that 50% of their marketing dollars were wasted. They just didn’t know which 50%. [00:14:23] Jay McBain: And I’ll tell you, that was really funny. In 2009 till every 58-year-old CMO got replaced by a 38-year-old growth hacker who walked in with 15,348 SaaS companies in their MarTech and ad tech stack to solve the problem, every nickel of marketing by 2019 was tracked. Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, HubSpot, driving this industry. [00:14:50] Jay McBain: Now, we stood up and said the 28 moments that come before a sale are pretty much all partner driven. In the best case scenario, a vendor might see four of the moments. They might come to your website, maybe they read an ebook, maybe they have a salesperson or a demo that comes in. That’s four outta 28 moments. [00:15:10] Jay McBain: The other 24 are done by partners. Yeah, in the worst case scenario and the majority scenario, you don’t see any of the moments. All 28 happen and you lose a deal without knowing there ever was a deal. So this is it. We need to partner in these moments and we need to inject partners into sales and marketing, like no time before, and this was the time to do it. [00:15:33] Jay McBain: And we got some feedback in the Salesforce state of sales report, which doesn’t involve any partnerships or, or. Channel Chiefs or anything else. This is 5,500 of the biggest CROs in the world that obviously use Salesforce. 89% of salespeople today use partners every day. For the 11% who don’t, 58% plan two within a year. [00:15:57] Jay McBain: If you add those two numbers together, that’s magically the 96% number. They recognize that every deal has partners in it. In 2024, last year, half of the salespeople in the world, every industry, every country. Miss their numbers. For the minority who made their numbers, 84 point percent pointed to partners as the reason why they made their numbers. [00:16:21] Jay McBain: It was the cheat code for sales, so that modern salesperson that knows how to orchestrate a deal, orchestrate the 28 moments with the seven partners and get to that final spot is the winning formula. HubSpot’s number in separate research was 84% in marketing. So we’re starting to see partners in here. We don’t have to shout from the mountaintops. [00:16:44] Jay McBain: These communities like ultimate Partner are working and we’re getting this to the highest levels in the board. And I’ll say that, you know, when 20 years from now half of the companies we know and love fail after we’re done writing the book and blaming the CEO for inventing the thing that ended up killing them, blaming the board for fiduciary responsibility and letting it happen. [00:17:06] Jay McBain: What are the other chapters of the book? And I think it’s all in one slide. We are in this platform economy and the. [00:17:31] Jay McBain: So your battery’s fine. Check, check, check, check. Alright, I’ll, I’ll just hold this in case, but the companies that execute on all five of these areas, well. Not only today become the trillion dollar valued companies, but they become the companies of tomorrow. These will be the fastest growing companies at every level. [00:17:50] Jay McBain: Not only running a platform business, but participating in other platforms. So this is how it breaks out, and there are people at very senior levels, at very big companies that have this now posted in the office of the CEO winning on integrations is everything. We just went through a demographic shift this year where 51% of our buyers are born after 1982. [00:18:15] Jay McBain: Millennials are the number one buyer of the $5 trillion. Their number one buying criteria is not service. Support your price, your brand reputation, it’s integrations. The buy a product, 80% is good as the next one if it works better in their environment. 79% of us won’t buy a car unless it has CarPlay or Android Auto. [00:18:34] Jay McBain: This is an integration world. The company with the most integrations win. Second, there are seven partners that surround the customer. Highly trusted partners. We’re talking, coaching the customer’s, kids soccer team, having a cottage together up at the lake. You know, best men, bate of honors at weddings type of relationships. [00:18:57] Jay McBain: You can’t maybe have all seven, but how does Microsoft beat AWS? They might have had two, three, or four of them saying nice things about them instead of the competition. Winning in service partnerships and channel partnerships changes by category. If you’re selling MarTech, only 10% of it today is resold, so you build more on service partnerships. [00:19:18] Jay McBain: If you’re in cybersecurity today, 91.6% of it is resold. Transacted through partners. So you build a lot of channel partnerships, plus the service partnerships, whatever the mix is in your category, you have to have two or three of those seven people. Saying nice things about you at every stage of the customer journey. [00:19:38] Jay McBain: Now move over to alliances. We have already built the platforms at the hyperscale level. We’ve built the platforms within SaaS, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Marketo, NetSuite, HubSpot. Every buyer has a set of platforms that they buy. We’ve now built them in cybersecurity this year out of 6,500 as high as cyber companies, the top five are starting to separate. [00:20:02] Jay McBain: We built it in distribution, which I’ll show in a minute. We’re building it in Telco. This is a platform economy and alliances win and you have alliances with your competitors ’cause you compete in the morning, but you’re best friends by the afternoon. Winning in other platforms is just as important as driving your own. [00:20:20] Jay McBain: And probably the most important part of this is go to market. That sales, that marketing, the 28 moments, the every 30 days forever become all a partner strategy. So there’s still CEOs out there that believe platform is a UI or UX on a bunch of disparate products and things you’ve acquired. There’s still CFOs out there that Think platform is a pricing model, a bundle model of just getting everything under one, you know, subscription price or consumption price. [00:20:51] Jay McBain: And it’s not, platforms are synonymous with partnerships. This is the way forward and there’s no conversation around ai. That doesn’t involve Nvidia over there, an open AI over here and a hyperscaler over there and a SaaS company over here. The seven layer stack wins every single time, and the companies that get this will be the ones that survive this cycle. [00:21:16] Jay McBain: Now, flipping over to marketplaces. So we had written research that, um, about five years ago that marketplaces were going to grow at 82% compounded. Yeah, probably one of the most accurate predictions we ever made, because it happened, we, we predicted that, uh, we were gonna get up to about $85 billion. Well, now we’ve extended that to 2030, so we’re gonna get up to $163 billion, and the thing that we’re watching is in green. [00:21:46] Jay McBain: If 96% of these deals are partner assisted in some way, how is the economics of partnering going to work? We predicted that 50% of deals by 2027. Would be partner funded in some way. Private offers multi-partner offers distributor sellers of record, and now that extends to 59% by 2030, the most senior leader of the biggest marketplace AWS, just said to us they’re gonna probably make these numbers on their own. [00:22:14] Jay McBain: And he asked what their two competitors are doing. So he’s telling us that we under called this. Now when you look at each of the press releases, and this is the AWS Billion Dollar Club. Every one of the companies on the left have issued a press release that they’re in the billion dollar club. Some of them are in the multi-billions, but I want you to double click on this press release. [00:22:35] Jay McBain: I’m quoted in here somewhere, but as CrowdStrike is building the marketplace at 91% compounded, they’re almost doubling their revenue every single year. They’re growing the partner funding, in this case, distributor funding by 3548%. Almost triple digit growth in marketplace is translating into almost quadruple digit growth in funding. [00:23:01] Jay McBain: And you see that over and over again as, as Splunk hit three, uh, billion dollars. The same. Salesforce hit $2 billion on AWS in Ulti, 18 months. They joined in October 20, 23, and 18 months later, they’re already at $2 billion. But now you’re seeing at Salesforce, which by the way. Grew up to $40 billion in revenue direct, almost not a nickel in resell. [00:23:28] Jay McBain: Made it really difficult for VARs and managed service providers to work with Salesforce because they couldn’t understand how to add services to something they didn’t book the revenue for. While $40 billion companies now seeing 70% of their deals come through partners. So this is just the world that we’re in. [00:23:44] Jay McBain: It doesn’t matter who you are and what industry you’re in, this takes place. But now we’re starting to see for the first time. Partners join the billion dollar club. So you wonder about partnering and all this funding and everything that’s working through Now you’re seeing press releases and companies that are redoing their LinkedIn branding about joining this illustrious club without a product to sell and all the services that wrap around it. [00:24:10] Jay McBain: So the opening session on Microsoft was interesting because there’s been a number of changes that Microsoft has done just in the last 30 days. One is they cut distribution by two thirds going from 180 distributors to 62. They cut out any small partner lower than a thousand dollars, and that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s over a hundred thousand partners that get deed tightening the long tail. [00:24:38] Jay McBain: They we’re the first to really put a global point system in place three years ago. They went to the new commerce experience. If you remember, all kinds of changes being led by. The biggest company for the channel. And so when we’re studying marketplaces, we’re not just studying the three hyperscalers, we’re studying what TD Cynic is doing with Stream One Ingram’s doing with Advant Advantage Aerosphere. [00:25:01] Jay McBain: Also, we’re watching what PAX eight, who by the way, is the 365 bestseller for Microsoft in the world. They are the cybersecurity leader for Microsoft in the world and the copilot. Leader in the world for Microsoft and Partner of the Year for Microsoft. So we’re watching what the cloud platforms are doing, watching what the Telco are doing, which is 25 cents out of every dollar, if you remember that pie chart, watching what the biggest resellers are converting themselves into. [00:25:30] Jay McBain: Vince just mentioned, you know, SHI in the changes there watching the managed services market and the leaders there, what they’re doing in terms of how this industry’s moving forward. By the way, managed services at $608 billion this year. Is one and a half times larger than the SaaS industry overall. [00:25:48] Jay McBain: It’s also one and a half times larger than all the hyperscalers combined. Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, all the way down. This is a massive market and it makes up 15 to 20 cents of every dollar the customer spend. We’re watching that industry hit a trillion dollars by the end of the decade, and we’re watching 150 different marketplace development platforms, the distribution of our industry, which today is 70.1% indirect. [00:26:13] Jay McBain: We’re starting to see that number, uh, solidify in terms of marketplaces as well. Watching distributors go from that linear warehouse in a bank to this orchestration model, watching some of the biggest players as the world comes around, platforms, it tightens around the place. So Caresoft, uh, from from here is the sixth biggest distributor in the world. [00:26:40] Jay McBain: Just shows you how big the. You know, biggest client in the world is that they serve. But understand that we’re publishing the distributor 500 list, but it’ll be the same thing. That little group in blue in the middle today, you know, drives almost two thirds of the market. So what happens in all this next stage in terms of where the dollars change hands. [00:27:07] Jay McBain: And the economics of partnering themselves are going through the most radical shift that we’ve seen ever. So back to the nineties, and, and for those of you that have been channel chiefs and running programs, we went to work every day. You know, everything’s on fire. We’re trying to check hundred boxes, trying to make our program 10% better than our competitors. [00:27:30] Jay McBain: Hey, we gotta fix our deal registration program today, and our incentives are outta whack or training programs or. You know, not where they need to be. Our certification, you know, this was the life of, uh, of a channel chief. Everybody thought we were just out drinking in the Caribbean with our best partners, but we were under the weight of this. [00:27:49] Jay McBain: But something interesting has happened is that we turned around and put the customer at the middle of our programs to say that those 28 moments in green before the sale are really, really important. And the seven partners who participate are really important. Understanding. The customer’s gonna buy a seven layer stack. [00:28:09] Jay McBain: They’re gonna buy it With these seven partners, the procurement stage is much different. The growth of marketplaces, the growth of direct in some of these areas, and then long term every 30 days forever in a managed service, implementations, integrations, how you upsell, cross-sell, enrich a deal changes. So how would you build a program that’s wrapped around the customer instead of the vendor? [00:28:35] Jay McBain: And we’re starting to hear our partners shout back to us. These are global surveys, big numbers, but over half of our partners, regardless of type, are selling consulting to their customer. Over half are designing architecting deals. A third of them are trying to be system integrators showing up at those implementation integration moments. [00:28:55] Jay McBain: Two thirds of them are doing managed services, but the shocking one here is 44% of our partners, regardless of type, are coding. They’re building agents and they’re out helping their customer at that level. So this is the modern partner that says, don’t typecast me. You may have thought of me in your program. [00:29:14] Jay McBain: You might have me slotted as a var. Well, I do 3.2 things, and if I don’t get access to those resources, if you don’t walk me to that room, I’m not gonna do them with you. You may have me as a managed service provider that’s only in the morning. By the afternoon I’m coding, and by the next morning I’m implementing and consulting. [00:29:33] Jay McBain: So again, a partner’s not a partner. That Venn diagram is a very loose one now, as every partner on there is doing 3.2 different business models. And again, they’re telling us for 43 years, they said, I want more leads this year it changed. For the first time, I want to be recognized and incentivized as more than just a cash register for you. [00:29:57] Jay McBain: I want you to recognize when I’m consulting, when I’m designing, when you’re winning deals, because of my wonderful services, by the way, we asked the follow up question, well, where should we spend our money with you? And they overwhelmingly say, in the consulting stage, you win and lose deals. Not at moment 28. [00:30:18] Jay McBain: We’re not buying a pack of gum at the gas station. This is a considered purchase. You win deals from moment 12 through 16 and I’m gonna show you a picture of that later, and they say, you better be spending your money there, or you’re not gonna win your fair share or more than your fair share of deals. [00:30:36] Jay McBain: The shocking thing about this is that Microsoft, when they went to the point system, lifted two thirds of all the money, tens of billions of dollars, and put it post-sale, and we were all scratching our heads going. Well, if the partners are asking for it there, and it seems like to beat your biggest competitors, you want to win there. [00:30:54] Jay McBain: Why would you spend the money on renewal? Well, they went to Wall Street and Goldman Sachs and the people who lift trillions of dollars of pension funds and said, if we renew deals at 108%, we become a cash machine for you. And we think that’s more valuable than a company coming out with a new cell phone in September and selling a lot of them by Christmas every year. [00:31:18] Jay McBain: The industry. And by the way, wall Street responded, Microsoft has been more valuable than Apple since. So we talk in this now multiplier language, and these are reports that we write, uh, at AMIA at canals. But talking about the partner opportunity in that customer cycle, the $6 and 40 cents you can make for every dollar of consumption, or the $7 and 5 cents you can make the $8 and 45 cents you can make. [00:31:46] Jay McBain: There’s over 24 companies speaking at this level now, and guess what? It’s not just cloud or software companies. Hardware companies are starting to speak in this language, and on January 25th, Cisco, you know, probably second to Microsoft in terms of trust built with the channel globally is moving to a full point system. [00:32:09] Jay McBain: So these are the changes that happen fast. But your QBR with your partners now less about drinking beers at the hotel lobby bar and talking dollar by dollar where these opportunities are. So if you’re doing 3.2 of these things, let’s build out a, uh, a play where you can make $3 for every dollar that we make. [00:32:28] Jay McBain: And you make that profitably. You make it in sticky, highly retained business, and that’s the model. ’cause if you make $3 for every dollar. We make, you’re gonna win Partner of the year, and if you win partner of the year, that piece of glass that you win on stage, by the time you get back to your table, you’re gonna have three offers to buy your business. [00:32:51] Jay McBain: CDW just bought a w. S’s Partner of the Year. Insight bought Google’s eight time partner of the year. Presidio bought ServiceNow’s, partner of the year over and over and over again. So I’m at Octane, I’m at CrowdStrike, I’m at all these events in Vegas every week. I’m watching these partners of the year. [00:33:05] Jay McBain: And I’m watching as the big resellers. I’m watching as the GSIs and the m and a folks are surrounding their table after, and they’re selling their businesses for SaaS level valuations. Not the one-to-one service valuation. They’re getting multiples because this is the new future of our industry. This is platform economics. [00:33:25] Jay McBain: This is winning and platforms for partners. Now, like Vince, I spent 20 minutes without talking about ai, but we have to talk about ai. So the next 20 years as it plays out is gonna play out in phases. And the first thing you know to get it out of the way. The first two years since that March of 23, has been underwhelming, to say the least. [00:33:47] Jay McBain: It’s been disappointing. All the companies that should have won the biggest in AI have been the most disappointing. It’s underperformed the s and p by a considerable amount in terms of where we are. And it goes back to this. We always overestimate the first two years, but we underestimate the first 10. [00:34:07] Jay McBain: If you wanna be the point in time person and go look at that 1983 PC or the 1995 internet or that 2007 iPhone or that whatever point in time you wanna look at, or if you want to talk about hallucinations or where chat chip ET version five is version, as opposed to where it’s going to be as it improves every six months here on in. [00:34:30] Jay McBain: But the fact of the matter is, it’s been a consumer trend. Nvidia got to be the most valuable company in the world. OpenAI was the first company to 2 billion users, uh, in that amount of speed. It’s the fastest growing product ever in history, and it’s been a consumer win this trillions of dollars to get it thrown around in the press releases. [00:34:49] Jay McBain: They’re going out every day, you know, open ai, signing up somebody new or Nvidia, investing in somebody new almost every single day in hundreds of billions of dollars. It is all happening really on the consumer side. So we got a little bit worried and said, is that 96% of surround gonna work in ag agentic ai? [00:35:10] Jay McBain: So we went and asked, and the good news is 88% of end customers are using partners to work through their ag agentic strategy. Even though they’re moving slow, they’re actually using partners. But what’s interesting from a partner perspective, and this is new research that out till 2030. This is the number one services opportunity in the entire tech or telco industry. [00:35:34] Jay McBain: 35.3% compounded growth ending at $267 billion in services. Companies are rebuilding themselves, building out practices, and getting on this train and figuring out which vendors they should hook their caboose to as those trains leave the station. But it kind of plays out like this. So in the next three to five years, we’re in this generative, moving into agentic phase. [00:36:01] Jay McBain: Every partner thinks internally first, the sales and marketing. They’re thinking about their invoicing and billing. They’re thinking about their service tickets. They’re thinking about creating a business that’s 10% better than their competitors, taking that knowledge into their customers and drive in business. [00:36:17] Jay McBain: But we understand that ag agentic AI, as it’s going to play out is not a product. A couple of years ago, we thought maybe a copilot or an agent force or something was going to be the product that everybody needed to buy, and it’s not a product, it’s gonna show up as a feature. So you go back in the history of feature ads and it’s gonna show up in software. [00:36:38] Jay McBain: So if you’re calling in SMB, maybe you’re calling on a restaurant. The restaurant isn’t gonna call OpenAI or call Microsoft or call Nvidia directly. They’re running their restaurant. And they may have chosen a platform like Toast Square, Clover, whatever iPads people are running around with, runs on a platform that does everything in their business, does staffing, does food ordering, works with Uber Eats, does everything end to end? [00:37:08] Jay McBain: They’re gonna wait to one of those platforms, dries out agent AI for them, and can run the restaurant more effectively, less human capital and more consistently, but they wait for the SaaS platform as you get larger. A hundred, 150 people. You have vice presidents. Each of those vice presidents already have a SaaS stack. [00:37:28] Jay McBain: I talked about Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, et cetera. They’ve already built that seven layer model and in some cases it’s 70 layers. But the fact is, is they’re gonna wait for those SaaS layers to deliver ag agentic to them. So this is how it’s gonna play out for the next three and a half, three to five years. [00:37:45] Jay McBain: And partners are realizing that many of them were slow to pick up SaaS ’cause they didn’t resell it. Well now to win in this next three to half, three to five years, you’re gonna have to play in this environment. When you start looking out from here, the next generation, you know, kind of five through 15 years gets interesting in more of a physical sense. [00:38:06] Jay McBain: Where I was yesterday talking about every IOT device that now is internet access, starts to get access to large language models. Every little sensor, every camera, everything that’s out there starts to get smart. But there’s a point. The first trillionaire, I believe, will be created here. Elon’s already halfway there. [00:38:24] Jay McBain: Um, but when Bill Gates thought there was gonna be a PC in every home, and IBM thought they were gonna sell 10,000 to hobbyists, that created the richest person in the world for 20 years, there will be a humanoid in every home. There’s gonna be a point in time that you’re out having drinks with your friends, and somebody’s gonna say, the early adopter of your friends is gonna say. [00:38:46] Jay McBain: I haven’t done the dishes in six weeks. I haven’t done the laundry. I haven’t made my bed. I haven’t mowed the lawn. When they say that, you’re gonna say, well, how? And they’re gonna say, well, this year I didn’t buy a new car, but I went to the car dealership and I bought this. So we’re very close to the dexterity needed. [00:39:05] Jay McBain: We’ve got the large language models. Now. The chat, GPT version 10 by then is going to make an insane, and every house is gonna have one of the. [00:39:17] Jay McBain: This is the promise of ai. It’s not humanoid robots, it’s not agents. It’s this. 99% of the world’s business data has not been trained or tuned into models yet. Again, this is the slow moving business. If you want to think about the 99% of business data, every flight we’ve all taken in this room sits on a saber system that was put in place in 1964. [00:39:43] Jay McBain: Every banking transaction, we’ve all made, every withdrawal, every deposit sits on an IBM mainframe put in place in the sixties or seventies. 83% of this data sits in cold storage at the edge. It’s not ready to be moved. It’s not cleansed, it’s not, um, indexed. It’s not in any format or sitting on any infrastructure that a large language model will be able to gobble up the data. [00:40:10] Jay McBain: None of the workflows, none of the programming on top of that data is yet ready. So this is your 10 to 20 year arc of this era that chat bot today when they cancel your flight is cute. It’s empathetic, it feels bad for you, or at least it seems to, but it can’t do anything. It can’t book you the Marriott and get you an Uber and then a 5:00 AM flight the next morning. [00:40:34] Jay McBain: It can’t do any of that. But more importantly, it doesn’t know who you are. I’ve got 53 years of flights under my belt and they, I’m the person that get me within six hours of my kids and get me a one-way Hertz rental. You know, if there’s bad weather in Miami, get me to Tampa, get me a Hertz, I’m driving home, I’m gonna make it home. [00:40:56] Jay McBain: I’m not the 5:00 AM get me a hotel person. They would know that if they picked up the flights that I’ve taken in the past. Each of us are different. When you get access to the business data and you become ag agentic, everything changes. Every industry changes because of this around the customers. When you ask about this 35% growth, working on that data, working in traditional consulting and design and implementation, working in the $7 trillion of infrastructure, storage, compute, networking, that’s gonna be around, this is a massive opportunity. [00:41:30] Jay McBain: Services are gonna continue to outgrow products. Probably for the next five to 10 years because of this, and I’m gonna finish here. So we talked a lot about quantifying names, faces, places, and I think where we failed the most as ultimate partners is underneath the tam, which every one of our CEOs knows to the decimal point underneath the TAM that our board thinks they’re chasing. [00:41:59] Jay McBain: We’ve done a very poor job. Of talking about the available markets and obtainable markets underneath it, we, we’ve shown them theory. We’ve shown them a bunch of, you know, really smart stuff, and PowerPoint slides up the wazoo, but we’ve never quantified it for them. If they wanna win, if they want to get access, if they want to double their pipeline, triple their pipeline, if they wanna start winning more deals, if they wanna win deals that are three times larger, they close two times faster. [00:42:31] Jay McBain: And they renew 15% larger. They have to get into the available and obtainable markets. So just in the last couple weeks I spoke at Cribble, I spoke at Octane, I spoke at CrowdStrike Falcon. All three of those companies at the CEO level, main stage use those exact three numbers, three x, two x, 15%. That’s the language of platforms, and they’re investing millions and millions and millions of dollars on teams. [00:42:59] Jay McBain: To go build out the Sam Andal in name spaces and places. So you’ve heard me talk about these 28 moments a lot. They’re the ones that you spend when you buy a car. Some people spend one moment and they drive to the Cadillac dealership. ’cause Larry’s been, you know, taking care of the family for 50 years. [00:43:18] Jay McBain: Some people spend 50 moments like I do, watching every YouTube video and every, you know, thing on the internet. I clear the internet cover to cover. But the fact is, is every deal averages around these 28 moments. Your customer, there’s 13 members of the buying committee today. There’s seven partners and they’re buying seven things. [00:43:37] Jay McBain: There’s 27 things orchestrating inside these 28 moments. And where and how they all take place is a story of partnering. So a couple of years ago, canals. Latin for channel was acquired by amia, which is a part of Informa Tech Target, which is majority owned by Informa. All that being said, there’s hundreds of magazines that we have. [00:44:00] Jay McBain: There’s hundreds of events that we run. If somebody’s buying cybersecurity, they probably went to Black Hat or they probably went to GI Tech. One of these events we run, or one of the magazines. So we pick up these signals, these buyer intent signals as a company. Why did they wanna, um, buy a, uh, a Canals, which was a, you know, a small analyst firm around channels? [00:44:22] Jay McBain: They understood this as well. The 28 moments look a lot like this when marketers and salespeople are busy filling in the spots of every deal. And by the way, this is a real deal. AstraZeneca came in to spend millions of dollars on ASAP transformation, and you can start to see as the customer got smart. [00:44:45] Jay McBain: The eBooks, they read the podcasts, they listened to the events they went to. You start to see how this played out over the long term. But the thing we’ve never had in our industry is the light blue boxes. This deal was won and lost in December. In this particular case, NTT software won and Yash came in and sold the customer five projects. [00:45:07] Jay McBain: The millions of dollars that were going to be spent were solved here. The design and architecture work was all done here. A couple of ISVs You see in light blue came in right at the end, deal was closed in April. You see the six month cycle. But what if you could fill in every one of the 28 boxes in every single customer prospect that your sales and marketing team have? [00:45:30] Jay McBain: But here’s the brilliance of this. Those light blue boxes didn’t win the deals there. They won the deals months before that. So when NTT and Software one walked into this deal. They probably won the deal back in October and they had to go through the redlining. They had to go through the contracting, they had to go through all the stuff and the Gantt chart to get started. [00:45:54] Jay McBain: But while your CMO is getting all excited about somebody reading an ebook and triggering an MQL that the sales team doesn’t want, ’cause it’s not qualified, it’s not sales qualified, you walk in and say, no, no. This is a multimillion deal, dollar deal. It’s AstraZeneca. I know the five partners that are coming in in December to solidify the seven layers, and you’re walking in at the same time as the CMOs bragging about an ebook. [00:46:21] Jay McBain: This changes everything. If we could get to this level of data about every dollar of our tam, we not only outgrow our competitors, we become the platforms of the next generation. Partnering and ultimate partnering is all here. And this is what we’re doing in this room. This is what we’re doing over these couple of days, and this is what, uh, the mission that Vince is leading. [00:46:43] Jay McBain: Thank you so much. [00:46:47] Vince Menzione: Woo. Day in the house. Good to see you my friend. Good to see you. Oh, we’re gonna spend a couple minutes. Um, I’m put you in the second seat. We’re gonna put, we’re gonna make it sit fireside for a minute. Uh, that was intense. It was pretty incredible actually, Jay. And so I’m, I think I wanna open it up ’cause we only have a few minutes just to, any questions? [00:47:06] Vince Menzione: I’m sure people are just digesting. We already have one up here. See, [00:47:09] Question: Jay knows I’m [00:47:10] Vince Menzione: a question. I love it. We, I don’t think we have any I can grab a mic, a roving mic. I could be a roving mic person. Hold on. We can do this. This is not on. [00:47:25] Vince Menzione: Test, test. Yes it is. Yeah. [00:47:26] Question: Theresa Carriol dared me to ask a question and I say, you don’t have to dare me. You know, I’m going to Anyway. Um, so Jay, of the point of view that with all of the new AI players that strategic alliances is again having a moment, and I was curious your point of view on what you’re seeing around this emergence and trend of strategic alliances and strategic alliance management. [00:47:52] Question: As compared to channel management. And what are you seeing in terms of large vendors like AWS investing in that strategic alliance role versus that channel role training, enablement, measurement, all that good stuff? [00:48:06] Jay McBain: Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. So when I told the story about toast at the restaurant or Square or Clover, they’re not call, they’re not gonna call open AI or Nvidia themselves either. [00:48:17] Jay McBain: When you look out at the 250,000 ISVs. That make up this AI stack, there is the layers that happen there. So the Alliance with AWS, the alliance they have with Microsoft or Google is going to be how they generate agent AI in their platforms. So when I talk about a seven layer stack, the average deal being seven layers, AI is gonna drive this to nine, and then 11, then probably 13. [00:48:44] Jay McBain: So in terms of how alliances work, I had it up there as one of the five core strategies, and I think it’s pretty even. You can have the best alliances in the world, but if the seven partners trusted by the customer don’t know what that alliance is and the benefits to the customer and never mention it, it’s all for Naugh. [00:49:00] Jay McBain: If you’re go-to market, you’re co-selling, your co-marketing strategies are not built around that alliance. It’s all for naught. If the integration and the co-innovation, the co-development, the all the co-creation work that’s done inside these alliances isn’t translated to customer outcomes, it’s all for naugh. [00:49:17] Jay McBain: These are all five parallel swim lanes. All five are absolutely critically needed. And I think they’re all five pretty equally weighted in terms of needing each other. Yes. To be successful in the era of platforms. Yeah. [00:49:32] Vince Menzione: And the problem is they’re all stove pipe today. If, if at all. Yeah. Maintained, right. [00:49:36] Vince Menzione: Alliances is an example. Channels and other example. They don’t talk to one another. Judge any, we’ve got a mic up here if anybody else has. Yep. We have some questions here, Jacqueline. [00:49:51] Question: So when we’re developing our channel programs, any advice on, you know, what’s the shift that we should make six months from now, a year from now? The historical has been bronze, silver, gold, right? And you’ve got your deal registration, but what’s the future look like? [00:50:05] Jay McBain: Yeah, so I mean, the programs are, are changing to, to the point where the customer should be in the middle and realizing the seven partners you need to win the deal. [00:50:15] Jay McBain: And depending on what category of product you’re in, security, how much you rely on resell, 91.6%. You know, the channel partners are gonna be critical where the customer spends the money. And if you’re adding friction to that process, you’re adding friction in terms of your growth. So you know, if you’re in cybersecurity, you have to have a pretty wide open reseller model. [00:50:39] Jay McBain: You have to have a wide open distribution model, and you have to make sure you’re there at that point of sale. While at the same time, considering the other six partners at moment 12 who are in either saying nice things about you or not, the customer might even be starting with you. ’cause there is actually one thing that I didn’t mention when I showed the 28 moments filled in. [00:51:00] Jay McBain: You’ll notice that the customer went to AWS twice direct. AWS lost the deal. Microsoft won the deal software. One is Microsoft’s biggest reseller in the world. They just acquired crayon. NTT who, who loves both had their Microsoft team go in. [00:51:18] Question: Mm. [00:51:19] Jay McBain: So I think that they went to AWS thinking it was A-W-S-S-A-P, you know, kind of starting this seven layer stack. [00:51:25] Jay McBain: I think they finished those, you know, critical moments in the middle looking at it. And then they went back to AWS kind of going probably WWTF. Yeah. What we thought was happening isn’t actually the outcome that was painted by our most trusted people. So, you know, to answer your question, listen to your partners. [00:51:43] Jay McBain: They want to be recognized for the other things they’re doing. You can’t be spending a hundred percent of the dollars at the point of sale. You gotta have a point of system that recognizes the point of sale, maybe even gold, silver, bronze, but recognizing that you’re paying for these other moments as well. [00:51:57] Jay McBain: Paying for alliances, paying for integrations and everything else, uh, in the cyber stack. And, um, you know, recognizing also the top 1000. So if I took your tam. And I overlaid those thousand logos. I would be walking into 2026 the best I could of showing my company logo by logo, where 80% of our TAM sits as wallet share, not by revenue. [00:52:25] Jay McBain: Remember, a million dollar partner is not a million dollar partner. One of them sells 1.2 million in our category. We should buy them a baseball cap and have ’em sit in the front row of our event. One of them sells $10 million and only sells our stuff if the customer asks. So my company should be looking at that $9 million opportunity and making sure my programs are writing the checks and my coverage. [00:52:48] Jay McBain: My capacity and capability planning is getting obsessed over that $9 million. My farmers can go over there, my hunters can go over here, and I should be submitting a list of a thousand sorted in descending order of opportunity. Of where my company can write program dollars into. [00:53:07] Vince Menzione: Great answer. All right. I, I do wanna be cognizant of time and the, all the other sessions we have. [00:53:14] Vince Menzione: So we’ll just take one other question if there are any here and if not, we’ll let I know. Jay, you’re gonna be mingling around for a little while before your flight. I’m [00:53:21] Jay McBain: here the whole day. [00:53:22] Vince Menzione: You, you’re the whole day. I see that Jay’s here the whole day. So if you have any other questions and, and, uh, sharing the deck is that. [00:53:29] Vince Menzione: Yep. Alright. We have permission to share the deck with the each of you as well. [00:53:34] Jay McBain: Alright, well thank you very much everyone. Jay. Great to have you.

