Podcasts about VMware

On this week's show special guest co-host Rob Joyce joins Patrick Gray and James Wilson to discuss the week's cybersecurity news. Rob served as an advisor to Donald Trump during his first term as president and also served at NSA for 34 years. While at the agency, Joyce led Tailored Access Operations (TAO), and later became NSA's Director of Cybersecurity. They cover: The surprisingly well done Fortibleed campaign Stolen Klue OAuth tokens lead to Salesforce data theft OpenAI wants to patch the planet runZero gets acquired by Accenture, congrats HD Moore! Much, much more! This episode is also available on YouTube. Show notes FortiBleed campaign used custom FortiGate sniffer to steal credentials | BleepingComputer FortiBleed: Fortinet device credential compromise expands into broader credential-attack guidance | unit42.paloaltonetworks.com Cybercriminals allegedly hacked tens of thousands of Fortinet firewalls used by major companies all over the world | TechCrunch Security Klue OAuth breach linked to 'Icarus' Salesforce data theft attacks | BleepingComputer Polymarket (@Polymarket) on X | X (formerly Twitter) The Korean telecom giant at the center of Anthropic's Mythos controversy | wrd.cm Beyond Fable: Can a Local LLM Replace Cloud AI for Security Code Reviews - SRLabs Research | SRLabs OpenAI Launches Full-Scale Effort to Patch Open-Source Bugs as It Takes on Anthropic's Mythos | wired.com Sponsored: Trail of Bits and OpenAI patch the planet | Risky Bulletin Intel agencies: Frontier AI models will reshape cybersecurity faster than expected | cyberscoop.com Embedding Forbidden Text in Spyware to Discourage AI Analysis | Schneier on Security A new unpatchable flaw in Apple chips opens the door to an iPhone jailbreak | TechCrunch Security USB worm spreads crypto-stealing malware via Windows shortcut files | BleepingComputer Android verification is coming: Google confirms timeline and supported app stores | Ars Technica California water utility probes breach claim by Iran-linked actor | Cybersecurity Dive Suspected cyberattack triggers false emergency alerts across parts of Brazil | The Record Tesco moving 40,000 server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's "abusive conduct" | Ars Technica Trump directs federal agencies to protect US data from quantum threats | therecord.media Accenture shells out $4.18B on three companies in big industrial cybersecurity push | cyberscoop.com

This week's episode covers a series of cybersecurity stories, including a researcher's discovery of vulnerabilities in FIFA's World Cup platform that could have enabled unauthorized administrative access and even the ability to alter live broadcasts. The team also discusses the risks of large-scale identity verification data exposure, supply chain attacks impacting the scientific research community, ongoing fallout from Broadcom's VMware acquisition, and legal challenges from major organizations facing rising VMware costs. Along the way, the hosts share commentary on AI-related security concerns, access control failures, and the broader impact of vendor decisions on enterprise security.Join us LIVE on Mondays, 4:30pm EST.A weekly Podcast with BHIS and Friends. We discuss notable Infosec, and infosec-adjacent news stories gathered by our community news team.https://www.youtube.com/@BlackHillsInformationSecurityChat with us on Discord! - https://discord.gg/bhis

Yevgeniy is a Fellow of the IACR (International Association for Cryptologic Research), and a Professor of Computer Science at New York University. He has worked in a variety of areas, including secure messaging and end-to-end security, random number generation, LLM watermarking, cryptography with biometrics and other noisy data, hash function and block cipher design, protocol composition and information-theoretic cryptography. Some of his work on Random Number Generation, Hash Functions and Secure Messaging has had real-world impact (e.g., for Zoom, Microsoft, Apple and Signal, among others). In addition to being an IACR Fellow, Yevgeniy was the recipient of 2021 and 2019 IACR Test-of-Time Awards for his work on Fuzzy Extractors and Verifiable Random Functions. He has also won the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Faculty Awards from AWS, Facebook, Google, IBM, Algorand, Protocol Labs, JP Morgan, Stellar Foundation and VMware, and the Best Paper Award at the 2005 Public Key Cryptography Conference.  YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MvfSuyWTqA 

Brad Shapiro, senior vice president and chief sales officer of HPE Financial Services HPE Financial Services is making a concerted push to be less of a “best-kept secret” and more of a deal-closing engine for partners. At HPE Discover 2026, Brad Shapiro, senior vice president and chief sales officer of HPE Financial Services, walked In the Channel through several new partner-facing offers unveiled at Monday’s Partner Growth Summit. The standout is the 90/9 Advantage structure: 90 days with no payments, followed by nine months at 1 per cent of the original equipment cost, before shifting to level payments. Shapiro said the program is designed to blunt the sting of recent price hikes by pushing costs into future budget cycles without requiring customers to find new money mid-year. On the networking side, HPFS is stacking three offers to help HPE take share from competitors: 0 per cent financing on Mist or Aruba Central software, a “10 per cent better than cash” hardware financing rate, and a competitive takeout program that monetizes displaced gear. The used equipment angle is particularly timely. Shapiro noted that memory shortages have driven up resale values for retiring gear, creating an offset against new hardware costs. “It’s the equivalent of the car market in the early COVID days,” he said. HPFS also expanded its approved credit capacity by 150 per cent, a move Shapiro said was driven by partner frustration with re-approval cycles as component prices fluctuated. The interview also touched on HPFS’s partner pledge – Shapiro said his team does not receive quota retirement until the partner gets paid – and the growing importance of IT asset disposition and chain of custody as Canadian customers navigate AI-driven infrastructure refreshes. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: This episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event on ChannelBuzz.ca. You’ll find our HPE Discover 2026 news hub on the menu bar at the top of the page. Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. Today, my guest is Brad Shapiro, Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer of HPE Financial Services, the captive financing arm of HPE. Brad is responsible for the global partner-facing financing strategy and programs that help resellers and MSPs close bigger deals and get paid faster. We sat down at HPE Discover last week to talk about the new partner portal enhancements HPEFS rolled out at Partner Growth Summit, the thinking behind the company’s aggressive credit expansion, and how IT asset disposition fits into the overall AI infrastructure refresh wave that’s starting to hit customer budgets. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Brad Shapiro. Brad, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Brad Shapiro: Sure. Glad to be here, Rob. Robert Dutt: You guys rolled out some meaningful enhancements to the HPEFS partner side on Monday: payment structures, promotional pricing, and competitive pricing tiered to the partner’s relationship level. Canada is on the first wave of that for July 1. I understand a bunch of Canadian partners are having a party for that. For a Canadian reseller or MSP who wasn’t here this week, what does it actually change in how they can put a deal together for their customers? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, sure. So as you said, lots of exciting announcements here for Discover. And I think first and foremost, what HPEFS has put together is really focused on helping the HPE partners sell more in a couple of key areas. So we’ve all seen, you know, with commodity prices going up and the price increases around products, we’ve got some really interesting offers that have gained a lot of traction in the market. The 90/9 Advantage is one of the key ones. And that offering partners can offer to their customers is 90 days of no payments, nine months at 1% of the original equipment cost, and then it goes to level payments after. So while we can’t address that the product prices are increasing, what we are doing is providing help for customers who didn’t plan for this in the budget cycle, right? CFOs didn’t say, “Oh, here’s more money because prices are going up.” So it allows the end-user customer to kind of plan for this into the next budget cycle and beyond so they can get the compute power they need. So that’s a key one. The other area, when we look at the networking space, right, we’re very excited about, you know, Aruba and Juniper coming together in the new HPE networking, and they’ve got some tremendous offerings out there. But to really help them and help customers avoid kind of a double payment, like we want to go take market share, we want to be aggressive. So the first offer is 0% financing on the networking software, whether that’s Mist or Aruba Central. Then we have on the hardware side 10% better than cash as a financing offer. So that’s a really cool offer. And then we’ve added a really aggressive focus on IT asset disposition. So we want to go in, help customers by monetizing the competitor’s assets, taking those out, and then putting HPE networking assets in. So when you combine those three offers—0% on software, 10% better than cash on hardware, and a competitive takeout on the competitor’s products—we think we’re really helping partners go and address and partner up with HPE networking and be aggressive in the market to help HPE take share. Robert Dutt: Going back to the 90/9 program, what areas is that covering? Brad Shapiro: That covers all products. So it’s really a financial structure that can address the whole portfolio. And again, it’s a very attractive offer. We’ve seen it compared to any other financing offers we put out there. We’ve seen the pipeline ramp tremendously. It’s really addressing a need that’s out there in the marketplace. Robert Dutt: Before getting into the details of some other programs, you touched on the supply chain situation that is on every partner’s mind right now. I’m curious over the last five months or so that this has been such a big factor. What have you been hearing from partners in terms of what they’re asking for from you, and where they’re looking for help here beyond obviously some clarity and whatever break they can get? Brad Shapiro: I’ll talk from a financial services perspective. It’s really about how can we help the partner address some of the customer concerns. One of the big ones is budgeting. It’s always been the case that there’s more to do than you have budget for. This just puts another wrinkle in it that is unprecedented. I’ve been doing this quite a long time. I’ve really not seen the market dynamic as we have it today. But that’s where financial engineering and financial structuring comes into play. Also, a lot of customers, while the new prices have gone up, when customers are retiring assets, what many don’t realize is the used equipment that’s coming off—the used equipment market has also increased in value. We’re able to give customers a lot more money for their used gear than they’re used to. That’s been helping offset some of the increases on the new product side. Robert Dutt: It’s the equivalent of the car market in the early COVID days. Brad Shapiro: Absolutely. Same type of scenario. Robert Dutt: The announcement around a 150% increase on approved credit capacity—that’s a pretty striking number. Is that part of the response to that? What’s driving you guys to go aggressively there right now? A response to that uncertainty, a response to tariffs, a response to all the things we see going on? Brad Shapiro: It’s a response to a few things. Yes, the price increases. For a while, the component pricing was so uncertain that there was a shorter validity period for quoting. The idea of increasing the credit line created enough room so that our partners didn’t have to keep going through the cycle. What we were hearing as feedback was, “Hey, we would go get a request from HPEFS, we get it approved, then if pricing went up, then we had to go through that process again.” We wanted to give plenty of headroom and be aggressive to allow partners to quickly get their deals done and not have to go through a process twice. It was ease of doing business, speed, and really helping them close their deals. Robert Dutt: Not a peculiar problem for HPE and HPEFS either. That’s something that we’re hearing across the industry front as a major partner issue—the idea of customer sales cycles and “validity” not matching up in any real way. Brad Shapiro: Yeah, absolutely. We’re trying to do our part to help partners get deals done. The good news is HPE on the BU side, on the compute side, announced a longer price validity. I know that they announced that here at Discover and there was really good feedback at the Partner Growth Summit. I think overall HPE, we’re all trying to address and help partners get their deals done with customers. Robert Dutt: The 0% software financing tied to VM migration is interesting when it feels like you’re trying to smooth that painful transition for folks who are on a platform and looking to move somewhere new. Is that the right way to think about it, or what else are you applying to that model? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so I think just in general, we’re trying to provide customers a way to engage and look at our CloudOps suite—Morpheus and Zerto and OpsRamp and the whole suite—and really focus on how can we make it easy for the customer to say, “Yeah, let me try this.” So at the end of the day, it doesn’t have to be something where they’re coming in and wiping out one versus the other. The cost differential is so great and we believe that if they can just lower the number of licenses on VMware, we can help them reduce costs. So they may look to put in our CloudOps software in certain places and reduce those VM licenses. 0% financing makes it an easier decision: “Hey, I can pay over time and it’s the same as paying cash, no interest.” It’s just another option for customers who may not have it in this year’s budget. Robert Dutt: I’m trying to track it because it’s something that you’re kind of ramping up on though in competitive areas. Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so what’s new from HPEFS, I would say this year versus maybe the past five or seven years, is a renewed focus on leveraging our financing capabilities to help partners sell more with HPE. We didn’t really have in the last five or seven years a lot of financing promotions. We’ve integrated with the BUs. We’ve listened to the partners. They want to see us come out with integrated offers that help drive more sales. And so we’ve been working closely with the BUs. We’ve been developing these offers over the past year. It started a little bit at last Discover, but we’re really hitting our stride now as an organization. And I think the partners are really going to benefit from that. Robert Dutt: PGS also saw the debut of sustainability competencies for partners through HPEFS and through Partner Ready Vantage in combination there. What does earning that competency mean in practice? What does a partner get and why should they be pursuing it? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so from our perspective, when we think about sustainability, we think it’s a really important aspect of the overall business. We have a responsibility. And so from a partner perspective, by getting that accreditation, there’s incentives that they can get under the Partner Ready Vantage program. And from an HPEFS perspective, we’ve created circular economy reports to help support partners and customers. And we’re proud that we’ve issued our 2,000th report to customers, and that keeps growing. So as sustainability continues to be an important part of this, I think partners have a role to play in helping their customers, but also can earn more from HPE. Robert Dutt: What are you hearing from partners around the idea of sustainability as part of the quoting and solution offering process? It’s just something that I feel like I’m hearing more of from Canadian partners in particular because of a series of regulations and requirements, and in some public sector spaces, the way it’s being weighted. Brad Shapiro: From my perspective, and I have a global role, so in certain geographies around the world, it’s very, very important. And it varies across geographies, but everywhere you look, it’s a growing trend in terms of importance, as you mentioned, in terms of government responses. We’re seeing more governments putting requirements in there. So my feeling is addressing sustainability is quickly becoming a must-have if you’re going to offer solutions. And so we’re right there with our partners in terms of helping them do that. Robert Dutt: It also connects to—and this is something that we touched on a little bit earlier—the idea that every customer upgrading their network and compute stack to something that’s more capable of AI has that corresponding pile of displaced gear that they’ve got to do something with. Brad Shapiro: Yeah. Robert Dutt: I guess, how significant do you see the ITAD opportunity in this refresh wave in the near future, and how do you help partners get in front of that? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so again, I think there’s a significant opportunity, and I think HPE networking is really well positioned in that AI space. So from our perspective, in looking at the products that we can displace readily, there’s a pretty large install base. Some of our competitors have many customers out there, so the idea of putting those assets back into reuse somewhere is very real. So we think we can do well to help that customer monetize the asset. We can also put that back into reuse, which is good for the environment, and at the same time, help customers really modernize their network, because that’s really a solid foundation you need. When you think about AI, everybody thinks about the compute side and GPUs, but the network is so critical to having that solid AI foundation, and we believe HPE networking is the right choice. Robert Dutt: Across the board in your purview, is there a Canadian dimension here worth calling out? We’re hearing a lot more about data sovereignty driving decisions and that kind of thing about where workloads live. But does that also extend to how customers think about decommissioned hardware and where it goes? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, look, I think from a decommissioned hardware perspective, we are very careful about chain of custody and where that ends up. And I think that’s one thing that differentiates HPE when we’re thinking about decommissioning versus many others out there. We’re a large brand. It’s really important to us to decommission in the right way, following all the regulations that are out there. So if you’re a Canadian partner or a Canadian customer, knowing that the HPE brand… we are as focused on doing those things in the right way and following the rules and regulations. Our brand reputation is at stake, and we put a lot of thought and resource, time and energy into that. Robert Dutt: What’s the single biggest piece of feedback or most common piece of feedback you’ve been getting from partners here at Discover this week? What are they talking to you about? What are they curious about in terms of what you guys can bring to bear for their customers? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, so I think there’s been a lot of positive feedback on the offerings that we’ve come out with. As I mentioned before, we’re showing up differently now. We’re showing up coordinated with the different business units across HPE with these offers. That’s helpful. The other thing we’re focused on is really about the partner experience. So it’s not just having the right offers. It’s making them easy to access, operationally making it a smooth process. We want to be fast. We want to be predictable. When we put lines of credit in place, we commit to funding. We want to fund our partners fast. So my whole team doesn’t get quota retirement in sales until the partner gets paid. So it’s really important that we align our metrics and the way we’re measuring ourselves with what’s going to delight the partner and create a better experience for them. Robert Dutt: Has there been a notable increase in terms of acceleration there on partners getting paid? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, I would say it’s long been a focus of ours, but we’re really emphasizing it in coming out and being very deliberate about what we want to do in terms of turnaround times. We call it our partner pledge, but the idea is we want partners to know that we can be a reliable source of funding. Not only does financing help them close the deal and make the deals bigger, but then they can get paid faster as well. That really helps their metrics because most partners, most businesses, are looking at cash flow and free cash flow and all those kind of metrics. And financing with HPEFS really helps. The other thing it does is when you think about a partner’s capacity to do business, if they’re financing through HPEFS, it’s HPEFS’s credit line that’s being used, creating more availability for the partner to sell other solutions. So it doesn’t go against their credit limits. Robert Dutt: Not to get all “what have you done for me lately” with you, but what can partners expect from your business over the balance of 2026, as much as anyone has visibility into the near future? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, sure. I think what partners are going to see is, again, we talked about the offerings—us showing up with very competitive offerings, us showing up looking to help partners win, and again, helping partners. We want partners to think about, “Okay, there are these financing capabilities and I want to leverage those. How do we grow the HPE business?” The HPE business for our partners should be a growth engine for them—a profitable growth engine—and HPEFS is really here to help facilitate that. Robert Dutt: One thing I hear from folks in similar seats to you all the time is the idea that they feel their capabilities are underused or under-understood by partners. Generally speaking, obviously there are some exceptions to any rule. Does that kind of map with how you feel, and what’s the one tool, offering, or program that you offer that you think more partners would benefit from getting to know and adding to their toolkit? Brad Shapiro: Yeah, sure. I think Phil Mottram said it. He said, “HPEFS is one of our best-kept secrets.” So, yeah, I think generally we feel like we can do a better job, but I would say even coming to this Discover—and I’ve been to many, many, many Discovers—HPEFS is showing up because the marketing team has just done a fantastic job of integrating not only HPEFS, but kind of a whole value proposition focusing around IT economics. And I think that’s been a pivotal message here at Discover. From a partner perspective, again, I go back to all of those special financing offers that you just can’t get generally in the marketplace. You know, 0% on CloudOps software, 0% financing on Mist and Aruba Central. We’ve got a very competitive financing offer on storage. We talked about earlier the networking offerings that we have. So, across the portfolio, there are these offerings that you can only get from HPE and HPEFS. Robert Dutt: For an MSP or reseller who hasn’t thought much about asset disposition as part of their services offering, but is thinking, “Okay, well, maybe this is something I need to get into,” what’s the entry point? Is it something they engage you on directly, or do they kind of have to build their practice first and then bring you into the picture? Brad Shapiro: Well, I think they can engage us. If there’s an opportunity… the way I think about it is most customers are focused on, “What am I going to get that’s new? I need new technology for a project.” A lot of customers don’t have the wherewithal or focus on the disposition side. We think many customers end up giving their product away. Maybe somebody takes it and goes, “I’ll take care of it for you free of charge.” And the customer thinks, “Oh, this is great,” but there’s money in those assets, particularly now with the memory shortage. Anything with memory is going to have value. So for a partner, you don’t need to be an expert; just understand what the customer has in their environment and what they might be getting rid of. And it’s really just contacting HPEFS and we’ll do the assessment of whether there’s market value or not for the partner. Robert Dutt: That’s kind of where I wanted to go. Anything you want to throw out there in summation or in closing? Brad Shapiro: No, I really appreciate you having me. And it was great to get an opportunity to showcase what HPEFS is bringing to the table. I’m really excited and proud of what we’re doing and the role we can play in helping the partners grow with HPE. That’s what being a captive financing company is all about. So, looking forward to winning and growing with the partners in Canada. Robert Dutt: All right. Thank you for taking the time. Brad Shapiro: Thank you. Robert Dutt: There you have it. Brad Shapiro from HPE Financial Services. I’d like to thank Brad for his time, and I’d like to thank you for listening to the podcast. If you found the conversation useful, the best way to support the show is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating or review if you’re so inclined. My takeaway from the conversation? HPEFS is making a deliberate shift away from being a passive financing option to an active weapon in the competitive arsenal. The 90/9 Advantage, the networking offer stack, and especially that partner pledge about quota retirement tied to partner payment speed—those are signals that HPE is serious about removing friction from channel economics. For Canadian partners, the July 1 portal rollout and the emphasis on chain of custody for ITAD are worth getting familiar with. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Lawsuit against Meta over scraped Pr0N; 40,000 more servers move off VMWare