Something New!  For HR teams who discuss this podcast in their team meetings, we've created a discussion starter PDF to help guide your conversation. Download it here https://goodmorninghr.com/EP232 In episode 232, Coffey talks with Margarita Ramos about the importance and future of the employee relations function following the $11.5 million SHRM discrimination verdict. They discuss the SHRM jury verdict and its implications for HR credibility; the role of employee relations at the intersection of compliance and employee experience; proactive versus reactive approaches to workplace conflict; multiple complaint channels and manager escalation obligations; why dismissing concerns as "not illegal" undermines trust; investigation failures highlighted in the SHRM case; investigator neutrality, training, and experience requirements; when and why to use outside investigators or counsel; leadership accountability and the role of the CHRO in employee relations; the three-legged stool of employee relations, HR business partners, and employment counsel; building ER infrastructure with case management systems and data analytics; handling high-performing but high-risk leaders; transparency in employee relations processes; reducing gossip through consistent and fair investigations; and the future of employee relations including responsible use of AI in investigations. Good Morning, HR is brought to you by Imperative—Bulletproof Background Checks. For more information about our commitment to quality and excellent customer service, visit us at https://imperativeinfo.com.  If you are an HRCI or SHRM-certified professional, this episode of Good Morning, HR has been pre-approved for half a recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information for this episode, visit https://goodmorninghr.com.  About our Guest: Margarita Ramos is a highly respected Global Employee Relations executive and employment attorney with more than two decades of experience across technology, SaaS, and financial services. She is trusted by CHROs, HR Business Partners, and C-suite leaders to build scalable ER infrastructures, stabilize organizations through change, and elevate the employee experience through disciplined governance and operational excellence. With a foundation rooted in JD-trained employment law—including roles as In-House Employment Counsel at Merrill Lynch and Principal Corporate Counsel at Microsoft—Margarita developed deep legal expertise in compliance, risk mitigation, and workplace investigations.  She later translated this expertise into senior ER and HR Compliance leadership roles at VMware, Splunk, RBC, and Bank of America, where she supported complex global workforces navigating rapid growth, cultural transformation, and organizational change. Throughout her career, Margarita has been brought in to create structure where ambiguity exists. She has built and led global ER Centers of Excellence, developed investigations and performance-management frameworks, and implemented modern case-management systems such as Workday, HR Acuity, and AI-enabled governance tools. Her approach blends empathy with operational rigor, ensuring ER functions are both employee-centric and aligned with business strategy. A skilled investigator and ER strategist, Margarita advises senior leaders on workplace investigations, conflict resolution, performance management, DEI&B, and global employment compliance. She is known for her ability to translate data, case trends, and cultural signals into actionable insights—leveraging ER metrics, KPIs, and reporting to influence leadership decisions, drive fairness, and strengthen organizational culture. Her data-driven approach enables leaders to make well-informed, consistent decisions that reinforce trust and accountability across the enterprise.  Margarita has also led M&A HR integration efforts at VMware and Splunk, overseeing cultural alignment, workforce assessments, and change-management strategies during periods of significant transformation. Her leadership in these environments reflects her commitment to creating workplaces where clarity, belonging, and operational excellence coexist. Beyond her corporate work, Margarita is deeply committed to developing future talent. She has mentored first-generation college students and contributed to organizations such as Girls Who Code, Year Up, and Hobart & William Smith Colleges. At Microsoft, she provided pro bono support for Kids in Need of Defense (KIND). Outside of work, she enjoys ballroom dancing and cooking. Margarita is passionate about shaping modern, strategic, tech-forward ER functions that support organizational values, reduce risk, build leadership capability, and create an environment where employees can do their best work with trust, fairness, and accountability. Margarita Ramos can be reached athttps://www.linkedin.com/in/margarita-ramos/ About Mike Coffey: Mike Coffey is an entrepreneur, licensed private investigator, business strategist, HR consultant, and registered yoga teacher.In 1999, he founded Imperative, a background investigations and due diligence firm helping risk-averse clients make well-informed decisions about the people they involve in their business.Imperative delivers in-depth employment background investigations, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance, and due diligence investigations to more than 300 risk-averse corporate clients across the US, and, through its PFC Caregiver & Household Screening brand, many more private estates, family offices, and personal service agencies.Imperative has been named a Best Places to Work, the Texas Association of Business' small business of the year, and is accredited by the Professional Background Screening Association. Mike shares his insight from 25+ years of HR-entrepreneurship on the Good Morning, HR podcast, where each week he talks to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for customers, shareholders, and community.Mike has been recognized as an Entrepreneur of Excellence by FW, Inc. and has twice been recognized as the North Texas HR Professional of the Year. Mike serves as a board member of a number of organizations, including the Texas State Council, where he serves Texas' 31 SHRM chapters as State Director-Elect; Workforce Solutions for Tarrant County; the Texas Association of Business; and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, where he is chair of the Talent Committee.Mike is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) through the HR Certification Institute and a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP). He is also a Yoga Alliance registered yoga teacher (RYT-200) and teach...

En IA, tres noticias que podrían cambiar el juego: Resolve AI, fundada por exdirectivos de Splunk, alcanza una valoración de 1.000 millones tras su Serie A y trabaja en un ingeniero de confiabilidad de sitio autónomo. Cursor, el asistente de codificación con IA, sigue expandiéndose con la compra de Graphite para mejorar las revisiones de código con IA. Y la semana no fue amable para el hardware, con iRobot, Luminar y Rad Power Bikes declarando quiebras. ¿Qué señales esconden estos giros y qué nos dicen sobre el futuro de IA y hardware?En redes, los cambios también cuentan: Instagram reduce el límite de hashtags por publicación a cinco, empujando a ser más estratégico con las etiquetas. YouTube anuncia actualizaciones para 2025 que amplían respuestas por voz, fijan nuevos objetivos de Superchat y añaden herramientas de creación con IA. TikTok Shop, por su parte, sube la comisión de venta al 9% a partir de enero de 2026. ¿Qué oportunidades y riesgos traen estas decisiones para emprendedores y creadores? Si quieres más historias de marketing radical con aprendizajes prácticos para tu negocio, suscríbete a la newsletter número uno de Marketing Radical en borjagiron.com. ¡Gracias por escuchar!Conviértete en un seguidor de este podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/noticias-marketing--5762806/support.Newsletter Marketing Radical: https://marketingradical.substack.com/welcomeNewsletter Negocios con IA: https://negociosconia.substack.com/welcomeMis Libros: https://borjagiron.com/librosSysteme Gratis: https://borjagiron.com/systemeSysteme 30% dto: https://borjagiron.com/systeme30Manychat Gratis: https://borjagiron.com/manychatMetricool 30 días Gratis Plan Premium (Usa cupón BORJA30): https://borjagiron.com/metricoolNoticias Redes Sociales: https://redessocialeshoy.comNoticias IA: https://inteligenciaartificialhoy.comClub: https://triunfers.com