Justin McGarry, vice president of product management for compute software at HPE At HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas this week, In The Channel sat down with Justin McGarry, vice president of product management for compute software at HPE, to talk about where HPE’s server management story is headed – and what it means for MSPs in the Canadian channel. The centrepiece of that story is Compute Ops Management (COM) – HPE’s cloud-native, subscription-based platform built on iLO telemetry embedded in every ProLiant server. McGarry’s pitch is direct: COM is not just a management tool, it’s a business growth platform for MSPs who lean into it. His primary proof point is Nitec, an MSP that helped co-develop COM’s multi-tenant capability and now manages distributed customer environments at higher margins with fewer resources than previously required. Across a broader study of roughly 300 ProLiant customers, HPE found up to 75% less downtime and approximately $150,000 in travel and resource cost savings per customer. For MSPs serving customers with ESG or sustainability reporting obligations – increasingly common in Canadian public sector and regulated industries – COM’s AI insights module adds a forecasting layer that projects future carbon emissions and energy costs using an open-source forecasting engine. That projection can anchor a practical business case for a server refresh, as illustrated by Bookie.com, which is using COM on its path to net zero by 2030. Two capabilities worth flagging for mixed-environment MSPs: third-party server monitoring (visibility into non-HPE OEM hardware from the same console) and Secure Gateway, a virtual appliance that aggregates iLO traffic into a single cloud egress point – solving the cloud-connectivity objection for customers in financial services, healthcare, and other regulated sectors. On the agentic AI front, McGarry is candid that Compute Copilot is early. This week’s Discover announcement extends its reach into security advisories – surfacing recommendations and moving toward automated remediation. The fuller agentic vision is still taking shape. McGarry’s takeaway for partners: there’s still significant runway to understand what COM can do for their businesses, and the MSPs who’ve made it a core capability are seeing it pay off. Read Full Transcript ROBERT DUTT: This episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Check out our full coverage of the event at ChannelBuzz.ca. You’ll find our HPE Discover 2026 news hub in the menu bar right at the top of the page. Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. This week I’m at HPE Discover 2026 in Las Vegas, and over the course of the show I’ve been sitting down with HPE executives and partners for a series of conversations that I’ll be releasing over the next few days. Today’s guest is Justin McGarry, vice president of product management for compute software at HPE. Now, when HPE says compute, they mean their server business anchored by the ProLiant line, but Justin’s specific domain is the software that wraps around that hardware. The centerpiece of that is Compute Ops Management, which is HPE’s cloud-native platform for securing, automating and managing ProLiant estates. It’s built on top of iLO, HPE’s embedded server intelligence technology, and over the past few years it’s evolved into something that Justin argues is less a management tool and more a business growth engine for MSPs. Justin came to HPE a couple years ago from VMware, where he ran global services portfolio and the go-to-market strategy, so he brings an interesting outside perspective to where HPE’s story fits in the broader enterprise infrastructure picture. We talked about the MSP opportunity, sustainability forecasting, where Compute Copilot, the conversational AI layer for server management, actually stands today, and where HPE thinks agentic capabilities take all of this. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Justin McGarry. Justin, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, happy to be here, Rob. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to chat with you today. I’m sure it’s a busy week, this kind of show almost always is. ROBERT DUTT: Absolutely. To start with, you guys have been calling the business unit Compute rather than servers for a while now. When you’re talking to partners, how do you describe what Compute is today versus maybe what it was five years ago, what it all kind of entails? JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I mean, I’ll give you my perspective. So I joined the company about two and a half years ago now. And when I think about what we do in Compute, the foundation of that is ProLiant. So from a hardware perspective, the servers that we ship day in and day out to our customers. The other piece, from my perspective, and maybe I’m being a little selfish here, is all the software and solutions that wrap around that. So from a software perspective, I own what we call Compute Ops Management. So that is our cloud-native management platform for securing and automating those ProLiant estates. We actually do third-party monitoring as well. So other server OEMs that you have in the environment, we’ll monitor that as well. And then we have our on-premise solution for air-gapped and sovereign environments. That’s OneView. We’ve had OneView out in the market for many years now. And then, of course, the foundation of everything we do from a software perspective is with iLO, integrated lights-out. That has been out in the market now for a few decades. We continue to innovate and evolve on that. And so all of that intelligence, the data, the telemetry, that’s all foundation to what we do in our management platforms with our subscription-based cloud-native Compute Ops Management, and our sovereign air-gapped solution with OneView. ROBERT DUTT: Okay. A couple questions around things that you guys have announced recently. You guys just highlighted a 20% energy efficiency gain with the Gen 12 platform on Xeon. So for a reseller or MSP helping a mid-market customer justify the server refresh right now, how do you see energy efficiency playing in actually closing deals? Or is it still just sort of a nice-to-have thing on the spec sheet? JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I think customers are still really focused on sustainability. Again, if I think back to what we do from a software perspective with Compute Ops Management, one of the key assets or capabilities that we have there is what we call AI insights. And with those AI insights, we can actually help customers from a sustainability perspective be able to predict and forecast future carbon emissions. So I was at Discover in Barcelona late last year. We had a customer Booking.com on stage and Booking.com has a massive distributed environment all ProLiant-based. How are they managing, securing, automating that? They’re using Compute Ops Management. One of their key goals at a company level is they want to be net-zero by 2030. How are they going to get there? They got to make sure that they’re running an efficient, sustainable operation, certainly from a data center perspective. ProLiant is in that picture. And then how they’re managing, monitoring that, predicting their future forecasts or their carbon emissions to help them derive when they’re going to go do their refreshes. They’re using Compute Ops Management for that. So sustainability is still very much top of mind. Globally, I would say even more important in EMEA with some of those board-level sustainability targets that customers have with their ESG board-level goals that they’ve got to go and achieve. ROBERT DUTT: Do you see that catching up at all in the North American market? JUSTIN MCGARRY: You know, I do. I mean, I’m hearing it more in customer conversations. If I think about when I was in Discover Barcelona, a lot of the discussion there was around sovereign and sustainability. Early into the week here at Discover, I haven’t had a lot of customer meetings yet, but I’m going to kind of predict that I think some of the sustainability pieces are going to come into play, especially when you think about AI, you think about inferencing in particular out at the edge. You think about all the energy required to go in and not just do the training, but now thinking about the inferencing and workloads and use cases around GenAI. I think that’s just going to continue to become more important. And so that’s why we prioritized it in our roadmap to continue to evolve on what we’re doing from a sustainability perspective. ROBERT DUTT: Let’s get a little bit more into Compute Ops Management. You came from VMware, which has its own management tooling story. What does COM do that’s genuinely different and what does it mean for an MSP managing, say, 100 ProLiant servers across 20 customers or whatever that profile looks like? JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, yeah. So I think what really differentiates HPE, I think, generally in the market is that we have the Compute Ops Management capability. So this was a build from the ground up, cloud-native subscription-based management tool that we brought to market a few years ago now. I think it has been very transformational in the customer conversations that we’ve been having because at the end of the day, it’s not just the hardware. It’s how you secure that, how you automate it. I think the unique differentiation that we have with Compute Ops Management is specifically with all the telemetry data and intelligence that we have at the iLO level. That is in every single ProLiant that we ship out the door. And because we have that chip in each of those ProLiants that goes out, it gives us a lot of capability to secure, automate, manage, orchestrate that environment for the customer. So I think that’s the unique value that we have in Compute Ops Management that may be a little bit different than what else you see out on the market and you reference VMware. Certainly a lot of great management capabilities there when it came to the workload level, the virtualization level. This is down at the hardware level, at the ProLiant level, helping customers manage and automate and secure that environment. When it comes to what’s in it for managed service providers, so we have a lot of success stories there that we’re continuing to build on where COM really enables multi-tenant compute management for those MSPs. They can do it from a single, secure, cloud console. They can proactively manage and monitor their customers’ environments. We have this MSP actually who will be on stage with me later today, Nitec, and the managing director there that runs that business. He started working with our team a few years ago now as we were starting to really kind of build some foundational capabilities into Compute Ops Management. He helped us with developing the concept around our MSP capability where we can manage different workspaces across an environment and have all of that visibility roll up to a single level. I think the key benefit for these partners, and of course there’s all the IT benefits and capabilities that they get. I think when I consider what Nitec has done and some of the other MSPs from a business perspective, what used to take a lot more resources for them to manage those customer environments, now they’re able to do that much more efficiently and effectively. They’re seeing a larger margin profile on these value-added services that they’re delivering to these customers as a result. And so, Compute Ops Management, you ask the folks at Nitec, that has been foundational to them being able to deliver these services effectively and at a much higher margin than they have been able to do in the past. So the story, Rob, honestly, is a very similar story to what customers achieve with using Compute Ops Management. We’ve got a study we did a little while back across about 300 ProLiant customers, up to 75% less downtime in their environment, a lot more, up to 150,000 or so in travel and resource costs saved. So just like we’re helping our customers effectively manage their environments with less resources and less cost at those distributed edge locations, we’re doing the same thing with our MSP partners. So we have a lot of opportunity there. It’s exciting to see, I would say, COM is not just a management tool, it’s a business growth platform for these MSPs who really lean into it and partner with us. ROBERT DUTT: Obviously, you’ve got folks like Nitec who are well along the curve, it sounds like, maybe even leading the way in many ways. Where are you at in terms of reaching the long tail of the MSP channel and kind of getting that, how fully realized is the opportunity for COM in the community today? JUSTIN MCGARRY: I think, Rob, we still have a ton of opportunity to get the message out there around Compute Ops Management. I find myself, when I am presenting to the various partner communities, there’s still a lot of opportunity to bring them up to speed on the capabilities that we have there, the benefits they can derive, and in particular, what’s in it for them. How can they go in and repeat what Nitec has done? I think if you ask Nitec, what is the one thing that they would recommend for partners to go do who are looking to scale their MSP businesses on top of a management capability like Compute Ops Management? It is getting a single kind of advocate champion in the organization to really understand what not only the product can provide to the end customer, but what are the benefits that the managed service provider can get out of using this type of capability in their environment to manage those end customers? ROBERT DUTT: You guys just recently launched or added Copilot, an integrated conversational AI layer for server management in COM. Interesting concept. Where is that at today? Is it sort of in the “this is what the future might look like” kind of phase, or is there aspects that it’s kind of going to be genuinely useful to an MSP today? JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I think it is very early stages with Compute Copilot. Today, it is very much a conversational AI assistant. So if I think about in my daily life how I’m using tools like Claude and my just kind of conversational interaction back and forth, Compute Copilot is very much that today. So hey, Compute Copilot, tell me about the servers I have in the environment and their health, or hey, Compute Copilot, tell me where I’m at on achieving, as I talked about the Booking.com story earlier, where am I at on my path to sustainability and meeting some of those targets? Those are some of the questions that you can ask of it today. If you asked Nitec, they would say, “Hey, all the manual effort and looking through all the manuals and documentation that HPE provides around the ProLiant infrastructure, we no longer have to go in, dig that all up and navigate our way through that.” We can ask the conversational assistant with Compute Copilot to do that. That’s the beginning. I think the future is really around agentic. So how can I interact with that Compute Copilot to say, “Hey, notice that this issue is happening in my environment. Provide me some recommendations on what I can do next.” It provides me those recommendations. And then I can say, “Hey, Compute Copilot, go and enact those recommendations.” And so I think about back to that study with those ProLiant customers and all that time and resource and effort saved, I just can’t imagine how much we can multiply that for our MSPs and for our customers once we start to get some of those agentic capabilities in place. What are the announcements we have this week, Rob, as we start to head down that agentic path is with security advisories. So security advisories, you think about the past, “Okay, I got to understand that there’s a security advisory out there. I then got to go and act on it and figure out what I need to go do in the environment to rectify that issue.” Now we’re heading down the path of, “Okay, I can get some intelligence to tell me, ‘Hey, this is happening in the environment. We can go and provide recommendations on where you need to go and implement this and then go and implement that.'” And so, yeah, I’m really excited about the opportunity that we have with agentic. I think back to your question, we’re just very much at the beginnings of where we can take capabilities like Compute Copilot. ROBERT DUTT: Especially as that kind of stuff starts to fit into the mix, it strikes me that it’s even more important that, as you mentioned, it’s a multi-vendor kind of environment that I as an MSP, if I have customers or existing infrastructure that’s running someone else, it’s, you know, it can be covered under this as well. JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, yeah. So the third-party monitoring capability we have today is very much monitoring. So other OEM servers that you have in your environment, you can get visibility into those. And so we provide this capability today. I think we announced that about a year or so ago. I would say that is opening a lot more doors for our, certainly the conversations with the MSPs. You know, we can’t kid ourselves that at MSPs they only have one type of OEM in the environment. They might have multiple. It’s a hybrid environment. And the same can be said for our customers out there as well. And so having this third-party monitoring capability in place where I can go to that single console and not just have visibility into my ProLiant estate, but if an issue occurs, I want to be able to see that across the entire estate. The third-party monitoring capability gives us the ability to do that, Rob. And, you know, one other thing I’d add real quick, and this is something that a lot of our partners and even, I’d say, our customers, we still have some awareness-building to do around Secure Gateway. So one of the challenges that customers, when I first joined, time and time again, I have discussions with customers about cloud manageability. And the first question they say is, well, Justin, where is this all hosted? And, you know, do I really want my environment talking to the cloud? And one of the things that we developed over time is this capability called Secure Gateway. It’s a virtual appliance that can be deployed in the environment. And what that does is it actually aggregates all of the iLO traffic to that Secure Gateway. That’s then one egress connection out to the cloud instead of all of those iLOs connecting and talking to the cloud. Nine times out of ten in customer conversations I have, whether it’s financial, it’s some other regulated industry, healthcare, insurance, what have you, we are now able to overcome that hurdle with cloud management capability because we have the Secure Gateway virtual appliance that we can deploy for customers. So that’s another great capability. Combined with third-party monitoring, you deploy that virtual appliance and that’s how we’re able to have that visibility across the entire estate. ROBERT DUTT: We touched a little bit on sustainability earlier. Back home in Canada, we have particular sensitivities around energy costs, carbon reporting, especially for public sector and anyone under provincial ESG oversight. What is the sustainability dashboard in COM? Does that move the needle here? Is it a checkbox feature? What can it kind of add to an MSP who’s trying to make sure that their customers are informed and in the right place? JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I would say it’s a fundamental feature that we have in Compute Ops Management today. I think what really takes it to the next level is the AI insights that I mentioned. So we worked with an open-source forecasting engine model out there that we leverage to develop and engineer that capability. And what that allows you to do is be able to forecast out to the future. Hey, this is how we’ve been trending today. This is where we will end up in the future based on some of that intelligence that we have in the AI-driven insights capability. So I would say sustainability dashboard in Compute Ops Management is a very kind of foundational fundamental capability. How you take that to the next level is then being able to leverage the AI-driven insights that we have for sustainability, be able to predict what the future is going to look like from a carbon emissions, energy cost perspective, and then be able to proactively take some measures to make sure that you’re going to be able to meet or exceed those targets. And so some customers are actually looking at that and saying, okay, I’m not necessarily ready to refresh now, but based on how I’m predicting out to the future, yes, I need to make that next step from Gen 10 or even prior to that in my environment to the new Gen 12 and the cost associated with doing so. I can predict and forecast out into the future that based on my energy costs, I may be able to cover, I mean, not all of that expense to do the refresh, but certainly a part of it. And so that’s something else that I know we have had a lot of success with our customers here recently. Again, it comes back to not just having that fundamental sustainability dashboard in place, but also being able to look out into the future to a certain extent with that forecasting model that we have to predict where you’re going to go with carbon emissions, energy costs. ROBERT DUTT: Last one for me. What do you think is the biggest untapped or under-realized opportunity in the compute software sphere for you guys right now? What’s basically the one thing that you’d want a Canadian reseller walking away from Discover this week understanding about this business that maybe they didn’t come in with? JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, I think that back to what we talked about a little bit ago, there’s still, I think, an opportunity with partners. Partners have heard maybe a little bit about Compute Ops Management, but haven’t yet gotten to the place where they fully understand the capabilities that we have there, where we have delivered on some of the things like Secure Gateway, third-party monitoring, the sustainability, AI-driven insights and the forecasting model there, where we’re going with agentic. What’s in it for them at the end of the day? What are they going to benefit from getting their customers up to speed on Compute Ops Management, using it to manage, orchestrate, secure, automate those environments? I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there to continue to, and this is on me. It’s on our teams at HPE to continue to work with our partners to bring them up to speed there. And then I think back to looking at what Nitec and others have done: really get that champion within your organization to understand not just what the customer benefits are and the outcomes that can be derived, not just from an IT perspective, but with the Booking.com story, that real business-critical impact that this software is driving. I think that’s a unique differentiator that HPE has out in the market from a ProLiant perspective with Compute Ops Management. And then the other piece for MSPs is, hey, I can go in and deliver higher-margin value-added services just by leveraging this management tool in the environment and learning from Nitec and others on how they’re doing that. So I think I feel like it’s very early stages, Rob, with the partner ecosystem. I think we have a ton of opportunity there to help them understand that COM isn’t just a management tool. It is a business growth driver for them, and helping them understand that and realize that outcome is certainly where I’m focused and where the team is focused going forward. ROBERT DUTT: Between that runway and I think the potential for agentic getting its hooks even deeper into this and making it increasingly actionable, I think you’re right. There’s a lot still to come. JUSTIN MCGARRY: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s exciting. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity with the partner ecosystem and I think, genuinely, I think we’re just getting started. ROBERT DUTT: All right. Look forward to seeing how it evolves. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time with me, Rob. Thank you. Thank you. ROBERT DUTT: There you have it. Justin McGarry from HPE. I’d like to thank Justin for carving out some time during what is a genuinely hectic week here at Discover. I really appreciate it. And thank you for listening. If you’d like to follow or subscribe to the podcast, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, most podcast directories. Ratings and reviews are always appreciated if you have a moment. A few things I take away from this conversation. First, Compute Ops Management is a more interesting story than the name might suggest. When you’ve got an MSP like Nitec that helped co-develop the platform’s multi-tenant capability and is now managing distributed customer environments at significantly higher margins with fewer resources, that’s a real signal worth paying attention to. Justin’s framing of COM as a business growth platform rather than a management tool is the right way to think about it. Second, the sustainability forecasting piece is genuinely differentiated for the Canadian market. The ability to project future carbon emissions and energy costs and use that forecast to build a board-level business case for a server refresh is practical and timely, especially for customers with ESG reporting obligations. And third, Compute Copilot is early, and Justin was honest about that. The near-term step, moving from conversational Q&A to actual agentic action on security advisories, is the right direction. It’s worth revisiting this conversation in a year to see how far that’s come. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