Resolve AI gains autonomous edge for $1B valuation and $4M ARR. It outperforms rivals in speed and accuracy of fixes. Splunk heritage shines in execution.Get the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiAI Chat YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JaedenSchaferJoin my AI Hustle Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we cover how Resolve AI, founded by former Splunk executives, reached a $1 billion valuation in its Series A round. In this episode, we explain what Resolve AI is building, why investors are moving this aggressively at such an early stage, and what it says about demand for AI-driven enterprise automation.Get the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiAI Chat YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JaedenSchaferJoin my AI Hustle Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ex-Splunk's Resolve AI reached $1B valuation via $4M ARR in AI SRE. Real-time autonomy impresses users. Multi-tranche round mitigates early risks.Get the top 40+ AI Models for $20 at AI Box: ⁠⁠https://aibox.aiAI Chat YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JaedenSchaferJoin my AI Hustle Community: https://www.skool.com/aihustleSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Federal agencies are increasingly data-driven, but the challenge lies in integrating, securing and operationalizing vast amounts of information. In this episode, experts explore how AI and analytics are transforming decision-making, enhancing situational awareness and improving mission readiness.  Kurt Steege, CTO ThunderCat Technology, Bart Larango, Federal Strategic Industry Advisor at Splunk, Daniel Buchholz, Red Cell Section Chief for the U.S. Department of State and Mark Canter, CISO at the U.S. Government Accountability Office discuss data security risks, ethical AI considerations and real-world use cases where agencies are leveraging AI for operational success.

Send Bidemi a Text Message!In this episode, host Bidemi Ologunde spoke with Bruce Johnson of TekStream Solutions to unpack how the Whole of State initiative—with the Louisiana State University, Splunk, and Amazon Web Services—is turning classrooms into 24/7, student-powered SOCs that launch graduates into mid-level roles. With nearly four decades in IT security, Bruce shares how opening the door to any discipline builds stronger teams and real-world readiness. How do these student SOCs keep organizations safe while students learn? What does a typical shift and escalation look like? Can a philosophy or nursing major really become an analyst? How is success measured—placements, detection speed, or something else? Where does AI help without replacing humans? And what changed as the model expanded to New Jersey Institute of Technology and Louisiana Tech University?Support for The Bid Picture Podcast comes from Black Rifle Coffee Company, a veteran-founded coffee brand roasting premium beans for people who love a strong start to the day. From bold blends to convenient ready-to-drink cans, Black Rifle Coffee keeps you fueled for whatever's ahead. Check them out at blackriflecoffee.com.Support for The Bid Picture Podcast comes from GymShark, performance apparel designed for people who take their training seriously. With gym-ready fits that move with you, GymShark helps you stay focused from warm-up to cooldown. Explore their latest drops at gymshark.com.Support for The Bid Picture Podcast comes from Uncommon Goods, an online marketplace filled with unique, independently made gifts. From clever gadgets to handcrafted home goods, Uncommon Goods helps you find something thoughtful for everyone on your list. Learn more at uncommongoods.com.Support the show

All links and images can be found on CISO Series. This week's episode is hosted by David Spark, producer of CISO Series and Brett Conlon, CISO, American Century Investments. Joining them are Ryan Barras, CISO, Mount Sinai Medical Center. In this episode: Nobody understands what we do Someone else should fix this Make the audience care Speaking CEO Huge thanks to our sponsor, Dropzone AI Dropzone AI autonomously investigates every security alert—no playbooks needed. This AI SOC analyst queries your CrowdStrike, Splunk, threat intel feeds, and 60+ other tools to build complete investigations in 5 minutes. Unlike black-box automation, it shows every query, finding, and decision. See it work yourself—explore the self-guided demo at dropzone.ai.

Les agents IA permettent aujourd'hui une "hyper-automatisation" des tâches en entreprise. C'est la mission que s'est fixée la startup française MindflowInterview : Evan Bourgouin, Directeur des opérations de MindflowL'hyper-automatisation agentique, concrètement, qu'est-ce que cela change pour les entreprises ?Nous automatisons les tâches répétitives dès qu'un humain, un ordinateur et un processus entrent en jeu. Beaucoup d'organisations utilisent déjà des services comme AWS, Microsoft Azure ou encore Salesforce et SAP, mais ces systèmes restent souvent isolés.Chez Mindflow, notre obsession, c'est l'intégration : connecter chaque service, chaque opération, au niveau le plus granulaire.Sur cette base, nous automatisons des processus dans la cybersécurité, l'IT ou les ressources humaines — par exemple l'onboarding d'un collaborateur, la création d'accès, de rôles, de comptes sur des outils comme Jira ou un CRM. Ce sont des tâches indispensables, mais pas celles où la valeur humaine est la plus forte.Quel est l'impact sur la cybersécurité et la charge des équipes ?Dans la cybersécurité, recevoir 100 alertes par jour sur un SIEM comme Splunk ou Microsoft Sentinel est devenu courant. Avec une équipe restreinte, une partie finit forcément par ne pas être traitée.Nous automatisons donc une part de ces réponses, tout en gardant l'humain dans la boucle.Cela change radicalement le quotidien : c'est un secteur où l'épuisement professionnel est très élevé. Les jeunes analystes arrivent et se font submerger par les tâches répétitives. En retirant cette charge, on leur permet de se concentrer sur l'analyse et la résolution de nouvelles menaces.Les utilisateurs vont du C-level jusqu'à l'alternant : chacun retrouve une capacité à créer, à améliorer son travail, en s'appuyant sur la plateforme.Automatisation ou agentique : comment expliquer la différence ?L'automatisation est déterministe : même input → même output.L'agentique, elle, adapte son comportement en fonction du contexte — par exemple une alerte différente sur ServiceNow ou une anomalie détectée dans un ERP. Mais on n'a pas besoin d'IA partout : certaines entreprises ne souhaitent pas envoyer leurs données dans des modèles d'IA pour des raisons de confidentialité.La vraie différence, c'est que nous avons résolu le problème de l'intégration, ce qui fait de Mindflow « l'IA du dernier kilomètre ». Une fois qu'on sait se connecter à AWS, Azure, Salesforce, Jira, un ERP ou un data lake, l'agent peut vraiment agir. Sans intégration, rien n'est possible.Comment une entreprise démarre-t-elle un projet d'automatisation ?Tout commence par une volonté interne et une culture favorable. Avec nos clients — souvent de grands groupes comme LVMH, Hermès, Thales ou Auchan — nous réalisons un état des lieux : où sont les goulots d'étranglement, quelles équipes sont surchargées, quels profils veulent devenir "builders".Une fois l'intégration réalisée, tout s'accélère. Les quick wins sont fréquemment dans la cyber, l'IT ou le support opérationnel, mais chaque entreprise a ses propres cas d'usage, même si elles utilisent parfois les mêmes outils.-----------♥️ Soutien : https://mondenumerique.info/don

Este episodio es posible gracias a HolaflyCon los planes de datos internacionales de Holafly tendrás internet en más de 170 destinos.Olvídate de buscar WiFi o pagar cargos extra: solo disfruta tu viaje conectado. Conoce los planes de Holaflyhttps://esim.holafly.com/es/utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=itnigEn este capítulo del podcast de Itnig, Pedro Tortosa nos explica en detalle una de las historias más llamativas del ecosistema tech reciente: cómo ONUM pasó de nacer en 2022 a venderse a CrowdStrike por 300 millones de dólares en solo tres años. Pedro explica de forma sencilla qué problema resolvía ONUM (la optimización y el ruteo inteligente de datos en tiempo real) y por qué esta tecnología era tan valiosa para gigantes como Splunk, Cribl o la propia CrowdStrike, que gastaba más de 50 millones al año en soluciones similares. Además, profundizamos en el recorrido profesional de Pedro, desde sus 20 años al frente de un integrador tecnológico hasta su experiencia en Devo, donde levantaron rondas con fondos como Insight, TCV o General Atlantic. Habla abiertamente sobre la dureza del mercado enterprise, los errores cometidos, la importancia de construir productos realmente diferenciales y cómo tomar decisiones difíciles cuando una startup quema mucha caja o se enfrenta a rondas complicadas. Finalmente, se abordan temas clave para cualquier emprendedor: cómo negociar ventas de empresas, cómo funcionan los earnouts, los liquidation preferences, las dinámicas con fondos de inversión y el reto de escalar productos deeptech desde España al mercado global. Un capítulo lleno de aprendizajes reales para fundadores, inversores y amantes del mundo startup.