en Fallon, vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales At HPE Discover Las Vegas this week, HPE pushed its networking story to the centre of the event – from autonomous AIOps capabilities to a unified SASE platform – and the channel is central to how it plans to execute on some ambitious market share targets. ChannelBuzz.ca sat down on-site with Ben Fallon, vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales, to talk about what the announcements mean in practice for Canadian partners. On the self-driving network vision – a major theme in the general sessions this week – Fallon pointed to HPE Aruba Mist as the concrete proof point: autonomous remediation that partners can toggle on in the dashboard for known network problems, no human click required. “Autonomous networking, with that human deciding where they want that to take place, is already real,” he said. On the Aruba and Juniper Networks platform integration – a frequent question from partners navigating two management platforms – Fallon described a “build once, deploy twice” philosophy built on microservices architecture, keeping both platforms differentiated by use case while accelerating innovation through cross-pollination rather than forced convergence. The SASE and security opportunity produced one of the clearest channel statements of the conversation: “Pretty much 100% of our security sales go through partners. There is no other path.” With HPE publicly targeting a $1 billion security business, Fallon said the partner base is nowhere near saturated – and that competency-based incentives within the Partner Ready Vantage program are in place to bring more networking-pedigreed partners into that conversation. A formal partner program unification is on track for November, with a stated focus on simplifying certification, deal registration, and rebates – and new incentives aimed squarely at winning net-new networking customers away from competing vendors. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Today’s episode of In The Channel is brought to you by HPE Discover 2026. Discover runs June 15-18 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Discover what’s next at hpe.com/discover. Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. We’re coming to you this week from HPE Discover Las Vegas, where HPE has been rolling out a significant set of announcements across networking, cloud, and AI infrastructure. The embargoes are lifted, and the Partner Growth Summit is in the books, so we can actually get into the substance of things. My guest is Ben Fallon, vice president of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem networking sales at HPE. Ben came to this role via the Juniper side of the house. He was running global partner and commercial sales for Juniper Networks when the acquisition closed, and moved into leading the combined networking channel earlier this year. His session at Discover this week was called “Betting on HPE Networking,” which turned out to be a pretty useful frame for a conversation. We got into what self-driving networks actually mean for a partner having a Monday morning conversation with a customer, the Aruba and Mist integration story, the SASE and security opportunity, and what partners can expect when the unified program formally launches in November. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Ben Fallon. Ben, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. I know it’s a busy week on site here, I’m sure. Ben Fallon: It is. It’s a fun week. We’ve got thousands of partners here, but it’s great to be here with you. Robert Dutt: For listeners who don’t know you or your role, can you give me a quick rundown on what you do here and how you came to be leading networking channels for HPE? Ben Fallon: Yeah, so like you said, I lead the global networking channel for HPE. I’ve spent the last 25-odd years in the industry, have led channels for a number of the significant vendors in the market. I was part of the Juniper acquisition, most recently running one of the global sales segments, and in January moved over to lead the channel. We’ve got a fantastic opportunity in front of us. Robert Dutt: I like that you frame it as you’re part of the Juniper acquisition. You’re not taking entire credit for them acquiring Juniper to get your talent. Ben Fallon: Absolutely not, no. It was a bonus. Robert Dutt: Absolutely. Your session this week is called “Betting on HPE Networking.” It’s a pretty confident way of looking at it, and obvious given the milieu. Walk me through what the bet looks like from where you sit. What are you asking partners to bet on, and why now? Ben Fallon: Yeah, so for me, it’s like when you look at a bet, you’ve got to make sure it’s a good one. No one wants to be playing the lottery. That’s got the worst chance of winning. The more strategy that you actually bring into a game, along with some execution, increases your chance of winning. So for us, what increases the chance of winning with HPE Networking is cross-selling. The more you’re selling across the portfolio, the more you’re going to engage with our account teams, the more problems you’re going to solve for our customers. And also, that’s where you can earn the most amount of rebates, and where the program is really geared towards. So if you make a bet on us, we’re making a bet on you, and you’ll get that back in profitability and customer satisfaction. Robert Dutt: Cross-selling within networking, across the HPE portfolio, or… Ben Fallon: All of the above. So you can absolutely cross-sell within the portfolio, whether you’re selling campus and branch, or you want to move into selling more security solutions. Or if you’re selling the hybrid cloud solution portfolio from HPE, you need to start getting involved in networking, because it’s going to expand your opportunity, and we know the network is at the heart of all of these AI workloads. Robert Dutt: One of the big presentations here is about taking the idea of self-driving networks from vision to reality. For a lot of partners, though, the question is always, “What do I take to my customer?” On Monday morning, how do partners translate that message around self-driving networks to a concrete conversation with staff at a customer, and make it map with their care-abouts? Ben Fallon: Yeah, sure. Well, look, complexity is only increasing. We know there are talent shortages. We know that it’s almost an impossible task to keep up with all the vulnerabilities that are created through AI. And so you have to have AI as part of your defense. So what’s real? Let’s take something like HPE Mist, where that has autonomous actions now built into the dashboard. So we know for certain problems that come up on the network, we know how to remediate them. We don’t need a person to go and click a button. You can literally switch on a toggle, and off it goes. So autonomous networking, with that human deciding where they want that to take place, is already real. Robert Dutt: You touch on Mist. One thing I do hear from partners sometimes is with the Aruba and Juniper integration, the two platforms you’ve got with Aruba Central and Mist, moving toward common capabilities, but it sounds like the vision is not to merge. What do you tell the partner who’s been selling one side of that equation or the other? And now that we’ve kind of got one HPE networking, what does it mean in practice, basically? Ben Fallon: Yeah, well, you touched on self-driving. That’s a unified vision across the entire portfolio. And then we’ve got this strategy of cross-pollination. I think if you look at a lot of acquisitions over the years, they’ve spent so long arguing over maybe not a feature, but how do you actually get to that feature to be capable? And innovation dies when that happens. If you want innovation to actually accelerate, which is what we’re seeing, you take the best from each platform, and because they’re built with a microservices architecture, you can build once, deploy twice, and it becomes this incredible boon of innovation on the platform. So I’d say that is real, because customers are voting with their wallet. So there’s a decent amount of cross-pollination, but each kind of remains aimed towards its focus. Robert Dutt: That’s it. Ben Fallon: And really what I see with partners is they see this as a growth play in the same way that we do. This is about finding new opportunity. So they may have served some SMB customers with some on-prem part of the Aruba portfolio. Now they’re wanting to get into some mid-sized lower enterprise, and they’re seeing that Mist has some capability that helps get them there. So it’s a growth play for us, and it’s a growth play for the partner. Robert Dutt: One of the things that caught my attention in the announcements this week was the unified SASE story – bringing SD-WAN and SSE under one management pane. You guys have talked about a billion-dollar security ambition. Pretty big number. What’s the channel’s role in getting to that? And for a partner who hasn’t historically led with networking security, what’s kind of the on-ramp or the easiest first step? Ben Fallon: Yeah. So first of all, obviously, we’ve got this universal zero-trust network architecture, which we’re really leaning into. And it’s about bringing together the different parts of the security portfolios from across HPE. And obviously with the Juniper acquisition, that brought an even richer portfolio. For partners, pretty much 100% of our security sales go through partners, so there is no other path. And what we’re really looking for is – we have some very, very capable, specialized partners on security – I think there’s a bigger opportunity for more partners to be selling HPE networking and security solutions. We’re just getting started. We’re already posting some great numbers. We had some incredible growth just last quarter, and there’s still more partners can do. We are not saturated from the partner landscape selling our security portfolio, so lots of opportunity there. Robert Dutt: Those additional partners in that space – do you see them being primarily folks who come in from other parts of the HPE network, existing specialists in security who maybe haven’t worked with you in the past, a little bit of both? What’s kind of the… Ben Fallon: It’s a bit of a combination, but you always have to focus. You can’t go everywhere. And where we’re focusing is on partners that have a pedigree in networking with us, because we’re increasingly seeing that there’s a great attach opportunity, and the convergence of the network and security we think is only going to accelerate. Robert Dutt: Are we at the point of having a formal program, that kind of thing, to bring those partners on board, or to enable and encourage the partners who are in the HPE sphere, but not yet? Ben Fallon: Yeah, we do. We have, as part of our Partner Ready Vantage program, our broad certifications that are part of that, and that’s how you get to platinum, gold, silver, etc. But then we have competencies, and we have a number of security competencies that partners can build up that capability. They can pick different parts of the portfolio. They could be brand new to networking, but build up competency in security, and that will bring technical competence and capability, but also incremental profitability for them as well. Robert Dutt: A lot of talk this week, obviously, about the disruption around VMware – customers reconsidering virtualization strategies and how that drives the refresh cycles within the data center on some of the compute and storage hardware, all that kind of good stuff. Does that also create a network refresh opportunity? Ben Fallon: So there can be opportunities that do arise. I don’t know if that’s the biggest piece that’s driving growth in data center networking right now. I think the AI boom is doing a significant job there, and probably dwarfs anything else. But what you’ll see is announcements this week around how we’re, really from a technology perspective, bringing more parts of the portfolio together from across the hybrid cloud portfolio and networking. Because really, that’s what customers want. They want integrated technology that solves their problems, and that’s what we’re focused on. Robert Dutt: From a Canadian channel perspective, where do you see the biggest networking opportunities today? I’m going to guess your answer to the last question strongly informs the answer to this one. But what are the biggest opportunities in the back half of the year? And what’s your ask of Canadian partners who are listening to this? Ben Fallon: Yeah. Well, there are two things I think are the biggest opportunity. One is cross-selling. If you’re selling part of the HPE portfolio today, look at how you can integrate across the stack – whether that’s the full HPE stack, or whether it’s specific to networking. There’s a huge opportunity there, and we’re seeing that partners that have adopted that are growing faster than anyone else. Second, new logos – going after new customers. We’re here to win. We’re here to be number one, and we’ll do that first in wireless networking. And to do that, we need new customers. And you’ll see new incentives and new programs come out in November that will put even more wood behind the arrow – that’s going to make it an incredible opportunity for partners to go and solve the networking crimes of other vendors and bring them into the light of a self-driving network. Robert Dutt: You guys are obviously deep into the process of integrating programs between legacy HPE and legacy Juniper. We have the November 1 date, I believe, as the formalized launch date for that becoming one. What can partners expect coming out of that at a programmatic level on the networking side? Ben Fallon: Yeah. So what we’re doing is, first of all, looking at the experience partners have – everything from how they get certified, trying to simplify that and make sure that they’re not having to do multiple layers and duplicative actions. We’re working on the experience when it comes to things like registering a deal, getting rebates, keeping it simple. I think other vendors I’ve seen, you need a bit of a rocket science degree to figure out how all of these different programs and rebates come together. We’re focusing on keeping it simple, we’re focused on driving action, and most of all – which I think is often missed – we’re making sure that our sales teams know how to engage with partners really well and go and win deals together. Robert Dutt: Good luck on a big week here at Discover, and thanks for taking the time once again. Ben Fallon: Appreciated. And we love working with our Canadian partners, and just a big thank you to all of them that are on board already. Robert Dutt: There you have it, Ben Fallon from HPE. I’d like to thank Ben for his time. We were literally recording between sessions at Discover, and I appreciate him making it work. And thank you for listening as well. A few things that stuck with me from this one. The self-driving network story has been fairly abstract for a while, but his Mist example – autonomous remediation actions you can toggle on in the dashboard, no human in the loop for known problem types – it’s the most concrete I’ve heard it get. That’s actually something you can put in front of a customer. The other thing worth sitting with: “pretty much 100% of our security sales go through partners. There is no other path.” That’s what Ben said. If you’re an HPE networking partner who hasn’t yet built a security practice, and HPE is out there talking about a billion-dollar security ambition, someone is going to capture that opportunity. Make sure it’s you. And for partners who may have walked away from the Juniper side of the portfolio at acquisition time and have been watching from the sidelines, November is shaping up to be the moment to take another look. Simplified programs, new incentives, a unified experience. It’s worth paying attention to. If you found the episode useful, we’d love to have you subscribe to the podcast. You’ll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most of the major podcast directories. If you have a moment to leave a rating or a review, it always helps. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Network Is Hot Again: Stackpane's Sarbjeet Johal on Cisco Live, AI Infrastructure and Systems Economics, Podcast, Johal brings a unique mix of technical, business, and economics experience to the discussion @Doug Green, Publisher, Technology Reseller News “The network is hot again because a lot more data is traversing on it, and a lot more data will traverse on it,” says Sarbjeet Johal of Stackpane. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Doug Green speaks with Sarbjeet Johal, Founder and CEO of Stackpane, technology analyst, cloud strategist and go-to-market specialist, about why the network has moved back to the center of the enterprise technology conversation. Johal brings an unique mix of technical, business and economics experience to the discussion. A veteran of VMware, Oracle and Dell EMC, Johal has spent decades building and deploying enterprise systems, advising technology providers, and helping buyers understand cloud strategy, infrastructure modernization and digital transformation. At Cisco Live, Johal says the biggest theme was simplification. Cisco, he argues, is working to reduce infrastructure complexity for customers operating across public cloud, on-premises systems, AI workloads and increasingly distributed environments. That includes a renewed focus on infrastructure as code, platform control, and AI-assisted tools such as Cisco IQ, which Johal says can help customers and partners troubleshoot, configure and operate Cisco environments more effectively. The conversation then turns to Johal's recent observation that “the network is hot again.” His point is that AI, real-time systems, digital services, autonomous agents, and API-driven interactions are all placing new demands on network performance. As more data moves across enterprise systems, latency, memory, compute, and connectivity become more strategically important. Johal notes that during AI inference, latency is especially critical, making the network, chips, CPUs, and memory all part of the same infrastructure story. Johal also frames the issue through systems economics. Enterprises are not simply buying more technology for the sake of modernization. They are being forced to ask whether cloud, AI, on-prem infrastructure, and automation actually pencil out in terms of total cost of ownership, return on investment, and operational value. For MSPs, channel partners, and technology providers, that creates an opportunity to help customers make better architecture decisions, not just consume more tools. The podcast closes with a look ahead to a future conversation on token economics, AI infrastructure costs, and where MSPs and channel partners can find real business opportunity as enterprise technology becomes more automated, more data-intensive, and more dependent on resilient network infrastructure. Editor's note: This podcast was recorded at Cisco Live in Las Vegas and is being posted later. With time, the conversation has become even more notable. Johal's central point — that the network is “hot again” — has only gained relevance as AI, automation, cloud infrastructure and real-time digital services continue to place new pressure on enterprise networks. Learn more: Stackpane at stackpane.com

Join us as Dave walks through what it actually takes to build custom AI agents from scratch - not theory, but real projects he has shipped for his family, his work, and his community. Dave shares how he used Kiro and Claude to solve real problems: normalizing flood-damaged library inventory data, automating AWS well-architected review collateral, building a room-cleaning task agent for his 12-year-old, planning family menus with Apple Calendar integration, and post-processing live concert recordings. You will learn how agents reason and take action, when to reach for a Kiro power versus a simpler automation, how MCP servers connect agents to real-world tools, and practical strategies for keeping agents accurate without burning through tokens. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 7:57 Dave's Background and How He Got Started with Agents 13:00 The Library Flood Story - First Real-World Agent Use Case 16:00 AWS Well-Architected Review Automation 17:09 What Are Kiro Powers and MCP Servers? 22:13 Kiro Pricing and Bedrock Integration 28:13 Live Demo - Room Cleaning Agent with AWS Rekognition 41:24 Family Meal Planning and Apple Calendar Integration 44:27 Automating Live Concert Recording Post-Processing 52:31 Getting Started - Dave's Recommendations for Beginners How to find Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-stauffacher/ Links from the show: https://kiro.dev/

Join us as Mike Fiedler (AWS Hero, PyPI Safety & Security Engineer, Python Software Foundation) makes the case for eliminating long-lived credentials from your release workflow - before an attacker does it for you. Mike walks through the real-world incidents that motivated Trusted Publishing, how OIDC-based short-lived tokens work under the hood, and the step-by-step process for setting it up in GitHub Actions. You'll learn how the 2024 Ultralytics compromise was forensically investigated thanks to Sigstore attestations, why that API token in your repo is just a password with a fancy hat, common pitfalls that will have you debugging for four hours, and why deleting your old token after setup is the step everyone forgets. PyPI went from 10% Trusted Publishing adoption in February 2024 to 36% today - this episode is how you become part of that number. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 4:00 Mike's PyCon US World Tour Recap 8:00 The Scale of PyPI: 13B Requests/Day & 36% Adoption 12:09 Why Long-Lived Tokens Fail: Four Attack Models 16:47 Case Study: The 2024 Ultralytics Compromise 21:44 What is Trusted Publishing? OIDC Explained 27:04 How the GitHub Actions Flow Actually Works 34:12 Other Registries: npm, RubyGems, crates.io, NuGet 36:34 Common Pitfalls & Debugging Tips 42:29 Provenance & Sigstore Attestations 44:22 The Step Everyone Forgets: Delete Your Old Token 47:06 Migration Guide & Getting Started This Week How to find Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miketheman/ https://www.python.org/psf-landing/ Links from the show:

Join us as Dale Orders (AWS Community Builder, four-time All Builders Welcome participant from Australia) walks through everything you need to know about getting to AWS re:Invent completely free - flights, hotel, conference pass, and more. Dale shares her personal journey from being rejected the first time to attending four AWS conferences through the All Builders Welcome grant program, including two as a mentor. You'll learn the exact eligibility criteria, what the grant actually covers (flights, accommodation, Uber vouchers, a prepaid Visa card, and a free AWS exam voucher), how to write an application that stands out, and the one thing that will get yours rejected immediately. Dale also covers what happens after you're accepted, how to handle the visa process if you're outside the US, and a full list of other tech conference grant programs beyond AWS. Applications typically open in late June - this episode is your head start. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 4:11 What is the All Builders Welcome Program? 8:03 Dale's Journey: Rejected Once, Accepted Four Times 11:07 Eligibility Criteria & Who Should Apply 15:49 The #1 Thing That Will Get Your Application Rejected 16:03 Everything the Grant Actually Covers 17:42 How to Apply & Timeline 18:41 Writing a Winning Application 35:18 Visa Process Warning: Don't Ignore This 38:41 Other Tech Conference Grant Programs & Wrap-up How to find Dale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-orders/ Links from the show:

Join us as Dale Orders (AWS Community Builder, four-time All Builders Welcome participant from Australia) walks through everything you need to know about getting to AWS re:Invent completely free - flights, hotel, conference pass, and more. Dale shares her personal journey from being rejected the first time to attending four AWS conferences through the All Builders Welcome grant program, including two as a mentor. You'll learn the exact eligibility criteria, what the grant actually covers (flights, accommodation, Uber vouchers, a prepaid Visa card, and a free AWS exam voucher), how to write an application that stands out, and the one thing that will get yours rejected immediately. Dale also covers what happens after you're accepted, how to handle the visa process if you're outside the US, and a full list of other tech conference grant programs beyond AWS. Applications typically open in late June - this episode is your head start. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 4:11 What is the All Builders Welcome Program? 8:03 Dale's Journey: Rejected Once, Accepted Four Times 11:07 Eligibility Criteria & Who Should Apply 15:49 The #1 Thing That Will Get Your Application Rejected 16:03 Everything the Grant Actually Covers 17:42 How to Apply & Timeline 18:41 Writing a Winning Application 35:18 Visa Process Warning: Don't Ignore This 38:41 Other Tech Conference Grant Programs & Wrap-up How to find Dale: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-orders/ Links from the show:

Broadcom just delivered another strong earnings report for Q2 fiscal 2026, and the stock fell more than ten percent. CSI breaks down exactly why that happened, what it means for long-term holders, and whether anything has actually changed in the fundamental thesis for one of the most important companies in AI infrastructure.Broadcom has compounded its enterprise value at over fifty percent annually for five years. AI semiconductors now represent roughly three-quarters of the semiconductor solutions segment, which itself makes up the majority of nearly forty-eight billion in trailing twelve-month revenue. Free cash flow hit a record dollar amount this quarter at a forty-six percent margin, still climbing toward its near-fifty percent record high.So why did the stock sell off? The short answer is that Wall Street wanted a raise in 2027 guidance, specifically whether Broadcom's forecast of over one hundred billion in AI semiconductor revenue for fiscal 2027 would be revised higher toward two hundred billion. CEO Hock Tan declined to update that number, and without a concrete revision, earnings expectations stayed flat.Infrastructure software, the VMware segment, is now a cash cow with sub-ten percent growth. The growth engine going forward is AI semiconductors and networking. Chip Stock Investor's position is unchanged, continuing to hold Broadcom as a core AI data center infrastructure name.For in-depth stock research and the Semiconductor Insider membership, visit chipstockinvestor.com. Use fiscal.ai/csi for 15% off any paid plan.

.entry-img img{ display:none !important; } .single .hentry .entry-img{ display:none !important; } https://open.spotify.com/episode/47RAQ1TXbfnlvIjsxzCHwH Delaying action on emerging technologies is often seen as the safest path for finance leaders. But in today's environment, standing still can quietly erode competitiveness faster than visible missteps. For CFOs, the choice is no longer between perfection and experimentation; it is between shaping how intelligent tools transform their business model, or inheriting a cost base, tech stack, and operating rhythm that were designed for a world that no longer exists. The real risk now lies in missed efficiencies, slower decision cycles, and constrained strategic options when rivals are already compounding the benefits of data- and AI-enabled finance. In this GrowCFO Show episode, host Kevin Appleby speaks with Todd McElhatton, CFO of Zuora, about why hesitating on AI adoption could be more damaging for CFOs than making imperfect early decisions. They frame AI not as a distant future technology, but as an immediate strategic lever that will separate adaptive finance leaders from those who are left managing obsolete operating models. The conversation stresses that waiting on AI often compounds operational risk, opportunity cost, and competitive disadvantage, especially for CFOs accountable for both efficiency and growth. Todd outlines how AI is reshaping finance, from quote-to-cash and system implementation to workforce design and governance. Drawing on his experience at HP, WebMD, Oracle, VMware, SAP, and now Zuora, he explains why CFOs must actively lead AI strategy, re-architect their tech stacks, and develop robust oversight rather than defaulting to conservative inaction. By the end of the episode, listeners gain a pragmatic view of where AI can deliver tangible value today, and why inaction may be the riskiest choice of all. Key topics covered: Todd charts his career journey across major tech companies and explains how it shaped his view of the CFO as both financial steward and operational leader. He details Zuora's evolution into an AI-enabled quote-to-cash platform and how AI is accelerating shifts to new, outcome-based business models. Todd and Kevin unpack the build vs. buy decision around AI, highlighting integration, domain expertise, compliance, and governance as critical factors for CFOs. The discussion explores how AI can reduce rework, speed implementations, and reallocate finance capacity from manual tasks to higher-value analysis and decision-making. Todd argues that CFOs who hesitate on AI risk constraining strategy, delaying business model transformation, and missing efficiency and innovation gains competitors are already capturing. He shares his personal AI use cases: research, scenario analysis, and board preparation, while emphasizing human oversight, skepticism, and multi-model validation. Links Todd McElhatton on LinkedIn Kevin Appleby on LinkedIn GrowCFO Mentoring Timestamps:  0:00:00 – How roles at HP, WebMD, Oracle, VMware, and SAP shaped his perspective on the modern CFO and why understanding operations is now non‑negotiable. 0:02:53 – How AI is impacting subscription and outcome-based business models, and why this forces companies to reassess their tech stacks. 0:06:27 – ZUORA's internal journey: moving beyond pilots to AI projects that materially affect performance while maintaining human oversigh. 0:11:37 – The trade-offs between building AI in-house and buying AI-native systems of record, with a focus on integration, compliance, and risk. 0:19:04 – How AI will reshape implementation timelines, roles, and the skills finance teams need, plus the efficiency and innovation upside. 0:19:19 – Todd's guidance on aligning AI and tech stack decisions with business strategy, and a cautionary example where system limitations stalled an acquisition. 0:32:00 – How Todd uses AI for research, analysis, and board materials while maintaining critical thinking and cross-checking outputs across models. 0:36:21 – A closing argument for CFOs to lead AI adoption, embrace calculated risk, and redeploy teams from repetitive work to higher-value contributions. Find out more about GrowCFO If you enjoyed this podcast, you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favorite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Spotify and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way, you never miss an episode. GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. Join GrowCFO as a free member today and participate in our regular networking events and webinars. Premium members can also access our extensive training center and CFO Digital Toolkit. You can enroll in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programs here. You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

La France dépense 80 % de son budget logiciel chez des acteurs américains. Les câbles sous-marins qui transportent nos données ? Posés à 80 % par les GAFAM. Le constat est brutal, et Henri Verdier, ex-DSI de l'État, ne mâche pas ses mots : certaines entreprises françaises sont devenues des "chauffeurs Deliveroo" du numérique. Elles utilisent des outils qu'elles ne possèdent plus, sur des infrastructures qu'elles ne contrôlent pas.Pourtant, des DSI reprennent la main : migration vers Proxmox plutôt que de continuer à payer des licences VMware en inflation permanente, construction d'infrastructures IT 100 % européennes, arbitrages qui remettent l'indépendance technologique au cœur des décisions et non plus en bas de la liste des critères.La preuve qu'un autre chemin est possible.Et surtout que le rapport de forces a changé : le statu quo coûte aujourd'hui plus cher que le changement.Du côté des pouvoirs publics, les signaux bougent aussi : observatoire de la souveraineté numérique, indice de résilience, migration du Health Data Hub vers Scaleway. Mais les contradictions restent criantes : le contrat Microsoft de l'Éducation nationale court jusqu'en 2029, et les entreprises françaises continuent de sous-financer les alternatives qu'elles appellent de leurs vœux.Entre velléités politiques, résistance au changement et premiers signaux concrets, Alain Garnier explore ce que signifie vraiment reprendre le contrôle de nos outils numériques... et pourquoi l'excuse de l'absence d'alternative ne peut plus tenir.Bon épisode

Broadcom shares fell about 13 percent after reporting results and issuing a softer than expected AI chip outlook, according to Barron's. The company sits at the center of the AI stack with custom silicon, networking chips, and VMware software, making its guidance influential across data center planning. Investors are watching hyperscaler capex pacing from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta, along with supply constraints in high bandwidth memory and advanced packaging. The selloff tightened sentiment for peers such as Nvidia, AMD, Marvell Technology, Arista Networks, and Cisco Systems. Founders should reassess cloud capacity strategies, reserved instance commitments, and multicloud options as availability and pricing may shift. Upcoming earnings and capex updates from chipmakers and hyperscalers, plus supply signals from TSMC, SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, will shape the near term outlook.Learn more on this news by visiting us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Broadcom heads into an earnings report after a four-day rally that added about $280 billion to its market value. The company supplies high-speed networking chips for AI data centers and designs custom silicon for large customers, and previously forecast roughly $11 billion in AI revenue for fiscal 2024. Broadcom closed its $69 billion purchase of VMware in November 2023 and has shifted VMware offerings to subscriptions, drawing attention to renewals and adoption. Prior guidance in December 2023 called for about $50 billion in fiscal 2024 revenue and around $30 billion in adjusted EBITDA, and a 10-for-1 stock split in July 2024 increased liquidity. Investors will watch order visibility, backlog, segment mix, margins, and comments from CEO Hock Tan and CFO Kirsten Spears on hyperscaler demand and software retention. Broader implications include AI deployment timelines, vendor selection, and total cost of ownership for hybrid infrastructure as VMware pricing evolves.Learn more on this news by visiting us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Op de Fediverse draaien meer dan 40.000 servers en bijna geen enkel bedrijf. Volgens twee K/Coens is dat geen bug, maar een feature. Randal en Jurian praten met Koen de Jonge en Coen Wesselman van Procolix. Dat hostingbedrijf doet al 25 jaar bijna alles zelf, volledig op open source, zonder Big Tech. Sinds 2024 is het voor 100% eigendom van een stichting, zodat het nooit tegen zijn eigen missie in verkocht kan worden. Waarom zo radicaal? Omdat ze te vaak zagen wat afhankelijkheid kost. Het gesprek gaat over de Fediverse als fijne plek. Over hoe de glorietijd van Twitter langzaam werd dichtgeknepen. En over de vraag: wie heeft hier eigenlijk de controle? Over Koen de Jonge Koen de Jonge is medeoprichter en directeur van Procolix (sinds 2000, gevestigd in Dordrecht) en voorzitter van de stichting die de Nederlandse Mastodon-server mastodon.nl draaiende houdt. Procolix is sinds 2024 volledig eigendom van een stichting (stewardship owned), draait 100% op open source en host onder meer De Groene Amsterdammer, The Moscow Times, petities.nl en stemwijzer.nl. In deze aflevering legt hij uit hoe de Fediverse technisch werkt en waarom hij hem geen alternatief noemt. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/koendejonge/ Mastodon: https://procolix.social/@koen Website: https://procolix.eu/over-ons Over Coen Wesselman Coen Wesselman is commercieel directeur bij Procolix en kwam daarvoor van internet.nl. Hij is sinds de begindagen van Twitter (account uit 2007) actief op sociale media en zet zich nu in om publieke diensten naar de Fediverse te krijgen. Aan tafel brengt hij vooral het commerciële en maatschappelijke perspectief in. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coenwesselman/ Mastodon: https://mastodon.nl/@wsslmn Sponsor: Red de AI Wet Kim van Sparrentak neemt het op tegen de techbro’s om duidelijke regels te maken voor kunstmatige intelligentie. Red de AI Wet besluiter je hier. In deze aflevering 0:00:00 Intro: open source, de Fediverse en niemand vertelt meer wanneer-ie naar de wc gaat0:05:00 25 jaar Procolix: hoe XenSource en VMware de keuze voor open source forceerden0:09:00 Als het zo logisch is, waarom doen niet veel meer bedrijven het dan?0:10:07 Brenno de Winter, soevereiniteit en de vraag wie er werkelijk de controle heeft0:12:50 VLC, FFmpeg en het risico van open source als kwetsbare bouwsteen0:17:08 De nadelen: tijd, integraties, recurring payments en btw voor heel Europa0:21:19 Het versnipperde landschap: X, Bluesky, Threads en de rest0:22:55 Hoe de glorietijd van Twitter werd dichtgeknepen: API’s, bots en wc-tweets0:27:01 Het panopticon: je bespied voelen door Meta, Google en zelfs WhatsApp0:36:25 De techniek uitgelegd: outboxen, abonneren en 40.000 servers die praten0:41:27 Als de brandweer alleen nog op X staat: NL-alert en de accountmuur0:44:48 Just a nice place, not an alternative: waarom er geen bedrijven op zitten0:52:57 Zelf een server hosten: opslag uitrekenen met Claude en wat het écht kost0:55:23 mastodon.nl in cijfers: 4.000 actieve gebruikers op 2 terabyte1:02:06 Moderatie en defederatie: hoe mastodon.nl een veilige plek probeert te zijn1:09:13 Luistervraag: Koen met een C of een K? (Gemini gaat tellen)1:12:16 Luistervraag: waarom Procolix in tv-torens zit, met diesel en gratis koeling1:17:44 Luistervraag van Simon: een LoRa-mesh-repeater in de toren en crisiscommunicatie Genoemd in deze aflevering mastodon.nl, Nederlandse Mastodon-server van de stichting van Procolix Procolix, open-source hostingbedrijf van de twee gasten Pixelfed, open Instagram-alternatief in de Fediverse publicvideo.nl, de PeerTube-videodienst die Procolix host Loops, korte video’s in de Fediverse, TikTok-achtig social.overheid.nl, Mastodon-server van de Nederlandse overheid T-DOSE, Technical Dutch Open Source Event, 6-7 juni in Geldrop Soevereiniteit! Hoe dan?, boek van Brenno de Winter Tips van de tafel Koen de Jonge: gebruik de officiële Mastodon-app, die remt je doomscrollen af door na een paar minuten even te pauzeren. Randal: post bewust minder, ook in besloten groepen; zet je feed op alleen-volgers en accepteer dat het saaier wordt, dat is een feature. Coen Wesselman: wil je controle zonder fulltime systeembeheerder te worden? Kies een bestaande server die bij je past in plaats van alles zelf te hosten. Koen de Jonge: nerderij voor 35 euro: bouw met een Heltec V3-printje, batterij en antenne je eigen LoRa-mesh-node om te leren hoe decentrale communicatie werkt.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Moin aus Osnabrück und herzlich Willkommen zur Folge #52 vom Update. Die Übernahme von VMware durch Broadcom zählt zu den größten Transaktionen der IT-Branche in den vergangenen Jahren. Seitdem beschäftigt viele Unternehmen die Frage, was dies für die eigene IT-Strategie bedeutet. In dieser Folge spricht Ulf mit Thomas Rehme über die aktuellen Entwicklungen rund um VMware, die Auswirkungen neuer Lizenz- und Produktmodelle sowie die Herausforderungen, vor denen viele IT-Verantwortliche aktuell stehen. Gemeinsam werfen die beiden einen Blick auf steigende Kosten, auslaufende Verträge und die Frage, in welchen Szenarien ein VMware-Exit wirklich sinnvoll ist und welche Optionen Unternehmen jetzt konkret haben. Bleiben, wechseln oder komplett neu denken?

AI infrastructure is breaking the old data center model.In this episode of Liftoff with Keith, I sit down with Lukas Gentele, CEO & Co-Founder of vCluster Labs, to unpack what it really takes to operate GPU infrastructure at scale in 2026.As AI workloads explode and neoclouds race to meet demand, Lukas and his team are building the operational backbone for modern AI clouds — from managed Kubernetes and tenant isolation to automated node provisioning and GPU lifecycle management.We discuss:Why traditional data center assumptions are collapsing under AI pressureWhat's fundamentally changed since the VMware eraHow an early partnership with CoreWeave shaped vCluster's trajectoryAnd the one mistake AI cloud operators are making right now that could hurt them over the next 18 monthsIf you care about AI infrastructure, GPU economics, hyperscaler strategy, or building category-defining platforms — this conversation is essential.Sponsor Info: We are strategic business advisors with decades of leadership experience and a proven track record of driving businesses' growth. We specialize in creating custom-tailored strategies to introduce your company, drive growth, build leadership teams, and ensure companies implement appropriate compensation programs. Our mission is to utilize our expansive network to benefit your company https://www.compass-strategic-advisors.com/ Connect with Lukas Gentele: Website: https://www.vcluster.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gentele/ Subscribe for more founder insights and hit the bell for notifications! Follow us on our channels for exclusive startup content and behind-the-scenes insights from interviews like this one. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3cFpLXfYvcUsxvsT9MwyAD?si=f5a14e779777487d Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/liftoff-with-keith-newman/id1560219589 Substack: https://keithnewman.substack.com/ Newman Media Studios: https://newmanmediastudios.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liftoffwithkeith For sponsorship inquiries, please contact: sponsorships@wherewithstudio.comFrom the Host: A special shout-out to our Great Host of the Ignite Studios: https://www.ignitegtm.com/ and Producers of AI Infra5 @Plug and Play World, HQ in Sunnyvale, CALiftoff is sponsored by a strategic consulting firm and the M&A specialists at Compass Strategic Advisors - https://www.compass-strategic-advisors.com/ and The GTM Firm - https://www.thegtmfirm.com/

Matt Langguth is back as a TAM and VMware, we have him join to give us an update and discus the enterprise platform choices with Modern Applications. VKS and risk/cost management being one of the key factors while building modern application IT strategies.