In this episode of the CIONET Podcast, Hendrik Deckers interviews, Carla Milovanov, the Group CIO at Landal, the nominee in the Applications & Architecture category during the #CIONETAwards2026 powered by Splunk. Register here to find out who wins this prestigious title:

Big thanks to Cisco for sponsoring this video and sponsoring my trip to Cisco Partner Summit San Diego 2025. This video is a deep dive with Jeetu Patel on why the real AI revolution is happening in infrastructure and networking, not just in GPUs or chatbots. Jeetu explains that we are massively underestimating how much AI infrastructure the world will need. Power becomes the core constraint, GPUs are the core asset, and networking is the force multiplier that lets thousands of GPUs act as one system. He walks through how we went from models on a single GPU → 4–8 GPUs in a server → racks with hundreds of GPUs (like NVL-72 with 500+ GPUs) → clusters of racks, and now “scale across” between data centers when power and real estate are scattered across different regions. The conversation then shifts to edge AI and Cisco Unified Edge: instead of doing all token generation in big data centers, some inference and token generation must move to the edge (branches, factories, hospitals, stadiums, stores) where data is created. Jeetu explains why edge devices need to be plug-and-play, remotely managed, and integrate compute, networking, security and observability in a single platform. He also introduces the idea that AI is now constrained by three big bottlenecks: • Infrastructure • A trust deficit (people don't trust AI yet) • A data gap (models are mostly trained on human internet data, not on rich machine data) Jeetu explains how security becomes a prerequisite for productivity, not a trade-off, and describes Cisco's work with Splunk, open-sourced time-series models, and machine data (logs, metrics, traces) to close the data gap by correlating machine data with human-generated data for better insights. Globally, he talks about the “token generation race” – how every country now cares about having enough AI token generation capacity because it directly links to GDP and national security. He cites huge infrastructure build-outs with partners like G42 in the Middle East, at gigawatt and trillions-of-dollars scale. Finally, Jeetu tackles the “AI will take my job” fear. He outlines three stages of thinking: 1. “AI will take my job.” 2. “Someone who uses AI better will take my job.” 3. “Without AI, I won't be able to do my job.” His message to younger viewers: be excited, adopt AI as a companion, own your learning, and learn fast because AI compresses the time it takes to build skills. // Jeetu Patel's SOCIALS // LinkedIn: / jeetupatel Website: https://www.cisco.com/ X: https://x.com/jpatel41 // David's SOCIAL // Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidbombal Instagram: www.instagram.com/davidbombal LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal Facebook: www.facebook.com/davidbombal.co TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal YouTube: / @davidbombal Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3f6k6gE... SoundCloud: / davidbombal Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... // MY STUFF // https://www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal // SPONSORS // Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com // Menu // 0:00 - Coming up 0:33 - "Networking is sexy" 02:24 - Scale up, scale out and scale across explained 04:47 - Cisco and Nvidia partnership 05:55 - Cisco and G42 partnership // Addressing the AI bubble 08:11 - New Cisco Unified Edge 11:08 - Agentic AI in the future 13:05 - Huge demand for networking 13:57 - The three constraints 16:38 - AI in the real world 19:26 - How AI will take jobs away 21:38 - Conclusion Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel! Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only.

At the Cisco Partner Summit, Technology Reseller News' Moshe Beauford spoke with Nathaniel Stearns, Splunk and cybersecurity consultant at Keos Technology, to discuss Cisco's integration of Splunk following its landmark acquisition and what it means for partners navigating the next era of AI-driven security. Stearns explained that Keos Technology—Splunk's largest professional services provider in the United States—works closely with resellers, distributors, and channel partners to provide pre- and post-sales support around Splunk implementations. “Cisco has been making very accelerated leaps to integrate all of Splunk’s products into its existing portfolio,” Stearns noted. “It's expanding their security capabilities in a really powerful way, and there's a large amount of education happening across the partner ecosystem.” As Cisco weaves Splunk into its infrastructure and security portfolio, Stearns emphasized the growing role of AI integration. “Artificial intelligence is all the buzz these days, but when it comes to driving business outcomes, AI has to be well integrated into valuable tools,” he said. “Cisco is doing a uniquely good job of connecting these tools—networking, security, observability, collaboration—and adding AI to make each one stronger.” For partners, this evolution represents a major opportunity. Stearns explained that Cisco's combined suite—including ThousandEyes, AppDynamics, and now Splunk—offers unmatched visibility, security, and operational intelligence. “Cisco has done a tremendous job bundling these all together and making it the single marketplace you want to go to for your security solutions,” he said. Looking ahead, Stearns predicts that Splunk's integration into Cisco will double its impact across the enterprise landscape. “Splunk was already a strong platform, but now that it's part of Cisco, there's an opportunity to double its business because it fits so perfectly within Cisco's ecosystem,” he added. “Resellers will have a unique opportunity to package these tools together and deliver holistic security and observability solutions.” Learn more about Keos Technology at https://www.keostechnology.com/.

The integration of Splunk into the Cisco stack is a potential game-changer for channel partners who fully leverage its capabilities. From a security perspective, Splunk provides a powerful analytics platform that acts as a gold mine for partners. It allows them to move beyond simple product reselling into offering high-value services like deep threat detection, correlation, and rapid response by analyzing security data across the entire Cisco environment. Furthermore, the platform offers significant benefits from an artificial intelligence (AI) standpoint. By applying Splunk’s AI and machine learning capabilities to the massive streams of data generated by Cisco devices, partners can automate formerly manual security and operational processes. This automation drastically improves efficiency, reduces labor costs and speeds up time-to-resolution for issues, allowing partners to deliver more profitable managed and professional services and expand with a viable security proposition. A key operational advantage is the unified visibility the combined platform delivers. Through it, partners can gain comprehensive insight into an entire fleet of devices across all their customers from a single, unified dashboard. This not only shortens the time it takes to get to market with powerful monitoring and security solutions, but also provides the deep operational clarity needed to deliver effective managed services and quickly troubleshoot complex customer environments. The final significant component resides in the ease of doing business: partners can sell Splunk products through existing Cisco Enterprise Agreements (EAs) and purchasing programs, simplifying procurement for customers and making sales transactions much simpler and faster for the partner. Check out the full podcast as expert guest, Moshe Beauford breaks down the key benefits of the Splunk-Cisco play for channel partners.

Watch the newest episode of the CIONET Podcast, where Claudio Balbo, Senior Director and Head of IT Architecture at Intesa Sanpaolo, discusses one of the most ambitious core banking transformations in Europe. Claudio is a Nominee in the Applications & Architecture category and a speaker at CIONET Awards: Part 1 on 9 December 2025 at 15:00 CET. Save your seat now to find out who wins this prestigious title

Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products. In today's episode, we discuss: Why companies get stuck in the mid-market and struggle to move up into enterprise Why Jyoti deliberately lost Netflix as their customer The difference between product-market-sales fit, and product-market-fit How to build a scalable, capacity-driven go-to-market machine (instead of chasing deals) Diagnosing whether you have a product problem or a distribution problem How to hire and evaluate your first head of sales and top sales leaders Why Jyoti sold AppDynamics three days before IPO The “binary differentiator” rule for launching new products into crowded markets Why Harness runs 16 product lines under one roof Where to find Jyoti: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansal/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/jyotibansalsf Where to find Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast References: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com/ Barclays: https://home.barclays/ BIG Labs: https://www.biglabs.com/ Carlos Delatorre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/ Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/ Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ Citi: https://www.citi.com/ Cloudability: https://www.apptio.com/products/cloudability/ Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/ Dynatrace: https://www.dynatrace.com/ Harness: https://www.harness.io/ Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Nasdaq: https://www.nasdaq.com/ Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/ New Relic: https://newrelic.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/ Traceable: https://www.traceable.ai/ Unusual Ventures: https://www.unusual.vc/ VMware: https://www.vmware.com/ Timestamps: (01:48) Why do companies get stuck in the mid-market? (05:09) Designing a product for enterprise and mid-market (07:19) Why Jyoti lost Netflix as a customer - on purpose (10:18) Becoming a scalable GTM organization (12:32) The real signs of product-market fit (14:04) Have you delivered the value? (15:46) How to hire your first sales team (19:59) The four signs of excellent sales leaders (23:16) How to interview a sales leader (27:51) Where Jyoti developed his commercial taste (29:37) Why early founders need to learn sales (32:02) How AppDynamics began (36:36) Why Jyoti sold three days pre-IPO (41:55) What does a healthy board look like? (44:23) How Jyoti perceives competition (46:18) Why you need a binary differentiator (49:53) How to launch multiple products (52:00) “We need to be best of breed” (57:38) Why PMs are like mini-entrepreneurs (1:00:20) The startup within a startup (1:02:45) A culture of continuous improvement

Cisco's channel partner ecosystem has undergone a profound transformation following a series of announcements at its 2025 Partner Summit in San Diego. The core focus of said announcements is enabling partners in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) via edge computing and Splunk. This significant shift is driven by new AI and edge offerings (Cisco Unified Edge and Cisco IQ), which promise to provide partners with fast-tracked time to market for next-generation, Cisco-powered solutions. This move is a seismic change to how partners operate, shifting the focus from traditional hardware sales to integrated, outcome-focused solutions with AI at the center of it all. The networking giant further backed the evolution with substantial commitments in marketing spend and major investments in partner education and enablement to build expertise in AI and security. All this is set to be formalized in the upcoming Cisco 360 Partner Program, launching in 2026. We sat down with Technology Reseller News Senior Technology Reporter Moshe Beauford, who offered his expert perspective on the Cisco partner news.

On this episode of Stats on Stats, hosts Jordan, Tiffany, and Kenneth welcome Paul Stout, Field CTO and longtime tech veteran, for a conversation packed with insights, banter, and bold takes. From automating military workflows to tracking car data with Splunk, Paul shares how a nontraditional career path, business acumen, and humor have shaped his approach to tech leadership.Guest Connect:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulestout/Stats on Stats ResourcesCode & Culture: https://www.statsonstats.io/flipbooks    | https://www.codeculturecollective.io  Merch: https://www.statsonstats.io/shop   LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/statsonstatspodcast   Stats on Stats Partners & AffiliatesIntelliCON 2026Website: https://www.intelliguards.com/intellic0n-speakersRegister: www.eventbrite.com/e/1497056679829/?discount=STATSONSTATSUse Discount Code: "STATSONSTATS" for 30% offAntisyphon TrainingWebsite: https://www.antisyphontraining.com   MAD20 TrainingWebsite: https://mad20.io   Discount Code: STATSONSTATS15Ellington Cyber Academy: https://kenneth-ellington.mykajabi.com   Discount Code: STATSONSTATSKevtech AcademyWebsite: https://www.kevtechitsupport.com   Dream Chaser's Coffee Website: https://dreamchaserscoffee.com   Discount code: STATSONSTATSPodcasts We LikeDEM Tech FolksWebsite: https://linktr.ee/developeverymind   IntrusionsInDepthWebsite: https://www.intrusionsindepth.com  -----------------------------------------------------Episode was shot and edited at BlueBox Studio Tampahttps://blueboxdigital.com/bluebox-studio/

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is becoming a must-have for teams managing cloud-native and hybrid environments. In this episode, we break down how Splunk delivers real-time observability, AI-powered insights, and seamless cloud integration to help organizations detect issues faster, optimize performance, and support digital transformation.

AI without observability is guesswork.I har a blast chatting with Patrick Lin, SVP and GM of Observability at Splunk on The Ravit Show. We get straight into how teams keep AI reliable and how leaders turn telemetry into business results.What we cover: • .conf25 updates in Splunk Observability • AI Agentic Monitoring and AI Infrastructure Monitoring • How a unified experience with Splunk AppDynamics and Splunk Observability Cloud helps teams ship faster with fewer surprises • Why observability is now a growth lever, not just a safety net • Fresh insights from the State of Observability 2025 reportMy take: • The nervous system of AI is observability • Signal quality beats signal volume • OpenTelemetry works best when tied to business context • When SecOps and Observability work together, incidents become learning momentsIf you care about reliable AI, faster recovery, and clear impact on productivity and revenue, this one will help.#data #ai #conf2025 #splunk #splunkconf25 #SplunkSponsored #theravitshow

In this episode, Hendrik Deckers sits down with Rajat Dhawan, Group Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Soho House, who is a nominee for the CIONET Awards 2026 in the Data & AI category. Register here to find out who wins this prestigious title

All links and images can be found on CISO Series. This week's episode is hosted by David Spark, producer of CISO Series and Jeff Steadman, deputy CISO, Corning Incorporated. Joining them is Quincey Collins, CSO, Sheppard Mullin. This episode was recorded live at the ISSA LA Summit in Santa Monica, California. In this episode:  The foundational debate Strength over breadth Beyond traditional backgrounds Keeping perspective on risk Huge thanks to our sponsors, Adaptive Security and Dropzone AI AI-powered social engineering threats like deepfake voice calls, GenAI phishing, and vishing attacks are evolving fast. Adaptive helps security leaders get ahead with an AI-native platform that simulates realistic genAI attacks, and delivers expert-vetted security awareness training — all in one unified solution. Learn more at adaptivesecurity.com. Dropzone AI autonomously investigates every security alert—no playbooks needed. This AI SOC analyst queries your CrowdStrike, Splunk, threat intel feeds, and 60+ other tools to build complete investigations in 5 minutes. Unlike black-box automation, it shows every query, finding, and decision. See it work yourself—explore the self-guided demo at dropzone.ai.

When “Normal” Doesn't Work: Rethinking Data and the Role of the SOC AnalystMonzy Merza, Co-Founder and CEO of Crogl, joins Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli to discuss how cybersecurity teams can finally move beyond the treadmill of normalization, alert fatigue, and brittle playbooks that keep analysts from doing what they signed up to do—find and stop bad actors.Merza draws from his experience across research, security operations, and leadership roles at Splunk, Databricks, and one of the world's largest banks. His message is clear: the industry's long-standing approach of forcing all data into one format before analysis has reached its limit. Organizations are spending millions trying to normalize data that constantly changes, and analysts are paying the price—buried under alerts they can't meaningfully investigate.The conversation highlights the human side of this issue. Analysts often join the field to protect their organizations, but instead find themselves working on repetitive tickets with little context, limited feedback loops, and an impossible expectation to know everything—from email headers to endpoint logs. They are firefighters answering endless 911 calls, most of which turn out to be false alarms.Crogl's approach replaces that normalization-first mindset with an analyst-first model. By operating directly on data where it lives—without requiring migration or schema alignment—it allows every analyst to investigate deeper, faster, and more consistently. Each action taken by one team member becomes shared knowledge for the next, creating an adaptive, AI-driven system that evolves with the organization.For CISOs, this means measurable consistency, auditability, and trust in outcomes. For analysts, it means rediscovering purpose—focusing on meaningful investigations instead of administrative noise.The result is a more capable, connected SOC where AI augments human reasoning rather than replacing it. As Merza puts it, the new normal is no normalization—just real work, done better.Watch the full interview and product demo: https://youtu.be/7C4zOvF9sdkLearn more about CROGL: https://itspm.ag/crogl-103909Note: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.GUESTMonzy Merza, Founder and CEO of CROGL | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monzymerza/RESOURCESLearn more and catch more stories from CROGL: https://www.itspmagazine.com/directory/croglBrand Spotlight: The Schema Strikes Back: Killing the Normalization Tax on the SOC: https://brand-stories-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-schema-strikes-back-killing-the-normalization-tax-on-the-soc-a-corgl-spotlight-brand-story-conversation-with-cory-wallace [Video: https://youtu.be/Kx2JEE_tYq0]Are you interested in telling your story?▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full▶︎ Spotlight Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you secure a world where trusted internal traffic now travels over the public internet? That's the question I put to Doug Merritt, CEO of Aviatrix, in this thought-provoking conversation recorded for Tech Talks Daily. Doug brings decades of experience from his time leading Splunk and other major technology players, and he now finds himself at the forefront of reshaping how enterprises think about cloud security. We discuss why the cybersecurity landscape is more treacherous than ever, especially as AI accelerates both defense and attack capabilities. Doug explains why the old "castle and moat" mindset no longer applies in the age of cloud workloads, where perimeters are atomized and workloads are ephemeral. He outlines how identity, endpoint, and network security form a three-legged stool—yet too many organizations focus on one leg while neglecting the others. Doug also shares why embedding protection directly into the network fabric changes the rules for defending the cloud, and how his team at Aviatrix is helping companies close dangerous visibility gaps. We explore the rise of agentic AI, the growing sophistication of lateral movement attacks, and why even trusted identities can pose risk in distributed environments. As we look to the future, Doug argues that the path forward is clear: build on strong foundations, simplify the noise, and make network visibility a first-class citizen in enterprise defense. What do you think—are most organizations ready to shift from bolted-on tools to truly embedded cloud security? I'd love to hear your thoughts after listening. Tech Talks Daily is Sponsored by NordLayer: Get the exclusive Black Friday offer: 28% off NordLayer yearly plans with the coupon code: techdaily-28. Valid until December 10th, 2025. Try it risk-free with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Johanna Jaakola – Integration Lead, Corporate Development Integration Team, Cisco Tesia Hostetler – Leader, Acquisition Integration Practice, Cisco Johanna Jaakola, Integration Lead on Cisco's Corporate Development Integration Team, and Tesia Hostetler, Leader of Cisco's Acquisition Integration Practice, continue their deep dive into Cisco's integration-led M&A framework. In Part 2, they reveal how integration planning shapes diligence, how value drivers guide surgical execution, and what it takes to coordinate a 180-person M&A community. From day one employee experience to go-to-market complexity and the Splunk mega-deal, this episode delivers practical frameworks for M&A professionals looking to accelerate value creation while protecting what matters most. Things you will learn: Learn how Cisco tests integration strategy during diligence and adjusts execution plans based on findings without losing sight of deal thesis Discover how Cisco structures functional integration leaders, maintains alignment through recurring touchpoints, and tracks everything in a centralized M&A hub Understand how to validate customer stories, align partner ecosystems, and make surgical decisions about when to integrate sales motions versus protecting existing revenue engines _____________________ M&A Doesn't Have to Be So Painful

In this episode of The Segment, host Raghu Nandakumara sits down with Carl Froggett, Chief Information Officer at Deep Instinct, the first company to apply end-to-end deep learning to cybersecurity.With nearly three decades of experience — including over 20 years at Citi leading global infrastructure defense and cybersecurity services — Carl brings a rare, full-circle perspective on how the cyber landscape, leadership, and culture have evolved from the early 2000s to today's AI-driven world.You'll learn:How Carl “accidentally” fell into cybersecurity — and what the early days of firewalls and compliance-driven security looked like What it was like to pioneer one of Citi's first dedicated cyber teams Lessons in leadership from iconic figures like Charles Blauner, Greg Lavender, and John Miller How Citi became an early adopter of technologies like Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, CrowdStrike, and Illumio Why building business alignment and trust matters more than ever for CISOs How to frame security risks in business terms — and where many leaders go wrong The massive shift from machine learning to deep learning in cybersecurity How generative AI and “dark AI” are redefining the threat landscape — and why the next era of defense demands a mindset change Packed with nostalgia, hard-won wisdom, and forward-looking insight, this episode bridges cybersecurity history, human leadership, and the AI-powered future ahead.Stay Connected with our host, Raghu on LinkedInFor more information about Illumio, check out our website at illumio.com 

Johanna Jaakola – Integration Lead, Corporate Development Integration Team, Cisco Tesia Hostetler – Leader, Acquisition Integration Practice, Cisco Johanna Jaakola, Integration Lead on Cisco's Corporate Development Integration Team, and Tesia Hostetler, Leader of Cisco's Acquisition Integration Practice, share how one of the world's most prolific acquirers structures deals for success. This episode breaks down Cisco's integration-led diligence model, where integration leads orchestrate due diligence from the deal thesis stage, ensuring strategic alignment and execution readiness before ink hits paper. Learn how Cisco's structured approach to integration strategy, two-stage approvals, and tight feedback loops between strategy and execution have transformed their M&A outcomes—with insights from their $28 billion Splunk acquisition. Things You'll Learn Why integration leads should orchestrate diligence How creating an integration thesis alongside your deal thesis ensures every diligence question tests strategic assumptions and drives execution clarity How Cisco's dual approval process (one to negotiate LOI, another for final purchase agreement) creates natural checkpoints to validate strategy before committing capital ____________________ Only 3 Days Left to Register for the Buyer-Led M&A™ Summit. This is the #1 virtual event built for dealmakers who want to eliminate chaos and take control from sourcing through integration.