AI subscriptions are becoming as essential as internet bills - and just as expensive. The vBrownBag gang takes a hard look at the real cost of LLMs and what happens when the free ride ends. Chris, Shala, and Damian dig into the Anthropic pricing plot twist, why AI data centers consume 10x the power of traditional racks, the DeepSeek distillation controversy, and what happens when the first hit's free phase ends. You'll learn practical strategies for reducing token burn, why local models are becoming a viable cost escape hatch, how to pick the right model for the right job, and why blindly using Opus for everything is lighting money on fire. This is the unfiltered conversation every AI practitioner needs to have - before the subsidies disappear and the real bills arrive. Timestamps 0:00 Cold Open: Get These Darn Kids Off My Lawn 1:27 Chris's Big News: Leaving IBM for Six Feet Up 8:09 How Many AI Subscriptions Do You Have? 16:41 Stack Overflow Is Dead, Long Live Claude 17:12 Don't Just Blindly Copy and Paste (AI Edition) 31:00 Anthropic Gross Margin 2025: Negative 53% 35:30 When Token Costs Exceed a Junior Dev's Salary 42:02 Find the Model That Fits the Job 46:11 AI Multitasking Is a Lie (Just Like Humans) 49:05 We Are Uniquely Bad at Making Money Off This Show 53:19 Supply Chain Attacks and GitHub Actions 54:45 Did We Solve Anything? Yes. No. Maybe. 55:58 Grateful for Friends & Wrapping Up Links from the show:

Welcome to The SaaS CFO Podcast. In today's episode, Ben sits down with Spiros Xanthos, founder and CEO of Resolve AI. With a robust background in developer tools and successful exits—including acquisitions by VMware and Splunk—Spiros Xanthos brings decades of insight from both startup and corporate environments. Now leading Resolve AI, he's pioneering agentic AI solutions designed to transform how enterprises maintain and operate production software. Spiros Xanthos shares candid lessons learned from building fast-growth, VC-backed companies, insights on fundraising strategy ($150M+ raised across Seed and Series A), and how the speed of AI innovation is reshaping company culture, product development, and go-to-market approaches. If you're curious about the latest in SaaS, AI-driven incident response, scaling a technical team, or outcome-based pricing, this conversation delivers practical wisdom for founders and finance leaders navigating today's rapid AI evolution. Show Notes: 00:00 Building developer tools and acquisitions 05:44 Challenges with data overload 07:06 Challenges in managing complex systems 11:00 Early self-funding decisions 13:23 Lessons from experience in startups 17:53 Building a Strong Brand 19:33 Expanding customer support team 24:19 Defining success metrics in AI tasks 26:42 Maintaining culture while scaling 29:48 Innovating with Multi-Agent Systems Links: SaaS Fundraising Stories: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/resolve-ai-raises-125m-series-a-at-1b-valuation https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/resolve-ai-secures-35-million-in-seed-round Spiros Xanthos' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spiros/ Resolve AI's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/resolveai/ Resolve AI's Website: https://resolve.ai/ To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben's daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ Join Ben's SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray

Join us as Brian Hough (CEO & Founder of Tech Stack Playbook, AWS Hero) gets brutally honest about the state of tech hiring and what skills developers actually need to survive - and thrive - in the AI era. Brian walks through his frontline perspective on why tech layoffs aren't about skills - they're about market economics - and what that means for engineers trying to stay relevant. You'll learn which roles are actually hot right now (ML engineer, AI engineer, cloud architect, full stack dev), why companies want utility players who can build end to end, how to use social media and building in public to get quietly hired, and why the engineers who thrive will be those who can go from vision to deployed system. Brian also covers practical strategies for positioning yourself before the next wave hits, including using roadmaps as a personal curriculum and leveraging AI as a career accelerator rather than a threat. Timestamps 0:00 Cold Open 0:11 Welcome & Introduction 2:16 Taking Vibe Code to Production-Grade Systems 3:01 Brian's Update: Dog Feeding & Building Internal Tools 8:05 Mac Maximus: Building on AWS EC2 Mac 9:49 Let's Get Into the Presentation 10:10 Agenda Overview 11:11 Is Anyone Actually Working Less Because of AI? 12:52 What Happens When You Don't Understand What You Built 20:10 AWS Root Account Horror Story 23:24 The Skills You Need in 2026 24:09 Tech Scene Overview & Job Posting Divergence 26:19 What Companies Actually Want: Utility Players 28:00 Hot Roles: ML Engineer, AI Engineer, Cloud Architect 32:00 The Layoff Reality: It's Market Economics, Not Skills 40:49 Now Is the Best Time to Start a Startup 42:31 Roles & Salaries Breakdown 43:55 This Advice Is for Everyone - Not Just Job Seekers 48:01 What's Getting Replaced vs. What's Irreplaceable 49:14 How to Become an Irreplaceable Engineer 52:42 Maximum Viable Product 53:02 Building in Public & Social Media Strategy 55:32 Positioning Yourself Before the Next Wave 56:19 Brian's Closing Thoughts 57:03 AI on Your Resume = Getting Hired Fast 58:12 Using Brian's 30-Day Plan as a Claude Curriculum 59:55 Platform Engineering Hot Take 1:03:05 Wrap-up & See You in Seattle How to find Brian: https://brianhhough.com/techstackplaybook Links from the show: https://roadmap.sh/python https://roadmap.sh/ai-engineer https://roadmap.sh/machine-learning https://roadmap.sh/ai-agents

 Ramkumar Narayanan | EVP, Head of India and Philippines,AI technology Enablement,FIS  Ramkumar Narayanan is a global leader focusing on data driven, digital product innovation spanning consumer and enterprise markets. He brings a vast experience in product development, product management and product marketing having led both new market entry and turnaround of existing business areas. He has been an advisor to Enterprises, large and small, in the arena of digital transformation, product strategy and product marketing. Ram is currently EVP Technology & Services at FIS India and Philippines. Prior to joining FIS, he served in global leadership positions at VMware, eBay, Yahoo! and Microsoft. He started his career in the auto industry in US developing software solutions for design and packaging of automotive suspension and powertrain systems. Ram formerly served on the Executive Council of NASSCOM and was Chairperson NASSCOM Product/Deep Tech Council.Ramkumar Narayanan holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University, Chennai, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering & MBA from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  

“The more microservices that you have, the more agent-ready you are because you can at least start taking these components, and convert them into agent infrastructure,” says Asa Kalavade, vice president of AWS Transform to Bloomberg Intelligence senior technology analyst Anurag Rana. The pair discuss how agentic AI is accelerating legacy modernization across mainframe, NET, VMware and other enterprise workloads. Kalavade explains how AWS Transform combines deterministic methods with AI to understand old systems, generate modern code and shrink projects that once took years into far shorter timelines, while also making applications more cloud- and agent-ready. She notes that in just one year, AWS Transform has helped customers save more than 1.6 million hours of manual effort and analyze 4.5 billion lines of code as they migrate and modernize applications in the cloud.

What if faster coding is actually slowing your software delivery down? Most teams are pouring AI into the coding phase, but the real bottleneck is everywhere else.In this episode, Andrew Haschka, Field CTO at GitLab for Asia Pacific and Japan, explains why most AI strategies in software engineering are failing and what it takes to fix them. He introduces the AI paradox: teams invest heavily in AI-assisted coding, yet coding accounts for less than 20% of the software delivery lifecycle, leaving the biggest bottlenecks untouched.Andrew makes the case for intelligent orchestration — moving from isolated AI interactions to governed, end-to-end agentic flows that span planning, coding, testing, security, compliance, and release. He shares how a unified system of record forms the foundation for high-quality AI outcomes, and why fragmented tools and siloed context actively limit what AI can deliver. Drawing on real customer examples — including Ericsson's 50% faster deployments and 130,000 hours saved in six months — he shows what a holistic approach actually looks like in practice.The conversation also covers how tech leads, developers, and junior engineers need to evolve their skills in a world where AI handles routine implementation. Andrew closes with a compelling argument: in the agentic era, governance isn't just a compliance burden, it's the primary source of competitive advantage.Timestamps:(02:30) What Are the Key Responsibilities of a Field CTO at GitLab?(03:26) Why Should Organizations Govern AI Strategy Rather Than Chase the Latest Features?(06:41) Why Is an End-to-End Agentic Flow More Valuable Than Individual AI Tools?(09:39) What Is the AI Paradox and How Does Intelligent Orchestration Solve It?(14:47) How Does Shifting Focus to Requirements Quality Transform Software Delivery Outcomes?(18:19) How Has GitLab Evolved Beyond CI/CD Into a Full End-to-End Delivery Platform?(20:20) What Should Software Teams Prioritize Beyond Coding in the AI Era?(24:14) How Do Organizational Silos Create a Capability Threshold for AI Adoption?(27:49) What Practical Strategies Can Organizations Use to Break Down Internal Silos?(30:58) How Did Ericsson Achieve 50% Faster Deployments and Save 130,000 Hours With GitLab?(33:07) How Should Software Developers Evolve in the Age of AI Agents?(36:26) How Is the Tech Lead Role Evolving in a Hybrid Human-AI Team?(39:22) How Can Junior Developers Keep Up With the Rapid Shift in Industry Expectations?(42:40) Why Do 79% of Singapore DevSecOps Practitioners Believe AI Will Create More Jobs?(45:27) Why Are Companies Reducing Staff Despite the Growing Demand for Software?(48:34) What Are the Most Common Pitfalls When Implementing Agentic Workflows?(52:29) What Practical Steps Should Engineering Leaders Take to Govern AI Responsibly?(55:13) Why Should Engineering Leaders Build an AI Strategy Before Choosing Technology?(57:15) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom_____Andrew Haschka's BioAndrew Haschka serves as Field CTO for Asia Pacific & Japan at GitLab, where he acts as a trusted strategic advisor to enterprise customers and partners navigating complex technology transformation. With over 20 years of experience spanning software delivery, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and organisational transformation, Andrew brings a rare combination of technical depth and executive-level counsel to the organisations he works with.Prior to GitLab, Andrew held senior leadership roles across APAC at Google and VMware, and has led large-scale digital transformation programmes for organisations including Downer, IBM, Jones Lang LaSalle, Thomson Reuters, Optus, and across the Fiji and Pacific Islands.Follow Andrew:LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/andrewhaschkaLike this episode?Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/258.Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.Buy me a coffee or become a patron.

Christopher Carter is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Approyo, a Wisconsin-based managed services company that was one of the first to put SAP systems into the cloud (back in 2002). He founded Approyo in December 2013 to provide full SAP technology services with extensive capabilities in hosting, managing, upgrading, and migrating.Summary of PodcastKey TakeawaysData Quality is the AI Blocker: AI's value is limited by the "crap in, crap out" problem. Carter advises a mandatory data cleansing project before any AI initiative, as AI tools alone are insufficient and require human oversight.Human-in-the-Loop Governance: Carter advocates for a human-in-the-loop for all critical AI processes to prevent compounding errors. He criticized McKinsey's reported plan for 30,000 autonomous bots, arguing they should be tools to augment human employees, not replacements.Mugatu AI Prevents Data Leaks: Mugatu AI is an AI security tool that uses predictive analytics and homomorphic encryption to prevent accidental data leaks. It flags risky emails (e.g., with sensitive spreadsheets) and suggests secure alternatives like shared links.Early Cloud Adoption: Carter was an early pioneer in virtualising SAP systems on VMware and Azure, which initially met with corporate resistance but ultimately proved to be a cost-saving, flexible innovation for the SAP ecosystem.The "Crap In, Crap Out" ProblemCarter's core message: AI's effectiveness is directly tied to data quality.Problem: Legacy systems contain decades of "dirty data" from acquisitions, stagnant records, and inconsistent formats.Example: One client had 27 years of uncleansed EDI data.Example: Another client's acquisitions created duplicate part numbers (e.g., 7 different codes for the same part).Solution: A mandatory data cleansing project before any AI initiative.AI tools can assist with scraping and matching, but human oversight is essential for validation.The goal is a human-AI partnership to ensure data accuracy.Human-in-the-Loop GovernanceCarter advocates for a human-in-the-loop for all critical AI processes to prevent compounding errors.Critique of McKinsey's Bot Strategy: Carter questioned McKinsey's reported plan for 30,000 autonomous bots, arguing they should be tools to augment human employees, not replacements.Relevance to Finance (FP&A): Clean data and human-AI collaboration enable rapid scenario planning (e.g., 4 forecasts instead of 1), a major game-changer for finance teams.Mugatu AI: Preventing Accidental Data LeaksMugatu AI is an AI security tool named after the villain in the movie Zoolander.Function: Prevents accidental data leaks by flagging risky outbound emails.Mechanism: Uses predictive analytics and homomorphic encryption to analyse content in milliseconds.User Feedback: Provides a "security score" (0-100) and suggests secure alternatives (e.g., a shared link instead of an attachment).Status: 14,794 end-users across 3 major corporations; acquisition interest from companies like NVIDIA.Career as a Tech InnovatorCarter's career is marked by early adoption of disruptive tech, often ahead of corporate policy.SAP & Cloud Virtualisation:Pioneered virtualising SAP systems on VMware and later on Azure.This innovation initially met with resistance from SAP executives, who had not yet formalised a partnership with VMware.Re-engagement with SAP:After a negative client experience, Carter left the SAP ecosystem.A conversation with a friend (SAP's VP of Oil & Gas) over a bottle of Macallan scotch introduced him to SAP HANA, reigniting his interest.Carrick Rangers FC:A minority owner of the Northern Ireland Premier League football club.His involvement stems from a lifelong passion for soccer, including a past role as VP of Sales/Marketing for a professional team. The Next 100 Days Podcast Co-HostsGraham ArrowsmithGraham founded Finely Fettled in 2014 to provide data from The UK High Net Worth Database to marketers targeting affluent and high-net-worth customers. He's the founder of MicroYES, a Partner for MeclabsAI, creating lead generation AI Agents & Workflows and introducing the MeclabsAI Platform. Graham also provides an Answer Engine Optimisation solution to get your website in shape to be found by LLMs.Kevin ApplebyKevin specialises in finance transformation and implementing business change. He's the COO of GrowCFO, which provides both community and CPD-accredited training designed to grow the next generation of finance leaders. You can find Kevin on LinkedIn and at kevinappleby.com

Andrew Brown (ExamPro) joins the vBrownBag crew to talk Gen AI skills, bootcamps, and whether vibe coding has made "learning to code" irrelevant.

AWS Hero Stephen Sennett joins the vBrownBag crew to argue that foundational knowledge matters more now, not less.

Managing Servers, and Kubernetes across on-prem, and multiple clouds, can quickly become complex, especially when you're juggling multiple tools. In this video, we explore how Azure Arc simplifies hybrid and multi-cloud operations by providing a single, consistent control plane for managing your entire infrastructure across Linux and Windows, on-prem, in Azure, or in any cloud. Once connected, you can patch Windows and Linux together with Azure Update Manager, enforce CIS benchmarks and Azure Security Baselines through Azure Policy, and pull consistent inventory, tags, and RBAC across your whole estate. Auto-recover unbootable Windows Server 2025 machines with Quick Machine Recovery, audit and configure WinRE using built-in Azure Policy. Run your virtual machines as Azure Virtual Desktop session hosts on Nutanix, VMware, Hyper-V, or using physical Windows hardware. Satya Vel, Azure Arc Principal Group PDM Manager (https://x.com/satya_vel) shares how to make Azure your operational standard for every workload, anywhere it runs. Learn more about Azure Arc at https://aka.ms/AzureArcServer, or join the community at https://aka.ms/ArcServerForumSignup ► QUICK LINKS: 00:00 - Azure Arc in hybrid environments 00:46 - Transitioning to Azure Arc 02:35 - Unified management 03:43 - How to bring in servers and containers 04:48 - Inventory management 05:30 - Patching 06:48 - Auto-manage future updates 08:25 - One-time update 09:32 - Configuration in a hybrid environment 11:05 - Auditing Windows machines 11:34 - Microsoft Defender for Cloud 13:06 - Desktop virtualization 13:51 - Wrap up  ► Link References For more information go to https://aka.ms/AzureArc ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft's official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. • Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries • Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog • Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: • Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics • Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ • Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ • Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics

The second of three episodes recorded at Google Cloud NEXT, Las Vegas in partnership with Kyndryl where we explore how enterprises are moving from AI experimentation to real, scaled impact, across infrastructure, applications, customer experience and workforce transformation. Host Russell Goldsmith was joined by: 1/ Anshu Kak, Global Vice President Google Cloud, Kyndryl 2/ Rajiv Batra, Director, Head of GSI Partnerships, Google 3/ Kieren Johnson, Head of IT, Ocado Retail 4/ Kimberly Agin, Head of Business Performance and Enablement, KeyBank 5/ Mauro Flores, EVP of Data Democratisation, Virgin Media O2 6/ Ryan Henry, Director, Infrastructure and Support, Randstad US Anshu Kak, Global Vice President, Google Cloud at Kyndryl, and Rajiv Batra, Director & Head of GSI Partnerships at Google, open the episode with a deep dive into the shift from “trying AI” to building agentic operating systems. They explain how Google and Kyndryl's joint plays, innovate, modernise, secure, help enterprises adopt agentic AI frameworks, modernise VMware and mainframe estates, and navigate sovereignty with Google Distributed Cloud. Kieren Johnson, Head of IT at Ocado Retail, reflects on his panel about hyper‑personalised CX. He shares why personalisation at scale requires sensitivity to human behaviour, including the unexpected discovery that drivers preferred speaking to human advisors over voice bots. Kimberly Agin, Head of Business Performance & Enablement at KeyBank, discusses how the bank has built the foundations for agentic CX in the contact centre. She outlines how human and non‑human agents work in tandem, how KeyBank uses data to contain 70% of digital queries, and why natural‑language routing is transforming the IVR experience. Mauro Flores, EVP of Data Democratisation at Virgin Media O2, explains how the organisation is using AI to unlock value from its vast data estate, accelerate decision‑making and empower teams with self‑serve insights. Ryan Henry, Director of Infrastructure & Support at Randstad US, brings a workforce‑technology perspective, sharing how agentic AI is reshaping talent operations, support models and employee experience. A rich, fast‑moving episode capturing how global enterprises are modernising infrastructure, rethinking customer engagement, and preparing their people and platforms for the agentic AI era.

Bob and Eric are at VMug Connect in Minneapolis talking about the event and VMware{code} lab which was running LLMs on ESXi with GPU, the good, bad and the ugly when running models locally.

Broadcom continues to expand its role as a major contributor to cloud-native open source, particularly within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem. Its recent donation of Velero—originally developed by VMware—to the CNCF Sandbox reflects a strategic move to foster broader community trust and collaboration. By shifting governance away from vendor control, Broadcom aims to position Velero as a truly community-driven data protection standard for Kubernetes environments, encouraging wider adoption and contribution.  At the same time, the company is reinforcing its position as a full-stack Kubernetes provider across both cloud-native and private cloud environments. Despite Kubernetes' dominance, many organizations still struggle with its complexity. Broadcom is addressing this by focusing on lifecycle management, long-term support, and deep integration with existing infrastructure like vSphere.  In a podcast recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026, Dilpreet Bindra emphasized that open source success comes not just from code contributions, but also from relinquishing control to empower the broader ecosystem and drive sustainable innovation.  Learn more from The New Stack about the latest developments around Velero:  Broadcom donates Velero to CNCF — and it could reshape how Kubernetes users handle backup and disaster recovery  How AI Search Is Supporting Artistic Freedom  Join our community of newsletter subscribers to stay on top of the news and at the top of your game. 

This episode is a wide-ranging conversation between Jacob and Swyx (Shawn Wang), an AI engineer, podcaster, and now operator at Cognition, who sits at a uniquely informed intersection of builder, investor, and community organizer in the AI world. The two cover the current state of the AI engineering zeitgeist: from the stabilization of agent infrastructure and the surprising stickiness of Claude Code, to the competitive dynamics of the AI coding wars, the rise of open models, the threat to traditional SaaS, and the frontier questions around world models, memory, and what it actually means for AI to "understand" something. The episode is grounded in practitioner-level candor, with Swyx offering real takes from running AIE conferences, working inside Cognition, and thinking deeply about what the next wave of AI-native software development looks like.   (0:00) Intro (1:17) What the Top AI Engineers Are Thinking About (2:13) Has AI Infra Finally Stabilized? (6:39) When Does Doing RL In-House Make Sense? (11:26) Why Selling Dev Tools to Agents is Different (17:18) AI Coding Wars (29:04) Consumer AI Plateau (30:22) Codex vs Claude Code (44:52) Future of Open Models   With your co-hosts:  @jacobeffron  - Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health  @patrickachase  - Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn  @ericabrescia  - Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq'd by VMWare)  @jordan_segall  - Partner at Redpoint

Vercel Supply-Chain Breach via AI Tool, Meta Sued Over Scam Ads, and Ransomware Surges with "The Gentleman" David Shipley covers new details on the Vercel breach, which began when an employee used the third-party AI tool Context AI; after Context AI was breached, attackers leveraged Google OAuth access to pivot into Vercel systems and enumerate unencrypted "non-sensitive" environment variables that contained usable secrets, with a hacker claiming Vercel data and source code and demanding $2M, while Vercel says Next.js and other open-source projects are safe and shares Google OAuth indicators of compromise. The episode also discusses a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging Meta misled users about scam ads and profited from them, noting Meta's claim it removed 159M scam ads and shut down nearly 11M criminal accounts. Finally, it cites ZeroFox data showing ransomware incidents holding steady at 2,059 in Q1 2026 and highlights Check Point research indicating "The Gentleman" has a much larger victim footprint and uses tactics like disabling Defender, re-enabling SMB1, abusing GPO, and targeting VMware environments. Cybersecurity Today would like to thank Meter for their support in bringing you this podcast. Meter delivers a complete networking stack, wired, wireless and cellular in one integrated solution that's built for performance and scale.  You can find them at Meter.com/cst 00:00 Headlines and Sponsor 00:46 Vercel AI Supply Chain Breach 02:50 Meta Sued Over Scam Ads 04:55 Ransomware Numbers Q1 2026 06:46 Gentlemen Crew Exposed 08:56 Wrap Up and Thanks 09:42 Sponsor Message Meter

Join us for Part 1 of a 3-part series as Du'An Lightfoot (Senior AI Engineer at Akamai) breaks down everything you need to know to get started running AI models locally on your own hardware. Du'An walks through the fundamentals of local AI - from understanding why you'd want to run models privately (data ownership, air-gapped environments, IP protection) to the hardware concepts that make it possible. You'll learn how inference actually works under the hood, why GPUs matter for AI workloads, how to choose and quantize models for your hardware, and how to get up and running with tools like Ollama. This is Part 1 of a 3-part series - future episodes cover serving models via API and distributing inference at the edge with Kubernetes. Timestamps 0:00 Cold Open: Why Local AI? 0:26 Welcome & Introduction 1:30 Following Up on the Frontier Models Episode 2:25 Du'An's Background & AI Inference at Akamai 3:49 What If You Wanted to Own Your Data? 5:00 Local AI vs Cloud AI: A Different Layer of the Stack 5:47 Why GPUs Matter: The Nvidia Story 7:03 CPU vs GPU: Serial vs Parallel Processing 8:28 Model Weights & Quantization Explained 12:45 Choosing the Right Model for Your Hardware 18:22 Getting Started with Ollama 24:16 Live Demo: Running Your First Local Model 30:41 Hardware Recommendations & Requirements 36:52 Hugging Face & Finding Models 42:18 Performance Tips & Benchmarking 48:35 Use Cases: When to Go Local vs Cloud 1:01:30 Live Demo: Claude Put-in-Work Repo 1:11:17 Bonus: Building a Deck with Co-work Live 1:16:36 Preview: Episodes 2 & 3 1:17:17 Wrap-up How to find Du'An: https://www.duanlightfoot.com/ https://github.com/labeveryday/ Links from the show: https://ollama.com/ https://apxml.com/ https://localllm.in/ https://huggingface.co/ https://github.com/labeveryday/claude-put-in-work https://claude.ai/

Join us as Kira Intrator (MIT-trained urban planner, systems thinker, and social impact technologist based in Geneva) makes the case that AI for Good isn't failing because of models - it's failing because of systems. Kira walks through why so many AI pilots never reach deployment, drawing on her experience building tools scaled across 9,000 users, three ministries, and six countries in Central Asia. You'll learn the five factors that kill AI projects in the development sector, why 80% of clinical AI models are trained on data that can't be deployed outside Western contexts, and what the $2.6 trillion opportunity in developing markets actually requires to unlock. This episode is equal parts systems thinking masterclass and call to action - a rare perspective from someone who has moved AI from prototype to production in places most tech professionals never consider. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 2:47 Kira's Background: MIT, Geneva, Central Asia 3:54 The Core Thesis: It's About Systems, Not Models 5:20 AI is Our Generation's Revolution 6:35 The $2.6 Trillion Opportunity 7:17 The 80% Western Data Problem 8:20 Why AI Projects Fail in Development: 5 Factors 9:28 Systems Mismatch & Low-Bandwidth Environments 9:52 Built for Pilot vs. Built for Deployment 10:29 Ownership, Economics & Sustainability 18:22 Real-World Case Studies 24:16 What Actually Works: Levers for Scale 30:41 The Role of Tech Companies & Foundations 33:39 Crystal Ball: Merging the Two Universes 35:01 A Call to Action 38:48 Wrap-up How to find Kira: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiraintrator/ Links from the show: Infrastructure & Platforms Anthropic Beneficial Deployments: https://www.anthropic.com/ Google Research Global South Labs: https://research.google/ Lelapa AI: https://lelapa.ai/ Microsoft AI for Good: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-good OpenAI Foundation: https://openai.com/ Research & Innovation Hubs Data Science Africa: https://www.datascienceafrica.org/ Masakhane: https://www.masakhane.io/ Stanford HAI: https://hai.stanford.edu/ Wadhwani AI: https://www.wadhwaniai.org/ Global Governance & Policy OECD AI Observatory: https://oecd.ai/ UNICEF Office of Innovation: https://www.unicef.org/innovation/ World Health Organization AI: https://www.who.int/ Funders & Philanthropies Gates Foundation: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ Patrick J. McGovern Foundation: https://www.mcgovern.org/ Conferences AI for Good Global Summit (July 7-10, 2026 - Geneva): https://aiforgood.itu.int/ Data Science Africa 2026 (July 20-24 - Kampala, Uganda): https://www.datascienceafrica.org/ Deep Learning Indaba 2026 (August 2-7 - Lagos, Nigeria): https://deeplearningindaba.com/

After a six-week hiatus spent between reserve duty and bomb shelters, Beyond the Code is back with Avishay Yanai, co-founder and CEO of Soda Labs. In this episode, Yitzy sits down with one of Israel's top cryptography minds to unpack the founder journey from academia and VMware to building a startup at the frontier of blockchain privacy. They discuss why most on-chain privacy tools are either fully transparent or regulatorily radioactive, and how Soda Labs is trying to build something different: privacy that institutions can actually use. Avishay explains the technical and commercial thinking behind “compliant privacy,” why they passed on the crowded MPC wallet space, and what it really feels like to go from researcher to startup CEO.

Join us as Hiroko Nishimura (AWS Hero, LinkedIn Learning Instructor, and author of AWS for Non-Engineers) reflects on seven years of teaching cloud to 700,000 learners - what she's learned about learning, and how AWS education has changed. Hiroko walks through the evolution of AWS certification content, what changed when the Cloud Practitioner exam shifted focus, and her honest take on the industry's move away from non-engineer focused learning. You'll hear her best advice for anyone wanting to build a career in tech through content creation, why you only need to be 1-2 steps ahead to start teaching others, and how community has shaped her entire journey. This episode is equal parts AWS education deep dive and career inspiration - whether you're studying for your first cert or wondering how to break into the cloud community, Hiroko's 700,000-learner perspective is exactly what you need to hear. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 1:42 How We Get to 700,000 Learners 3:37 The 22 Courses Explained 6:15 How AWS Cloud Practitioner Has Changed 7:31 The Shift Away from Non-Engineer Focus 12:45 What Actually Changed in the Exam Content 18:22 Hiroko's Teaching Philosophy 24:16 How AI Has Changed the Learning Landscape 30:41 Community Building & AWS Heroes 35:00 Content Creation as a Career Strategy 39:02 Key Takeaways: You Only Need to Be 1-2 Steps Ahead 41:08 The Origin Story: 700,000 Learners from One Study Blog 44:02 Wrap-up & Where to Find Hiroko How to find Hiroko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hirokonishimura/ https://hirokonishimura.com/ https://hiroko.io/ Links from the show:

Episode 173: Steve Cafiero & The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Business Relationships by Susan McPhersonAbout SteveSteve Cafiero is founder and managing partner of TideShift Partners, where he works with senior leaders to scale their businesses across leadership strategy, organizational alignment, talent development, and change management. Steve clients include executives from major corporations including SAP, AT&T, Gartner, Amazon, Forrester, Calvin Klein, VMware, Broadcom, AETNA, UBS, and several privately held companies. Steve's professional experience includes positions at SAP, Gartner, AT&T, and privately held financial services firms. He holds a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York, and an MBA from PACE University. He and his wife Kim have been active members of the Wilton community for over thirty years. They have two grown daughters, and enjoy traveling, entertaining, and spending time with family and friends.Conversation HighlightsThe transition from traditional networking to connection building for deeper relationshipsKey takeaways from The Lost Art of Connecting by Susan McPhersonHow past experiences, including family stories, shape our approach to leadership and connectionThe significance of vulnerability, trust, and intentionality in professional relationshipsPractical strategies: gather, ask, do—ethical engagement over timeThe role of emotional bank accounts and being present in conversationsHow introversion and extroversion influence our ability to connectLeadership styles rooted in servant leadership and active listeningBuilding community through hosting and expanding networks beyond immediate contactsThe importance of timing and momentum in expanding influenceThe MAIN QUESTION underlying my conversation with Steve is, In this age of disconnection, how are you intentional about how you show up for others to connect with and understand them?Find SteveWebsite: www.tideshiftpartners.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-cafieroEmail: scafiero@tideshiftpartners.comLinkedIn - Full Podcast Article: CHAPTERS00:00 - The Book Leads Podcast - Steve Cafiero00:58- Introduction & Bio02:49 - Who are you today? Can you provide more information about your work?06:00 - How did your path into your career look like, and what did it look like up until now?22:28 - How does the work you're doing today reconcile to who you were as a child?26:03 - What is your superpower?26:50 - Steve's ability to connect with others00:00 - What does leadership mean to you?36:55 - Can you introduce us to the book we're discussing?50:26 - What's changed in you in the process of writing this book?01:03:45 - What are you up to these days? (A way for guests to share and market their projects and work.)This series has become my Masterclass In Humanity. I'd love for you to join me and see what you take away from these conversations.Learn more about The Book Leads and listen to past episodes:Watch on YouTubeListen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsRead About The Book Leads – Blog PostFor more great content, check out the catalog for my newsletter Last Week's Leadership Lessons, if you haven't already!

What does it take to become a “rockstar” CFO in the age of AI? Today, Zane Rowe, CFO of Workday, shares lessons from a career spanning global airlines, Apple, EMC, and VMware—to leading finance at one of the world's most influential enterprise software companies. From navigating generative AI in the finance function to building a true CEO–CFO partnership, Rowe breaks down how modern financial leadership is evolving. He reveals why today's CFO must think beyond accounting, how AI is reshaping decision-making, and what the next generation of finance leaders must do to stay ahead. If you want insight into the future of financial strategy, enterprise AI, and what separates good CFOs from great ones, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, sits down with Jacob to cover the full arc of where AI research stands today and where it's headed. The conversation spans the explosive growth of coding agents and what it signals about near-term AI capability, the use of math and physics benchmarks as proxies for general intelligence, how reinforcement learning is being extended beyond easily-verified domains toward longer-horizon tasks, and what it means to run a research organization at the precise moment the models themselves are starting to accelerate the research. Jakub shares a candid take on the competitive landscape, why chain-of-thought monitoring is one of the most promising tools in the alignment toolkit, and — with unusual directness — why the concentration of power enabled by highly automated AI organizations is a societal problem that doesn't yet have an obvious solution.   (0:00) Intro (1:53) Research Intern Capability Timelines (4:59) Math Breakthroughs (7:59) RL Beyond Verifiable Tasks (12:32) RL vs In-Context (19:01) Allocating Compute Internally (28:18) AI for Science (31:40) Pattern Matching (33:23) Solving the Hardest Math Problems (37:40) Chain of Thought Monitoring (44:33) Generalization and Value Alignment in Models (47:57) Inside OpenAI (51:55) Quickfire   With your co-hosts:  @jacobeffron  - Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health  @patrickachase  - Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn  @ericabrescia  - Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq'd by VMWare)  @jordan_segall  - Partner at Redpoint

Join us as Josh and Adriana call BS on the oversimplified vendor neutrality narrative - because switching observability vendors isn't magic, even with OpenTelemetry. Josh and Adriana walk through the hard truths about OTel vendor neutrality using their favorite analogy: switching from iOS to Android because vCard exists. Sure, your contacts will move, but what about everything else? You'll learn what vendor neutrality actually means in production, why vendor-neutral instrumentation still matters (your code artifacts survive tool changes), the real challenges and pitfalls of switching vendors, and best practices to make the process as pain-free as possible. This episode cuts through the hype with honest talk about what works, what doesn't, and why OpenTelemetry is still valuable even when it's not a magic wand. Timestamps 0:00 Welcome & Introduction 3:32 Getting Into the Talk 4:28 Origin Story: From LinkedIn Post to Full Presentation 5:35 Standards We Love: USB-C, Stop Signs, McDonald's 8:00 The No Name Brand Analogy 12:45 What Vendor Neutrality Actually Means 18:22 The iOS to Android / vCard Comparison 24:16 What You Lose When Switching Vendors 30:41 Why Vendor-Neutral Instrumentation Matters 36:52 Real Challenges & Pitfalls 42:18 Best Practices for Switching 46:17 Shameless Self-Promotion & Resources 49:03 Wrap-up How to find Josh & Adriana: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamlee/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianavillela/ Links from the show: https://opentelemetry.io/

Serval is one of the fastest-growing AI-native enterprise software companies right now, and this episode is a rare inside look at the deliberate architectural, go-to-market, and talent decisions behind that growth. Jake Stauch breaks down why he made the contrarian bet to build a full system of record rather than layer on top of existing tools, why ITSM is more vulnerable to AI disruption than CRM, ERP, or HRIS, and how Serval is winning Fortune 500 deals against a $14B incumbent with a fraction of the resources. Beyond the product, Jake gets into the organizational decisions that underpin Serval's velocity — why recruiting is the #1 job of every employee, how to prevent talent bar decay as you scale from 8 to 200 people, and how the role of the manager is shifting as ICs own more scope than ever. Threading it all together is a founder's honest account of what it means to build a horizontal software company when the models are improving, the infrastructure is shifting, and the window to displace a legacy incumbent is open but won't stay open forever.   (0:00) Intro (1:25) What is Serval? (4:51) Early Doubts and Strategy (6:34) AI Tailwinds in ITSM (8:04) Competing with ServiceNow (9:41) Why ITSM Is Vulnerable (11:52) Automation via Codegen (16:27) Critical Guardrails (28:32) Internal Support Complexity (30:24) Hiring as the Moat (31:44) Dream Team Recruiting (33:49) Managers vs Super ICs (36:44) Junior Engineers and AI Native Workflows (43:13) Quickfire   With your co-hosts:  @jacobeffron  - Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health  @patrickachase  - Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn  @ericabrescia  - Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq'd by VMWare)  @jordan_segall  - Partner at Redpoint

Pat Gelsinger is the former CEO of Intel and longtime Silicon Valley leader.  He joins Auren to unpack the forces reshaping technology, geopolitics and leadership.After more than 30 years at Intel (including serving as its first CTO) and nearly a decade as CEO of VMware, Pat now sits at the intersection of deep tech and purpose-driven innovation as executive chair and head of technology at Gloo and general partner at Playground Global.In this episode of Summation, Pat and Auren discuss:Why the US now imports more from Taiwan than from China -- and what that means for national securityThe case for a U.S. sovereign wealth fund to counter China's tech investments in semiconductors, energy, and rare earth mineralsWhat happened when Intel gave $70B back to shareholders instead of building fabs, and why tech companies need technologist CEOsAndy Grove's 35-year mentoring relationship with Pat, starting with a cold call that changed his careerYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Pat Gelsinger on X at @PGelsinger

Margin volatility driven by operational complexity and governance gaps is reshaping the economic landscape for MSPs and IT service providers. Evidence shows that the effectiveness of automation now depends less on deployment volume and more on whether it reduces complexity and enforces coherence across client environments, as highlighted by Speaker A referencing reports from TechCentral, Avik, and vendors such as VMware, Broadcom, Microsoft, and Apple. The key structural shift is that clients and technology vendors are consolidating platforms and workflows to restore operational clarity, which fundamentally alters how MSPs structure service offerings and pricing. The most consequential development cited is Broadcom's transition of VMware users toward Cloud Foundation 9, with half of surveyed organizations (n=450 across 14 countries, each with 500+ employees) stating an intent to reduce their VMware footprint by 2028 in response to bundled offerings deemed too costly or complex, according to The Register. This reduction in adoption signals accelerated migration efforts, downsizing of virtual machine fleets, and movement toward alternative platforms, indicating margin pressure and uncertainty for MSPs supporting heterogeneous environments. Supporting developments reinforce this shift. Apple's introduction of Apple Business—a unified platform encompassing device management, email, calendar, directory services, and marketing tools—demonstrates a move toward environments with fewer moving parts and less operational ambiguity. Microsoft's Copilot Cowork for Microsoft 365 similarly embeds AI directly within core workflows, with enterprise guardrails and coherence at its center, rather than simply layering on new tools. Reports from Avik and Forrester underscore persistent gaps between leadership intent and frontline capability, especially around fragmented visibility and unaddressed governance requirements, amplifying the consequences of unmanaged complexity and AI misalignment . For MSPs and technology leaders, the operational takeaway is a need to prioritize the reduction of client environment complexity and establish explicit controls around AI and automation. Auditing fixed-fee agreements for AI work clauses, defining coverage for remediation and exception handling, and building enforceable governance layers are critical to avoid absorbing unpriced risk and free labor. Stack simplification is now paramount, since automation on top of complexity increases volatility and cost. Service contracts are trending toward bifurcation, with standardized platform offerings at lower rates and non-standard exception handling priced separately, shifting where profit and risk reside. 00:00 Consolidation Wave 03:08 Coherence Gap 04:59 Margin Leak 08:14 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  ScalePad Zero Networks 