Monzy Merza (@monzymerza, CEO/Founder @Crogl) talks about build a next-generation Enterprise SOC by leveraging AI to stay ahead of Cybersecurity threats.SHOW: 969SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #969 TranscriptSHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotwNEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS" SPONSORS:[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”.[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/cloudcastSHOW NOTES:Crogl websiteTechCrunch articleForbes ArticleIntellyx ArticleLast WatchDog ArticleTopic 1 - Welcome to the show, Monzy. Give everyone a brief introduction and tell us about your unique journey from government research to Splunk to Databricks to founding Crogl.Topic 2 - Let's start with the current state of cybersecurity and AI. We're seeing headlines about AI being the top cybersecurity concern for 2025, even overtaking ransomware. From your perspective, what's driving this shift and why should organizations be paying attention to the intersection of cybersecurity and AI?Topic 3 - You've described Crogl as an "Iron Man suit" for security analysts. That's a compelling metaphor. Can you break down what you mean by that and how your approach differs from the traditional "reduce alerts" mentality that most vendors have been pushing?Topic 4 - Let's talk about your "knowledge engine" and what you call an “AI for the Enterprise SOC”. You're using compound AI systems with LLMs, smaller models, and knowledge graphs. This sounds quite different from vendors who are just "bolting on" LLMs to existing tools. Walk us through this architectural decision and why it matters.Topic 5 - The cybersecurity industry is experiencing massive alert fatigue - 4,500 alerts per day, with analysts only able to investigate 8-25 of them. Your philosophy is "every alert should be analyzed" rather than filtering them out. That seems counterintuitive to what the market has been doing. How does your autonomous investigation approach actually work in practice?Topic 6 - Where do you see this evolution heading, and what are the implications for SOC teams and security practitioners? Are we heading toward fully autonomous SOCs?FEEDBACK?Email: show at the cloudcast dot netBluesky: @cloudcastpod.bsky.socialTwitter/X: @cloudcastpodI

This week, we dig into the latest DORA report and OpenAI's big product updates. Plus, some hot takes on airline status and the Eurostar. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode (https://www.youtube.com/live/urU5sn8Ufl8?si=WNrIuP_uXbhIg4gq) 540 (https://www.youtube.com/live/urU5sn8Ufl8?si=WNrIuP_uXbhIg4gq) Runner-up Titles Just plug in an iPhone Be helpful, not helpless Rundown Announcing the 2025 DORA Report | Google Cloud Blog (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-the-2025-dora-report/) OpenAI Agentic Commerce (https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/) (https://openai.com/sora/) The New Sora App (https://openai.com/sora/) Introducing ChatGPT Pulse (https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-pulse/) Relevant to your Interests Intel and Apple hold investment talks, no deal in sight - 9to5Mac (https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/24/intel-and-apple-hold-investment-talks-no-deal-in-sight/) Ed Zitron is mad as hell (https://www.ft.com/content/4c8d6420-d088-4660-8973-c4996cd990fb) TikTok will stay: Trump signs executive order to keep app in the US (https://siliconangle.com/2025/09/25/tiktok-will-stay-trump-signs-executive-order-keep-app-us/) 10+ Hidden Features in iOS 26 (https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-26-hidden-features/) Splunk .conf25: Forging a Data Foundation for Cisco's AgenticOps Vision (https://futurumgroup.com/insights/splunk-conf25-forging-a-data-foundation-for-ciscos-agenticops-vision/) JFrog SwampUp 2025: The Agentic Development Era Emerges From The Swamp (https://www.forrester.com/blogs/jfrog-swampup-2025-the-agentic-development-era-emerges-from-the-swamp/) RIP, AOL dial-up: Take a walk down memory lane to 5 other now-defunct tech icons that defined millennials' youths (https://www.aol.com/rip-aol-dial-walk-down-063119808.html) Logitech launches MX Master 4 flagship productivity mouse – the best mouse we've tested adds haptic feedback, circular Action Ring shortcuts (https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-mice/logitech-launches-mx-master-4-flagship-productivity-mouse-the-best-mouse-weve-tested-adds-haptic-feedback-circular-action-ring-shortcuts) Charlie Javice Sentenced to 85 Months in Prison for Fraud (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/business/charlie-javice-sentence.html) Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to step aside (https://www.axios.com/2025/09/30/spotify-ceo-daniel-ek) Cloudscape - Cloudscape Design System (https://cloudscape.design/) Cursor CLI (https://cursor.com/cli) Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.5 (https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-5) Cursor CLI (https://cursor.com/cli) Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.5 (https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-4-5) GitHub Copilot CLI is now in public preview (https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-25-github-copilot-cli-is-now-in-public-preview/) Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover (https://joel.drapper.me/p/rubygems-takeover/) How Ruby Went Off the Rails (https://www.404media.co/how-ruby-went-off-the-rails/) Open source to closed doors: RubyGems control fight erupts (https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/25/open_source_to_closed_doors/) Platform Engineering and AI - Two Buzzwords Finally Meet! | Michael Cote (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jL3xp3LmQw) Nonsense Build-A-Bear Stock Outperforms Nvidia (https://theonion.com/build-a-bear-stock-outperforms-nvidia/) (The Onion) Conferences CF Day EU (https://events.linuxfoundation.org/cloud-foundry-day-europe/), Coté speaking, Frankfurt, October 7th, 2025. AI for the Rest of Us (https://aifortherestofus.live/london-2025), Coté speaking, October 15th-16th, London. Use code SDT20 for 20% off. Wiz Wizdom Conferences (https://www.wiz.io/wizdom), NYC November 3-5, London November 17-19 SREDay Amsterdam (https://sreday.com/2025-amsterdam-q4/), Coté speaking, November 7th. SDT News & Community Join our Slack community (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-1hn55iv5d-UTfN7mVX1D9D5ExRt3ZJYQ#/shared-invite/email) Email the show: questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Free stickers: Email your address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Follow us on social media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Threads (https://www.threads.net/@softwaredefinedtalk), Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@softwaredefinedtalk), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/), BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/softwaredefinedtalk.com) Watch us on: Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@softwaredefinedtalk) Book offer: Use code SDT for $20 off "Digital WTF" by Coté (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Sponsor the show (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads): ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:ads@softwaredefinedtalk.com) Recommendations Brandon: Black Rabbit (https://www.netflix.com/title/81630027) Coté: Sune, Hackney, London (https://www.sune.restaurant). 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Josh Liburdi, Principal Engineer of Security Operations at DoorDash, joins Maxime Lamothe-Brassard, LimaCharlie CEO / Founder, to talk about building the Strelka file scanning system.As a security engineer who works in security operations (prevention, detection, and response), Josh has more than a decade of industry experience and has worked at several diverse organizations, including Brex, Target, and CrowdStrike.He also presents at information security conferences (BSides NYC & SF, SANS, fwd:cloudsec), is a published author (Bluenomicon from Splunk, Huntpedia from Sqrrl), and is active in the open source security community with contributions to many projects, including Substation at Brex (creator), Strelka at Target (creator), and the Zeek network analysis framework.Join Defender Fridays, live every Friday, to discuss the dynamic world of information security in a collaborative space with seasoned professionals. Become part of the LimaCharlie Community. Learn more about LimaCharlie at limacharlie.io.

Take a Network Break! We start with a listener correction on Cisco’s history of wireless certifications, then dig into a couple of red alerts on Microsoft Defender and a backdoor in Outlook. On the news front, Cisco announces new AI agents and SoC packages for Splunk; F5 spends $180 million to buy an AI security... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a listener correction on Cisco’s history of wireless certifications, then dig into a couple of red alerts on Microsoft Defender and a backdoor in Outlook. On the news front, Cisco announces new AI agents and SoC packages for Splunk; F5 spends $180 million to buy an AI security... Read more »

Take a Network Break! We start with a listener correction on Cisco’s history of wireless certifications, then dig into a couple of red alerts on Microsoft Defender and a backdoor in Outlook. On the news front, Cisco announces new AI agents and SoC packages for Splunk; F5 spends $180 million to buy an AI security... Read more »

Morgan runs a public relations and marketing agency called Firebrand. They raise awareness of technology brands to build awareness, create demand, drive lead generation and close sales. Prior to Firebrand, he was the founder in the US of LEWIS , a global communications firm, which we grew to $35m in revenues and 250+ staff in the US, and $75m with 600 staff globally. He has over 30 years' tech experience, both consumer and B2B. He has advised a range of companies including start-ups such as Amount, Prophecy and Weaviate; non-profits, such as AARP, Mozilla and VSP Vision Care; and public companies, such as BT Group, Equinix, MuleSoft, Splunk and Sky. At LEWIS, he lead the acquisition of three companies - Page One Power which they integrated and rebranded as LEWIS Pulse; the Davies Murphy Group, a 65-person PR and marketing consultancy; and Piston, a 50-person full-service digital advertising agency.

Spiros Xanthos is the CEO of Resolve AI, a platform to put AI on-call for humans. He previously started Log Insight that was acquired by VMware. And started Omnition that was acquired by Splunk. He also helped start OpenTelemetry. They've raised $35M from amazing investors such as Greylock.Spiros's favorite books: - Zero to One (Author: Peter Thiel)- Build (Author: Tony Fadell)(00:01) Introduction & Setting the Stage(00:42) AI's Impact on Software Engineering(02:55) What Reliability Means in Software(04:34) Resolve AI Explained in Plain English(06:33) Real-World Example of Resolve in Action(08:28) Early Customers & Lessons from Company Building(11:40) OpenTelemetry & The Open Source Journey(16:55) Positioning a Developer Tool in a Crowded Market(18:58) Philosophy of Product Building(21:06) Cultural Norms: What to Keep and What to Change(24:33) Radical Transparency & Team Dynamics(26:50) Recruiting for Resilience in Early Team Members(28:59) Future of AI in Software Engineering(31:25) Resolve AI Roadmap & Expansion Plans(33:28) Exciting AI Advancements on the Horizon(35:17) Rapid Fire Round--------Where to find Spiros Xanthos: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spiros/--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-infiniteX: https://x.com/prateekvjoshi 

What 25 years in venture capital teaches you about building billion-dollar startups that founders wish they knew earlier...David Hornik, founding partner at Lobby Capital and former August Capital partner, breaks down the real dynamics between VCs and founders that most entrepreneurs completely misunderstand. From his $50M+ exits including Splunk, GitLab, and Bill.com, David shares why venture capital success isn't about the money - it's about finding the right partnership.In this conversation, you'll discover why the best investors act as collaborators, not gatekeepers, and how startup culture matters as much as your product-market fit. David reveals the misconceptions founders have about what VCs actually look for, the importance of long-term vision alignment, and why building supportive communities around entrepreneurs drives real innovation.Key takeaways for founders:Trust and alignment matter more than just growth metrics Your company culture determines long-term success The best VCs become mentors, not just money providers Staying true to your mission while adapting is crucial for survivalDavid's unique background spans Stanford Computer Music to Harvard Law, plus he created the first VC blog and podcast. He's been honored on Forbes' Midas List and teaches at both Stanford Business School and Harvard Law School.Subscribe for more founder insights and hit the bell for notifications! What's the biggest misconception you had about VCs? Drop it in the comments below.Follow us on our channels for exclusive startup content and behind-the-scenes insights from interviews like this one.SpotifyApple PodcastsYoutubeNewman Media Studios LinkedIn

Panther CEO William Lowe explains how integrating Amazon Bedrock AI into their security platform delivered 50% faster alert resolution for enterprise customers while maintaining the trust and control that security practitioners demand.Topics Include:Panther CEO explains how Amazon partnership accelerates security outcomes for customersCloud-native security platform delivers 100% visibility across enterprise environments at scaleCustomers like Dropbox and Coinbase successfully replaced Splunk with Panther's solutionPlatform processes petabytes monthly with impressive 2.3-minute average threat detection timeCritical gap identified: alert resolution still takes 8 hours despite fast detectionSecurity teams overwhelmed by growing attack surfaces and severe talent burnoutConstant context switching across tools creates inefficiency and organizational collaboration problemsAI integration with Amazon Bedrock designed to accelerate security team decision-makingFour trust principles: verifiable actions, secure design, human control, customer data ownershipResults show 50% faster alert triage; future includes Slack integration and automationParticipants:· William H Lowe – CEO, PantherSee how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

In this episode of B2B Sales Trends, Harry Kendlbacher speaks with Christian Smith, former Chief Revenue Officer at Splunk, about what it really takes to transform a business at scale. Christian helped lead Splunk through a massive shift — from $500M to $5B in recurring revenue and from on-prem to cloud SaaS. Drawing on his 35-year career, he shares what it means to go beyond traditional value selling and align the entire company around outcomes, impact, and economic value. Inside the conversation: - What it takes to lead an enterprise transformation of this magnitude. - Why traditional value selling falls short, and how to apply the Outcome → Impact → Value framework. - How to build a value-aligned organization where product, marketing, and sales speak the same language. - Best practices for defending spend in front of the CFO and giving champions “defendable artifacts” of value. - How to approach CXO conversations with confidence — without overengineering them. - Why use case taxonomies are essential to connecting features to real business outcomes. - What really gets in the way of transformation and how leaders can break down silos to align around the customer. If you're looking for practical insights on building a culture of value and showing up stronger in executive conversations, this episode is one you'll want to hear.