In this episode of Long Blue Leadership, Joel “Thor” Neeb '99 explains this simple framework. “Yes” builds experience. “No” protects focus and time. SUMMARY In this episode of Long Blue Leadership, Joel Neeb '99 explains this simple framework. Yes builds experience. No protects focus and time. Leadership is knowing when to shift.   SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN  |  FACEBOOK   JOEL'S TOP 10 LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS 1. Time is your most finite — and most misused — resource. Facing mortality created instant clarity: Stop letting others waste your time. You must actively protect time to focus on what matters most. 2. Regret comes from inaction — not failure. Neeb didn't regret failures — he regretted not trying things that were uncomfortable. Leadership growth = bias toward action in uncertainty. 3. Imposter syndrome + growth mindset = a leadership superpower — “I don't belong here… yet” paired with effort fuels growth. Elite teams are full of people quietly thinking the same thing — and pushing forward anyway. 4. Reinvention is not optional — it's continuous. You don't “transition” to a new role — you start over from scratch. The best leaders willingly become beginners again. 5. Comfort is the enemy of growth. When things become easy, growth stops. Leaders must intentionally seek discomfort, not avoid it. 6. Elite teams + inspiring mission = peak human performance The most meaningful work comes from: Being on a team where you feel you must earn your place and pursuing a mission bigger than yourself. This combination drives purpose and performance. 7. Say yes early in life, say no later in life. Under 35: Say yes to everything → build capability through exposure. Over 35: Say no to almost everything that doesn't align with your goals → protect focus. Leadership maturity = ruthless prioritization. 8. The future belongs to those who disrupt themselves first. AI (and any disruption) rewards those who move early. “Stay slightly ahead of the rate of change” = competitive advantage. 9. AI should be a thought partner in everything; not a replacement but an accelerator. Leaders who integrate AI into daily workflows will move exponentially faster. 10. Think in five-year transformations, not three-month wins. People overestimate short-term output and underestimate long-term transformation. Leadership requires a bold long-term vision and daily actions from that vision.   CHAPTERS 00:00:00 — Introduction: From Fighter Pilot to CEO-Level Leadership 00:00:49 — Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis: The Moment That Changed Everything 00:03:48 — Clarity on Time, Regret, and What Truly Matters 00:07:02 — Reinventing Yourself: Leaving the Military & Starting Over 00:10:04 — Growth Mindset, Imposter Syndrome & Elite Teams 00:13:38 — Learning the Language of Business 00:17:14 — AI Is Disrupting Everything: What Leaders Must Know 00:22:46 — Using AI as a Thought Partner to Move Faster 00:24:58 — Say Yes Early, Say No Later: Mastering Your Time 00:35:06 — Big Goals, Long-Term Thinking & Final Leadership Lessons 00:37:22 — Joel's Big Audacious Goal: Leading Through AI Disruption 00:42:47 — Using AI to Learn Faster (Even While Working Out) 00:48:14 — Closing Thoughts and Key Takeaways   ABOUT JOEL BIO Joel "Thor" Neeb '99 is a recognized business leader in the software-as-a-service (SAAS) industry. He most recently served as vice president of execution and transformation at VMware, where he led a cultural and operating model transformation for the 40,000-person company as well as helped launch VMware's AI roadmap and strategy. Prior to VMware, he served as chief executive officer at Afterburner Inc., where he led more than 100 elite professionals, including former fighter pilots, Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers, in helping global organizations achieve breakthrough performance. Neeb is a former United States Air Force F-15 mission commander. He was the tactical leader of 300 of the most senior combat pilots in the U.S. Air Force and oversaw the execution of a $150-million-per-year flight program.   CONNECT WITH JOEL LINKEDIN  |  8x8   CONNECT WITH THE LONG BLUE LINE PODCAST NETWORK TEAM Ted Robertson | Producer and Editor:  Ted.Robertson@USAFA.org Send your feedback or nominate a guest: socialmedia@usafa.org   Ryan Hall | Director:  Ryan.Hall@USAFA.org  Bryan Grossman | Copy Editor:  Bryan.Grossman@USAFA.org Wyatt Hornsby | Executive Producer:  Wyatt.Hornsby@USAFA.org     ALL PAST LBL EPISODES  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     FULL TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS: Guest, Joel "Thor" Neeb '99 | Host, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz '99   Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:11 Joel, my friend, welcome to Long Blue Leadership.   Joel Neeb 0:13 Thank you very much. So glad to chat with you.   Col. Naviere Walkewicz 0:15 Oh gosh. Well, we are excited for this. It's going to be just a filled conversation of incredible insights, and you have so much to share. And I think what's really special about this is how we're going to touch into AI, because it is relevant, and it's everywhere now, but I actually want to dial it back first to a very specific moment in time, and it's probably an area that has really transformed your life, right? So you went through stage 4 cancer. I mean, not many people can say that they have gone through that and survived it, and I think it also really impacted others in your family. Can you just share a little bit about your story? Joel Neeb 0:49 Yeah, so back in 2010 I was flying, on top of the world. I was going through the interview process for the Air Force Thunderbirds, and I found out, out of nowhere, that I had a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. So within just a couple of weeks, I went from feeling like I was at the peak of good health to now being told that I had about 18 months to live and a 15% chance to live five years. And those would be a pretty gruesome five years if I did make it that far. And so that was the new reality that I had to contend with. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 1:19 I can't even imagine that. I mean, just… Was there some kind of indication, like, you went in and you were checked up and they found this? I mean, it just wow, just boom. Joel Neeb 1:30 You know, it's funny. I actually have to credit the flying role with most likely diagnosing and solving this for me early. Because when I would fly and I'd have my G suit on my abdomen, it would inflate against me when I pulled Gs, and it was a pain that I was experienced on the right side of my abdomen that right around my appendix. On a scale of one to 10, it was like a two. So nothing big, but big enough that when I went and saw the flight surgeon for my annual physical, I mentioned it, and I said, I'm sure it's nothing, but they did the right thing, and did some quick tests and ultrasound on that area and some MRI work, and they were able to very quickly determine that a big tumor grown in that spot. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 2:09 Wow. Well, I guess right there, just a lesson off the bat is listen to your body. You know your body, and if something doesn't feel right, seem right, you know, say something and get it checked out.   Joel Neeb 2:18 That's exactly right.   Col. Naviere Walkewicz 2:19 Oh, my goodness. OK, so you got that diagnosis. You're sitting there with that information. How do you process that? What is the conversation with your wife, you know, what's the next step when you're given some kind of timeline like that? Joel Neeb 2:34 Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I would have thought having gone through like fighter pilot training and even the Air Force Academy, and, you know, all the things that build resilience in life, that I would have felt more prepared for that moment. In other words, that I would have felt more prepared than the average individual. But I did not. I felt, I felt very much like I was in a catastrophe from which I couldn't see how to get through the day to day activities. I was a zombie around the house and it really relied on my wife and my family stepping in to help me. And so for a good couple months, it's was just kind of inconsolable and, you know, I always like to say it was, I would wake up and go through my day very, very tired because I didn't sleep the night before. And then I go to bed staring at the ceiling fan spinning, trying to figure out, you know, any options that I would have to extend my life for my kids to remember me a little bit. I had a 1- and a 3-year-old and so I went through life for a couple of months just a zombie and doing very poorly. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 3:38 So what changed in that couple of months that, I guess, changed the trajectory of how you looked at things, or how you approached her, or what happened? Joel Neeb 3:48 Yeah, you know, there's a great quote that I repeat a lot, which I think makes a lot of sense, which is “the dying have the most to teach us about life.” And what it really means is that when you're faced with these types of struggles, that all of a sudden, whether you're 80 or 33 like I was, you get a certain amount of clarity right in that moment and it's good for eliminating the rest of the noise in your life and identifying what's most important and what should have been most important all along. And that comes through and is in the forefront is it was fascinating to me that the moment I got the diagnosis, immediately I was mad at myself for spending any extra time at work, like it was like a light switch in my head went off and said, like, “You shouldn't have stayed that extra hour at work just to watch the clock turn. You were done with your job there.” I had a boss at the time that I was a huge fan of and he was a clock watcher, and wanted just to be in there to fill up time. And my mind immediately went to “now my finite resource is time, and I've been wasting it.” And I remember vowing that I'll never waste my time again, and I've been very disciplined against letting anybody steal time from me from that point forward; that was one of the key things I took away. And then looking back in my life, there were things I regretted, things that I celebrated and that I was proud of, and also considered what I would do differently if I was given a second chance. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 5:05 So, you know, you wrote a book called Survivor's Obligation. I'm curious about this journey, though, because obviously you beat it 15 years later, you're here. So, you know, you beat the odds of the 18 months. What was that like when you still had to provide for your family? You know, you were still working like, what was that journey like? Joel Neeb 5:25 Yeah, first of all, I have to credit the Air Force with showing up in a huge way. At that time, I was watching other people in the civilian sector who were undergoing cancer struggles, and they had a much more difficult time than I did. The Air Force had stepped in and was making meals around the clock for my family. I didn't have to show up to work. I you know, they afforded me every opportunity to get better and I really credit the Air Force family with getting me through that period of time, in ways I just certainly would not have been able to get through on my own, and in terms of, like how I looked at my life as I was thinking about the things I was proud of and the things I regretted. The things that I was proud of I was a little surprised by, and the things I regretted I was surprised by. I didn't regret my failures, of which there were many. I didn't regret them, because what I actually regretted were those times that I didn't try, where there's times where I didn't make the effort into doing something new that was a little bit scary, that would have put me outside of my comfort zone, and maybe would have challenged my ego a little bit. And now the end of my life was here, and I'd never have a chance to do anything else. You know, my story was complete. And I said, you know, really angry at that. Had I gotten a second chance, I would do things very differently. I love being a fighter pilot, but I would have preferred it to have been a chapter in my life, not the entire book. I would have tried to go to the business world and done all these things, and when I did get that second chance, and basically, God called my bluff and said, “All right, let's see if you actually follow through with this.” Then, of course, I had to hold myself accountable to living differently in that next chapter.  Col. Naviere Walkewicz 7:02 So that's what you're doing now. You're living in this next chapter. And so, I mean, I think there's a transition out of the military. Obviously, you retired as a lieutenant colonel. And so talk us a little bit about in this moment of what you're going to do if given a second chance. Let's talk about what some of those things that you took a chance on, maybe in the business world first. Joel Neeb 7:24 Sure. So our mutual friend, Kovacic, he says, “I'm in the middle of my Texas Longhorn MBA right now. It's amazing. It's just down the street from you.” He knew — he was following my cancer struggle closely. And he said, “Look, you're two years into this journey. Who knows what the future holds?” But I talked to him about wanting to be in the business sector and trying something new. And he said, “If you're serious about that, you should join the MBA program.” And so that's what I did. I went and joined the MBA program and had a blast being the dumbest guy in the room, by far, in business school. At the same time, it almost reminded me of being a fighter pilot again, or at least the early days of being a fighter pilot, because it was a little bit of a combination of terror and exhilaration, which is really what I loved about being a fighter pilot. That first time you go upside down by yourself and in pilot training and you prove to yourself you can do it, you're a little bit terrified, but fully exhilarated, and knowing that this is exactly what you should be doing. At the same time, I had that same sentiment as I'm sitting in business school classes, as I'm trying to keep up with the conversation there, and you say, “Well, you know that's so different from flying a plane, how are you getting the same joy out of it?” And it's really because where I landed with, you know, what did I value most in life. It came down to the times when I was on an elite team with an inspiring mission, an elite team, meaning I felt like I didn't deserve that spot there. And the little secret was, everybody on the elite team didn't feel like they deserve that spot there. But boy, are they going to try to earn it. And then that inspiring mission that we're pursuing, whether it was our time at the Air Force Academy, I always felt like I didn't deserve to be there. I felt like that was an incredibly elite team with an inspiring mission. Felt the same way about being a fighter pilot. Had a healthy dose of imposter syndrome going through all of this, but I've learned to believe that that's a bit of a superpower, in a sense, because if you have imposter syndrome coupled with a growth mindset, which means I don't belong here today, but I can sure earn the right if I try hard. I think that helps us to really realize the full potential of our lives. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 9:26 Really well said. And I think that actually kind of helps us see how you're able to make that transition. I want to go back to the fact, — first off, Kope is amazing. I love that he, you know — it talks about the Long Blue Line and our networks from the Air Force Academy. They really are for life. And I think, you know, you just, kind of just showed that you applied and you participated in this MBA program when you're in your mid-30s. Then can you talk about that a little bit? I think there's an interest in, “Oh, if I didn't do this in my 20s, it's too late.” Can you talk about that transition in, you know, your mid-30s, and do you think that was the right time? Can people do it later in their life, etc? Joel Neeb 10:04 So I would say you certainly can do it at any point in life. You can recreate yourself at any point. A lot of — gonna go totally off topic, but a lot of longevity science is saying that the first person to live to be 150 is alive today, meaning we're all going to see a lot more healthy years hopefully in our lives than ever before. So that should mean that all of us should pursue multiple chapters, and there's certainly not a point in life where we're done reinventing ourselves. But the key is the word “reinventing.” And I was at a point in my career where, at 33 years old, I was very, very comfortable flying. I was very, very comfortable doing air shows and flybys and leading missions and signing autographs. And so my identity was a lot of ego and not a lot of growth, meaning it felt good to be told how great I was at doing a certain skill set, but it wasn't that hard to do anymore. It becomes rote, and I wasn't growing at this point. In order to go into the business world, I had to completely reinvent myself. And I like to tell people that are transitioning out of the military, as difficult as it was to do the first thing, whether that's be a fighter pilot or an intel officer, or how you had to reinvent yourself at 23 years old — that's just as challenging as it's going to be. You have to sign up again for the B course, as we call it, as fighter pilots. The thing that introduces you to being a fighter pilot and realize that you're devoting that much effort to reinvent yourself. And people would push back and say, “Yeah, but you've already led in these environments. You have all of these things that should carry over. Wouldn't it be easier for you just to make a transition and less of that initiation energy that's required to start this new thing?” The answer is no, you literally have to start it over, as if you're 25 years old. You got to eat a lot of humble pie and realize you're not special in this environment. But the good news is, you can become special very quickly if you're willing to reinvent yourself now — you bring perspective that nobody else can carry. Nobody else knows how to navigate high stakes, life-or-death environments like we've learned in the military. Nobody shows up with the processes that we've learned through checklists and through cultural training, all the things that maybe we didn't even aware that we're seeing. As soon as you see the opposite in the business world and you realize, well, we don't have that great of a culture here. We had a great one in the military. That's a huge resource that you can bring into that environment, but only after you've completely reinvented yourself and translated your skill set into something that's meaningful for that business setting. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 12:28 So Joel, that's fascinating, because what you're saying is you're almost stripping yourself of all these experiences to really open up your aperture for what's new. And I'm curious if this was a way you came into that? Sid you go in with your eyes wide open with that plan, or did you learn this about yourself? Joel Neeb 12:47 I came into it arrogantly. I went into these conversations thinking, “Wait till they see how much I have to offer. I've been in very complex scenarios. I've led my way out of them. I have all these awards for being a good leader and a good instructor, and so just wait until they see what I've got to offer.” And that's why business school helped me out a lot, because in a sandbox setting that really didn't have consequences, I got to participate in conversations and learn very quickly I didn't know what they were talking about and that they were — they had an understanding around business already that I didn't have. I didn't understand the language, and I needed to really reeducate myself to become ready in this moment. And so there were moments in that period where I would have done very differently in approaching that next transition, had I known how far I had to go to really having something to offer the business sector. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 13:38 Was there a moment during that time when you were getting your MBA that, in a way that cancer startled you as a life-or-death situation, and you changed your you know — “If I'm given a second chance.” Was there a moment in the business, you know, getting your MBA where you like, really, like, linked into like, this is what I'm going to be doing. It was so clear to you the next move in this, in this journey. Joel Neeb 14:04 Yeah, I say that. I mean, there's one that stands out that really showed how little I understood the business world. So they're talking about pipeline in this conversation at my MBA school, and they said, “You know, we need to improve pipeline. We're working on getting better pipeline for our needs.” And I'm listening to this thinking, “What are they talking about? Is this like an oil pipeline? Is this pipe plumbing? What do they mean?” And for those in the business sector, of course, you understand. They're talking about a sales pipeline. A sales pipeline is a sales funnel that shows that the leads that turns into the sales and the conversion rate and all the things that that, of course, I know intimately well. Now, at that point, it showed me that there's an entire language I just haven't been exposed to, because I'd been talking about missiles and G forces and airplanes for so long that it didn't matter how much experience I was bringing to the table. There was a language I didn't understand. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 14:50 I think that is really, really thoughtful in how you showed that, because then it helped you probably in navigating when you're leading, you know, other teams that have different experiences coming to the table. So when you learn that language, and I want to talk a little bit about, you know, CEO of Afterburner, let's just talk about your role in the civilian sector, your multiple roles, I'd love for you to share a couple of stories where you've grown as a leader and where you've continued to learn things about yourself in that space. Joel Neeb 15:22 Yeah, so at Afterburner, what we end up doing at Afterburner, more often than not, was leading in keynotes, doing workshops for training, and what we would show them is how you can leverage the things that we learned in the military on the elite teams that we participated in, whether that's Green Beret, fighter pilot, Navy SEAL — we hired all those backgrounds, and, of course, look for teams that had a business degree on top of that. What we ended up doing was getting on stage in front of these folks and sometimes talking to 10,000 people. So I've done presentations in front of 10,000 people in my past. And what I was surprised by — thinking about the learning opportunities and where the growth came from — is that even after having done 3,000 briefings, you know, in a fighter pilot setting, and getting in front of the red flag team in Nellis and doing a presentation there, I would be behind the scenes at some of these huge presentations, and I would get incredible stage fright, I guess is the only way to say it. Butterflies. I would feel like I was going to pass out. And the reason I share this is because I was frustrated that it didn't translate better to this new thing that I was looking to do with public speaking. Now I'm talking for an hour, and I had to be engaging and comical at times, and, you know, bringing the audience into it. I say that because, once again, I was finding that that combination of terror and exhilaration and proving to myself that I could do it, and I had a new place that I needed to grow into for that now, I've done this enough times where my heart rate doesn't go up a beat when I do this at this point, but that's after doing thousands of presentations and I think the key takeaway for me was our growth is never over with, and it's growth that really feels good, and so leaning into those areas of discomfort has been something that's been really important to me my entire life, particularly after cancer. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 17:06 So what is growing you now? What is new for you that you are pursuing in your personal growth and development? Joel Neeb 17:14 Yeah, so it was new for me now is what's new for society, this next era with AI. AI is going to disrupt every one of our lives. And just as aggressively as AI disrupted my life with cancer, or, excuse me, as cancer disrupted my life, or even becoming a fighter pilot or joining business school disrupted my life, we see the same thing take place on a personal and professional level because of just how powerful this new technology is. And if you're sitting there wondering, “It hallucinates still, and I don't really buy it, and we'll see where this ends up,” I'm here to tell you, as somebody who's at the bleeding edge of AI that's going to transform every single thing we do in very good ways, but also disrupt the way you think you add value today, and the way you think that you know we should participate on teams right now. And so that's it's going to disrupt everything. And so I'm looking to constantly reinvent myself in the context of this next era. And I'm also looking to lead our 2,400-person company at 8x8 on that same journey, so that we can disrupt ourselves before we're disrupted. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 18:14 So what does that look like right now? Share something maybe that is on the leading edge of that, you know, that forefront of being disruptive before you're disrupted in your organization. Joel Neeb 18:27 Yeah, so for us, it's making this new technology as accessible as possible so that we can break down the barriers for using it and realizing that, much like in the '90s, we went from only a small technical portion of the company that was using computers, then expanded to, of course, everyone in the company is using a computer on every desk. But that wasn't always like that in the late '80s and early '90s; that was just reserved for a very technical portion of the group. Now that expanded. Of course, everyone's on the net. You wouldn't dream of trying to get a job without being internet savvy and having computer skills. We're going to see the same thing take place with AI and so, and I don't just mean using AI. I mean using AI to code, using AI to build things, and it's not just going to be reserved for that technical component of the company anymore. And so what that looks like for us: We conduct a weekly session where we talk about the use cases from the previous week on a personal and a professional level. Why is that important? Because now we're breaking down that barrier. So last week, I'll give you an example. We had somebody whose father passed a couple months ago, and this person had he lives in the UK. He's from Africa. His father had never met his son, so this person's grandson, his father's grandson, he'd never met. And by using AI at his funeral, he was able to take their images and create a moment where they came together and hugged and picked up the grandson and played this really touching video for the rest of the people there to share in that moment that never really happened, of course, but was able to celebrate this person's life and that connection through the grandson. And it was just a really I mean, they were people that were getting emotional, talking about it, listening to the story. And then we have somebody else say, I had my basement flood, and I took pictures of it, and I used AI to imagine how we would have to renovate it and build it back better. And somebody else says I successfully used AI to combat the tax increase on my house, because I came up with good comparables around the area and a good way to beat it. By the way, it's a really good one to use, if you have…    Col. Naviere Walkewicz 20:32 A mental note right there.    