What does it take to run a world-class Security Operations Center (SOC) in today's high-stakes, high-speed cybersecurity landscape?In this episode of the @Endace, Packet Forensic Files, Michael Morris chats with Jessica (Bair) Oppenheimer, Cisco's Director of Security Operations, for an in-depth look at next-generation Security Operations Centers (SOCs). Jessica shares her expertise from securing high-stakes events like the Paris 2024 Olympics, NFL Super Bowl, Black Hat, and RSAC Conference. Discover how her team leverages AI, full packet capture with EndaceProbes, and integrations with Cisco XDR and Splunk to combat AI-driven threats and ensure rapid detection and response. This episode is a must-listen for cybersecurity professionals who want to stay ahead of evolving threats. It is packed with insights on balancing automation with human expertise and key KPIs for SOC success.ABOUT ENDACE *****************Endace (https://www.endace.com) is a world leader in high-performance packet capture solutions for cybersecurity, network and application performance. EndaceProbes are deployed on some of the world's largest, fastest and most critical networks. EndaceProbe models are available for on-premise, private cloud and public cloud deployments - delivering complete hybrid cloud visibility from a single pane-of-glass.Endace's open EndaceProbe Analytics appliances (https://www.endace.com/endaceprobe) can be deployed in on-premise locations and can also host third-party security and performance monitoring solutions while simultaneously recording a 100% accurate history of network activity.

Please enjoy this encore of Career Notes. Distinguished Security Strategist at Splunk, Ryan Kovar, shares his journey that started in the US Navy and how it contributed to his leadership in life after the military. Cutting his teeth as sysadmin on the USS Kitty Hawk, Ryan worked as a contractor following the Navy. At Splunk, he leads the SURGe research team to solve what he calls the "blue collar for the blue team problems". He works hard on incorporating diversity of thought. Ryan notes, "I've been doing cybersecurity or IT now for over 20 years and of that 20 years of knowledge, only about five years of that knowledge is really relevant. You can't sit on your laurels in this industry." We thank Ryan for sharing his story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please enjoy this encore of Career Notes. Distinguished Security Strategist at Splunk, Ryan Kovar, shares his journey that started in the US Navy and how it contributed to his leadership in life after the military. Cutting his teeth as sysadmin on the USS Kitty Hawk, Ryan worked as a contractor following the Navy. At Splunk, he leads the SURGe research team to solve what he calls the "blue collar for the blue team problems". He works hard on incorporating diversity of thought. Ryan notes, "I've been doing cybersecurity or IT now for over 20 years and of that 20 years of knowledge, only about five years of that knowledge is really relevant. You can't sit on your laurels in this industry." We thank Ryan for sharing his story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All links and images can be found on CISO Series. This week's episode is hosted by me, David Spark, producer of CISO Series and Andy Ellis (@csoandy), principal, Duha. Joining us is our sponsored guest, Edward Wu, CEO and founder, Dropzone AI. In this episode:  Building context-aware verification frameworks Understanding why UX fails Moving beyond AI replacement narratives Building for a crisis A huge thanks to our sponsor, Dropzone AI Dropzone AI autonomously investigates every security alert—no playbooks needed. This AI SOC analyst queries your CrowdStrike, Splunk, threat intel feeds, and 60+ other tools to build complete investigations in 5 minutes. Unlike black-box automation, it shows every query, finding, and decision. See it work yourself—explore the self-guided demo at dropzone.ai.

Having met at the UC Davis Wine Executive Program, Kia Behnia, CEO, and Mason Earles, CTO, founded Scout to replicate the best sensor in the vineyard, “the farmer's eye.” Leveraging off-the-shelf hardware, Scout uses AI to process images taken from a tractor to automate vineyard mapping, vine counting, yield forecasting, virus identification, and more. From managing vineyard assets to implementing precision agriculture to improve quality, Scout is harnessing the power of AI to optimize vineyard management.Detailed Show Notes: Mason's background - UC Davis Professor, Apple, AI & agricultureKia's background for Scout - owns the Neotempo wine brand, worked at Splunk, the “data for everything” companyThe official company name is Agricultural Scout, dba Scout, the website is agscout.ai, so it can be called any of those namesFounded in 2022, initially more hardware-based, but pivoted to an intelligence company using off-the-shelf hardwareThe goal is to “replicate the farmer's eye” with an AI-based solution using cameras, tractors, and Scout cloud and mobile app (which can be used offline); the brain is centered around a phoneUS only today (~50-100 clients, 300 blocks, 2M vines, processed 56M photos), going international in 20264 main use cases currently: Automate vine count, inventory, and mapping of vines - 4x faster than people could doEstimate crop performance - both vigor and fruitYield forecasting - can use every step in the growing season to forecast yield with historical performance and weather forecastsHealth performance and vine mapping - leveraging AI for virus detection3 types of clientsEstate wineriesVineyard management companies (“VMC”)Real estate investors or owners to track vineyardsBenefits include: $400-1,200 savings/acreProductivity gains through managing more acres with fewer people, identifying low-performing vines, and the program tells farmers where to sampleRemote monitoring of faraway vineyardsEarly season yield forecastingDisease management - virus can cause $170k/acre damage over 3-5 years, costs $40/PCR test, the goal is to keep virus 50 acresNeighborhood and AVA discountsStarter - 2 scan package (for inventory and virus)Professional - 6 scan packageTypical customer starts w/ 2 and upgrades to 6Monarch promotion, customers get 1 free scanUp front hardware costs ~$3,000New product in beta in July 2025 - ChatGPT Scout for vineyardsMarketing mostly through word of mouth, industry trade shows, and webinars have been effective, as has partnership with Monarch (already tech enthusiasts)Barriers to purchase are often due to farming budgets built around labor Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Breaking Badness, Kali Fencl sits down with Audra Streetman, a former journalist turned threat intelligence analyst at Splunk. Audra shares her journey from local newsrooms to the frontlines of cybersecurity, detailing how her storytelling skills translate directly into threat research. Audra walks us through how ransomware attacks like JBS Foods and the Excellion breach sparked her pivot into cyber. She dives deep into persistent threat tactics, such as file transfer appliance exploitation, the growing risk of cloud infrastructure attacks, and North Korean IT worker scams. If you're a cybersecurity professional, a curious career switcher, or someone looking to stay ahead of threat actor trends, this episode delivers real insight with practical relevance.

How do you keep complex digital experiences running smoothly when every layer, from networks to cloud infrastructure to applications, can break in ways that frustrate customers and burn out IT teams? This question is at the heart of my conversation recorded live at Cisco Live in San Diego with Patrick Lin, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Observability at Splunk, now part of Cisco. In this episode, Patrick explains how observability has evolved far beyond simple monitoring and is becoming the nerve centre for digital resilience in a world where reactive alerts no longer cut it. We unpack how Splunk and Cisco ThousandEyes are now deeply integrated, giving teams a single source of truth that connects application behaviour, infrastructure health, and network performance, even across systems they do not directly control. Patrick also shares what these two-way integrations mean in practice: faster incident resolution, fewer blame games, and far less time wasted chasing false alerts. We explore how AI is enhancing this vision by cutting through the noise to detect real anomalies, correlate related events, and suggest root causes at a speed no human team could match. If your business depends on staying online and your teams are drowning in disconnected data, this conversation offers a glimpse into the next phase of unified observability and assurance. It might even help quiet the flood of alerts that keep IT professionals awake at night. How is your organisation tackling alert fatigue and rising complexity? Listen in and tell me what strategies you have found that actually work.

This week Jim's guest on The CMO Podcast is Carrie Palin, the SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Cisco, the $55 billion by revenue tech leader, whose purpose is to leverage technology, people, and broader networks to solve society's greatest challenges. Cisco is on quite a roll–its stock is up about 40% in the last year. Carrie never took a marketing class in school, and never even imagined she would be a top tech B2B marketer, let alone the CMO of one of the world's great companies. But serendipity happened, and Carrie said yes to IBM coming out of TCU, and began a tech marketing career that took her to Dell, Box, Splunk, and now Cisco. Carrie has had a remarkable run in her four years as Cisco's CMO, which we will talk about. Tune in for a conversation with a CMO, who believes some things in life are simply non-negotiable.---This week's episode is brought to you by Deloitte and StrawberryFrog.Learn more: https://strawberryfrog.com/jimSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Google issues an emergency patch for a Chrome zero-day. A new malware campaign uses fake DocuSign CAPTCHA pages to trick users into installing a RAT. A high-severity Splunk vulnerability allows non-admin users to access and modify critical directories. Experts warn congress that Chinese infiltrations are preparations for war. Senators look to strengthen cybersecurity collaboration in the U.S. energy sector. Crocodilus Android malware adds fake contacts to victims' phones. SentinelOne publishes a detailed analysis of their recent outage. Cartier leaves some of its cyber sparkle exposed. Our guest is Jon Miller, CEO and Co-founder of Halcyon, discussing Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attacks. Microsoft and CrowdStrike tackle hacker naming…or do they? Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today on our Industry Voices segment, we are joined by Jon Miller, CEO and Co-founder of Halcyon who is discussing Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) attacks. Listen to Jon's conversation here. Selected Reading Google patches new Chrome zero-day bug exploited in attacks (Bleeping Computer) Fake Docusign Pages Deliver Multi-Stage NetSupport RAT Malware  (Infosecurity Magazine) Splunk Universal Forwarder on Windows Lets Non-Admin Users Access All Contents (Cyber Security News) China hacks show they're 'preparing for war': McMaster (The Register) FCC Proposes Rules to Ferret Out Control of Regulated Entities by Foreign Adversaries (Cooley) US lawmakers propose legislation to expand cyber threat coordination across energy sector (Industrial Cyber) Android malware Crocodilus adds fake contacts to spoof trusted callers (Bleeping Computer) SentinelOne Global Service Outage Root Cause Revealed (Cyber Security News) Romanian man pleads guilty to 'swatting' plot that targeted an ex-US president and lawmakers (AP News) Cartier reports data breach exposing customer personal information (Beyond Machines) Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at cyberwire@n2k.com to request more info. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Lights On Data Show, host George Firican discusses the rapidly evolving landscape of data management with Kamal Hathi, Senior Vice President and GM at Splunk, a Cisco company. They explore the challenges organizations face as they scale and adopt AI, emphasizing the importance of digital resilience, security, and observability. Kamal shares insights from Splunk's latest report, 'The New Rules of Data Management' (https://splk.it/3RLx67g), which surveys over 1,400 IT, engineering, and cybersecurity professionals across 16 industries. Key topics include the importance of data federation, tiering, and having a clear data strategy for business success. Tune in to learn how leading organizations are overcoming data challenges to achieve better business outcomes.