Joel Neeb 20:33 Exactly. So we're lowering the barriers on a personal level. So then when I tell you on a professional level, here are my expectations for how you'll bring AI to the table to accelerate the things you're already doing, the teams are ready to do that, and that's been a really important aspect of this journey. Naviere Walkewicz 20:50 Is it important for an organization to already have a culture that is open to — I think what you know is you're going to get a bunch of different perspectives. You're going to get a, you know, maybe thinking outside the box that you wouldn't have thought of. So would you say that the organization was ready for that? Or have you had to create that culture along the way? Joel Neeb 21:11 Yeah, I'd say, you know, change is hard. Nobody likes change. We like being through change. And so one of the things that growth provides an opportunity to change for the better, but it's always start to get that activation energy to really pursue change. And so what we had to teach the culture at 8x8 is to not be change weary, but to be change ready, and to understand that in this era, our ability to stay a couple months ahead of the rate of change will be a superpower the likes of which no one can compete with us. Meaning as difficult as it is to pursue this change and to continue reinventing yourself — and when I say revenge up, I mean if you're doing the same thing today in six months, then you're gonna be passed by — literally changing that fast. And we're seeing that inside of our company. And so the new constant will be changed. The new constant will be disruption. And the faster we get comfortable with that, and the faster we realize that if we disrupt ourselves a little bit faster than the competition, that's a superpower, but we're already enjoying it internally within 8x8, but it's because we've forced ourselves to get a little bit ahead. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 22:15 that's really interesting. And I imagine, would you say that it takes, you know, when you are in this transformation mode, because this is what you're taking your organization through, you know, how are you coaching as a leader? How are you — maybe it's through the repetition of trying it in their personal life. But you know, what are you sharing from a leadership perspective that's helping them think that way constantly, right? I mean, it's different from, “OK, I'm going to do this today and…” But how are they constantly ingraining that in themselves? And how are you leading that?   Joel Neeb 22:46 Yeah, a couple of ways. One, we're saying that AI should be a thought partner in everything that we do, maybe not a thought leader, meaning, I'm not going to hand off a decision or an activity to AI, per se, but literally in everything that we do. So I'll give you a quick example in your role. So you're doing podcasts, and these are amazing. And by the way, you're poised, and I'm not surprised after knowing you at the Academy, because you were very polished then. But this is incredible. You did a phenomenal job with this. But let's say that you want to get some feedback after this session. You can take this transcript, upload it to AI, and you would say, “Give me the key themes from this session that we discussed.” You could say, “Create emails that will be enticing and send them out to the entire team based on this transcript that we have for this conversation.” You could say, “Create new episodes and new questions for the next 10 guests that will continue to weave a red thread of common questions and common themes throughout all these.” Where I'm going with this is when you consider how to use AI as a thought partner in everything that you're doing, you can go 100 times faster on the key things that we want to accomplish. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 23:52 I believe that wholeheartedly. And just a little side story, I'm coaching my son's fifth grade basketball team. Never coached basketball before, and he's going to be middle school next year, so it's the one and only year. But I used ChatGPT to build out my coaching plan, and we are — we only lost our first game and we've been undefeated since so I'm going to hand it off to my ChatGPT coaching partner.   Joel Neeb 24:13 That's amazing. That's a great story. See, that would be one we'd love to hear at our session that we do every week around how accessible AI is. Because people hear that and they say,” I can do that too. I want to bring that to my kids game.” The more we use it every single day, the better prepared we're going to be for the big changes that are coming. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 24:27 Excellent. So Joel, I want to dig into your personal life a little bit, because you have such a fascinating way of — I mean, you make everyone feel that the moment that they're spending with you is 100% theirs. But I know in the background — and your time is important, you talked about that — but I know in the background, you are doing so many things. You've got your family is a key pillar. You know, your health and fitness is a key pillar. You're traveling all the time. As a leader. You know, how are you navigating all of that and doing it so well? Joel Neeb 24:58 Well, first of all, I appreciate the sentiment. I certainly don't feel like I'm always doing it well, but I'll tell you my philosophy and how I mentor people that are that are pursuing a path to their dreams, and whatever that dream might look like, is the following. I tell them, “If you're younger than 35 years old, you need to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way.” What do I mean by that? When the boss asks you if you're able to give a big sales presentation, even though the voice in the back of your head says you're not ready for this — “I don't think you you're gonna do well,” the answer is yes. You prepare yourself, you go out there, you embarrass yourself, you do it better next time. And that's how you learn through that process. When they ask you if you're ready to go lead this mission, your answer is yes. You're gonna figure it out. You're gonna do everything behind the scenes to make sure that you're successful. And you're going to push yourself into that discomfort zone and ensure that you're leaning into all of those opportunities as aggressively as you can. Why? Because it's exposure to all of those areas of discomfort that really owns the discipline for us to perform in this positive way when you get to those areas now. When you're after 35 years old, the main advice that I give to people is that you're flipping the script. You are no longer going to say yes to everything you're asked. You're going to aggressively say no to everything you're asked unless it aligns to your key things that you want to pursue in life. So you're completely looking at it in a different direction. I've said yes to everything for the first half of my life. Now I'm saying no to everything in the second half. Why? Because it's the distractions that stop us from doing the big things in life. Once we pass about 35 years old, the better you are at saying no to things, the freer your time will be to say yes to the most important things. So while it looks like I'm juggling a lot of things, to your point, I'm aggressively saying no to everything else that doesn't align with a few things that I have really focused my time on. Naviere Walkewicz 26:52 So let's pull that thread a little bit more, because saying no is uncomfortable, and it may feel to some that they are letting others down. How do you or how might you coach them through telling someone no? Joel Neeb 27:09 Yeah, I would say that I don't have that problem. I probably did, and certainly prior to cancer, I would have. I am at the place now after I've learned how short all of our lives are, not just my life because I had a cancer battle. And the big surprise for me was not that I might die in 18 months, it was that I was going to die at all. Because for all of us, that notion of death is so far away and really something that we don't really come face to face with very often in life, that all of a sudden I had to accept the fact that I was going to die someday, and I better make good use of the time between now and then. So when people ask to have my time, I aggressively say no. I never feel bad about it. And then I also introduce gatekeepers to my time on top of that. So I don't even — most of the time you're working with my executive assistant, most of the time you're gonna be working with somebody on my team, and that's because I want to jealously guard my time at this stage so I can be as incredibly impactful on the few things that I want to do as possible. That desire dwarfs any emotional attachment I would have to say no to somebody else that long time. It doesn't even cross my mind to think twice about it. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 28:25 I think that's a great lesson right there. I mean, I think if you actually put time as the, you know, main, the thing you're protecting, right, everything else on to your point, it dwarfs behind that. And I think the way you did that, you actually made it very doable for people to say no, because now you've created gatekeepers, you put some stops in there. And I think that's a lesson that people can take away as they're looking to navigate their journey forward. So thank you for sharing that for sure. So, you know, you wrote two books, I'm sure there's probably more. Is that something you've always wanted to do, or has that been a realization of “I've experienced this, and there's a — I need to share this. Like, what was the impetus behind writing books on your experiences? Joel Neeb 29:09 Yeah, great question. Very different reason I wrote both books. So the first book was born out of this feeling that as I was going through cancer, that clarity that I experienced: The dying-have-the-most-to-teach-us-about-life piece of it, I came back to the sense that, wow, I wish I knew this before I had cancer, I would have lived my life very differently, and I had made a deal with God that, you know, if I do make it through this, I want to share these insights and share what you know, my perspective was from being on this precipice with death and what I take away from it, because I did think it was valuable enough for my life to share with others in my immediate vicinity and then to write it in a book. And I just needed to get that out of me. The second one for the insight age is much more around what is the template that I wanted to pursue within companies to help take them from the Information Age where we have universal access to information, to the Insight Age, where we now have universal access to AI-driven insights, and how you prepare for that. I wanted people to have the template for it and understanding about how I approached it before I showed up so that we could all be on the same sheet of music when I led the transformation. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 30:15 OK, that's really helpful. So as we think about AI in business, and, you know, having a template for that, can we talk a little bit? And we went to the Air Force Academy, and so I, gosh, I can't even imagine how I might have been a better student had we had AI back in the day. But how do you see AI disrupting? You know, our service academy cadets are, you know, anyone going through, you know, degree programs, you know, how do you use it where there's still original thought, but obviously it's, there's a thought partner that is helping you and maybe accelerate that. I mean, how is that working? Joel Neeb 30:49 It's the same shift that you and I both experienced with universal access to information in the Information Age. And so in other words, there was a time where you had to memorize every phone number that you would call in your network, right? I mean, I sat down — we went to a high school reunion recently and we all sat down and we're trying to rattle off the phone numbers across the table. And we got most of them out there, still lingering in our head somewhere, these memorized phone numbers for everybody. I couldn't tell you, like, my kids phone numbers at this point, like, because I'd push a button and I just get it. And where I'm going with that is we're now in an era where memorization of rote facts and phone numbers and just facts that you can find in the internet is no longer required, and we're used to that, right? And so I wouldn't say that we think less. I would say we think a lot more. At this era there's a risk right now of saying, “I'm no longer going to be required to do critical thinking, because AI is going to do some of that for me.” And the answer is, it will. But much like I got a calculator for every GR that I got to go to — I did a math minor at the Academy…    Col. Naviere Walkwicz 31:54 That's why I didn't see you in any classes.     Joel Neeb 31:59 I brought a calculator to every test, but it certainly didn't make it easier. If anything, it made it harder. I would have had an easier time like writing down calculations and just having to do the arithmetic. Because I had something that did the arithmetic for me, it elevated my thought process and made me more responsible for the critical thinking. You're going to see the same thing with AI. So as you think about it, how AI will disrupt a knowledge institution like the Air Force Academy. At first blush, we would think, well, it's just going to make it easier to cheat. It's going to make it easier to do the things that we're doing today. Yes, it does, just like if I only was doing arithmetic, a calculator makes it easier for me to do that, and I can turn my brain off. But as we all know, it's just going to elevate the threshold for what is required of us, right? So we're going to go in right, we're going to go into this next era with a thought partner on everything that we do, but you still have to guide that thought partner. You still have to point it in the right direction. You have to ask it the right questions. This era is going to be much less about having the right answers and much more about asking the right questions to find success.   Col. Naviere Walkwicz 32:59 Which is critical thinking at its finest, honestly. Fascinating. So, you know, Joel, I think about you and, you know, when I see the, like, the things that you're doing, American Ninja Warrior, your family is involved in this. How do you see, you know, how do you bring your family into the vision that you have it with the growth mindset? Do you see that that's how your family is? All the children are raised that way your wife is. I mean, is this the way that the Neeb household kind of operates? And has it always been this way, or has it really been since you kind of came to that realization that life is too precious for me to live otherwise? Joel Neeb 33:35 Yeah, I mean, I try to live the philosophy that I want my family to live as well. And it's not the Joel show, meaning this is not just for them to support me and go cheer in the crowd at American Ninja Warrior. My wife has gone on and done physique competitions like you have as well. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 33:49 She's amazing. Your whole family's amazing. Joel Neeb 33:53 And she's a regional board member for a group called YPO. So she's in charge of 3,000 CEOs and a network for that. And then she just did a presentation to Europe yesterday on AI herself, and she's going to be traveling to Europe next month to do the presentation in a live setting. And so where I'm going with this is, I feel like because of my cancer battle, because of what we've experienced as a family, and we've learned how precious our time was and how incredible it is to experience that combination of terror and exhilaration, all of us lean into those moments, and we don't do it perfectly, and we all get mad at traffic, and we all are lazy once in a while, and, you know, myself included, but more, we try to do a little bit extra step into that direction, because it has been such a fun way to live after having the scare that we had as a family. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 34:43 That makes sense, and I can really see your family embracing that. You know, I want to ask you a question about yourself and what you're doing on a daily basis to be better, and it sounds like you're already thinking about it right? Reinvention on a constant basis. But if there was anything else you would say that you're doing on a daily basis to be better and better is, you know, in quotes, like you define what better is, what would that be? Joel Neeb 35:06 Yeah, I think that there's a couple of things that I think we should all try to do if we're trying to be, quote, unquote “better.” As you said, there's a quote I like that that says that we vastly overestimate what we can do in three months and we underestimate what we can do in five years. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 35:27 OK, wait, say that one more time. If you don't mind, say it one more time. Joel Neeb 35:30 Yeah, really, we overestimate what we can do in three months. “I can't wait for February. I'm going to do X, Y and Z.” And then we disappoint ourselves because we didn't accomplish all those things. And yet we underestimate what we can do in five years. What do I mean by that? It means that if we were intentional about what we wanted to do in the long term, about what we wanted to grow into in years from now, five years from now, you can reinvent yourself to be anything. I think conceivably, any of us could say, “I could accomplish just about anything in five years, if I put my mind to it.” The problem is we think in the short term, and so a lot of us think of I need this happen fast. I need the, you know, in three months. I need this to take place. That's putting the car before the horse. We need to define what we want to be in the long term and then back into what that implies we need to do right now. That also speaks to the focus that I have and saying no to other things, because if I have this big, audacious goal for what I want to be in the long term, then I have to say no to a lot of things if I'm going to take those steps necessary to start marching down that path. And so what I say to folks is that build that long term first, build that vision of what you want to be in the future that's exciting to you, whether that's a fighter pilot or a CEO or you name it, shoot for the stars, whatever that is that you want to be, and then start backing into it and celebrate the fact that you're doing this. In other words, then people get caught up and, you know, I feel like I'm not making enough progress, and I'm mad at myself for not taking enough steps, I would challenge that and say, don't put the pressure on yourself that you have to do this. Reverse that conversation. Say, “I get to, I get to pursue this vision.” Doesn't mean it'll take place. Doesn't mean to occur. But if I have a vision in mind, and I'm taking steps towards it, even if I don't reach it, I'm still going to be in an incredible place that I wouldn't have been otherwise. And so that's, that's the approach that I would take. Col. Naviere Walkwicz 37:18 All right, Joel, so what is your big audacious goal in five years that you're working towards? Joel Neeb 37:22 Big audacious goal? Yeah, so I am super excited about the future of AI. I think that it has a lot of positive and negative implications for society in general. And so I'll give you a quick example. Right now, we've got 9.5% of our recent graduates that are unemployed, which is much higher than it's ever been from graduating college. That's unique, and what I attribute that to is that we're just starting to see the workforce disruption that's occurring because of AI. We're starting to see the workforce drawdown that's occurring because of it. At the same time, we're seeing companies that are able to do much, much more with AI. And so they're questioning, well, how do I operate as a company? How do I teach everybody to stay on board this training and be successful in this new environment and then societally, we're challenged with, well, how do I set up our young people for success? How do I tell my 19-year-old what to do to do to be successful. So when I think about the big, hairy, audacious goal that I want to go pursue in this next chapter in five years, I want to be on the forefront, helping the government, helping companies, helping everyone to continue disrupting themselves and leaving as few people behind as possible in this next era. Because that's the real threat. And the challenge is cats out of the bag. If we don't do this, China is going to do it like others are going to pass it by. Pass it by. The wrong answer would be to try to step it back in the bag and say we're not doing any I we're going to put regulations around, putting our heads in the sand. We would just get passed by, like, in a few years by our biggest competitors out there, which we know we don't want to have happen. And so the key is, how do we keep as many people up to speed with his transformation possible? So I talked to, you know, graduates like August Pfluger, who's in Congress, and we have, yeah, he's awesome. And so we talk about, what does that look like in the future he's shaping, you know, the future from a government perspective? I talked to former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, is a good friend of mine, and we go on vacations together and a conversation we have about from a corporate perspective: How do we address this as well? So that's my big goal. That's what I want to influence over the next couple of years. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 39:22 Love that. So if you could rewind the clock and, you know, tell your young Joel, and this is really for anyone who is looking for preparing myself for that long term, right? So maybe it's not the five year, the big thing in five years, but it's — this is for what can I do today that is gonna — I'm gonna help myself — future me. What would you tell yourself, Joel? Joel Neeb 39:43 If I were to go back to Academy Joel, I would say, “Take this experience more seriously.” At the time, I kind of resented the experience that I was going through at the Academy, not understanding fully that they understood how to polish the coal to try to make it into a diamond. And I didn't always see the method to the madness behind the scenes and why they were doing things. And I would tell myself to take it more seriously, to lean into the leadership opportunities, lean into the experiences. I think it's a tendency as a cadet to lean away from those and to kind of look at those with resentment. I remember I did, and I wish I would have taken those more seriously. I wish I would have taken my 20s more seriously in terms of pursuing things that were uncomfortable, and not just getting comfortable towards the latter end of my 20s and early 30s, where I was flying upside down with ease every single day and really not doing anything that was challenging me too much. I certainly didn't have it all mastered and figured out. But my discomfort was all but gone in those moments. And so I would tell myself, “Keep leaning into those areas of discomfort, because it's in those areas that we find growth.” And growth is one of the top things that we can feel as a human being. Being a part of an elite team is growing together on an inspiring mission. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 40:56 Well, I know that you are, you know, constantly in the forefront of AI, but what makes you or what causes you discomfort now that you're working through? Joel Neeb 41:05 What causes me discomfort now is compelling a 2,400-person organization to move as quickly as I think we need to. In other words: right now. The things I'm talking to you about, I'm communicating with them about on a daily basis, and we have remotely dispersed teams. I'm staring into cameras like we are right now. So I'm not sitting in the room with them and helping them to learn these things. My discomfort is around how as a leader, can I be more compelling about the burning platform that they're standing on right now, that as soon as it burns away, their role is going to be obliterated, and we're going to be disrupted by the market. And how do I really excite them around this destination that we're pursuing together, where we're going a little bit faster than the rate of change? I'm proud of the progress that we've made, but in terms of the discomfort that I'm feeling, it's almost impossible to go fast enough in this era, and so I am. The thing that keeps me up at night is, how do I make this more compelling for them? And then ultimately, I know that whatever themes I'm learning right now to make it compelling is what I'm going to have to bring to society in this next chapter, as well as we try to keep the entire American society moving ahead of the rate of change that we're experiencing. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 42:14 Well, thank you for that. I would imagine you probably phoned your friend, ChatGPT, on some  ways to do that, but I think that what you really shared today has opened, I think, eyes of how we can partner with technology at our fingertips. I mean, you and I were just chatting before this, and I asked you this, because one of the things I remember you being really big on is finding time to read as a family. I remember you had like Saturday family time, we read. As much as you're traveling and as much as you're trying to move your organization at this rate of change with AI, where do you find time to read now? Joel Neeb 42:47 Yeah, so I use AI for that too. So when I'm in the gym, I upload a chapter at a time into ChatGPT for the books that I'm reading, and I ask it to read it to me in the voice thing that it can do. And so it's reading the book to me. But the really cool part is, it's not just audible. I'm not just hearing, you know, the recording of it. And by the way, you can even tell it talk two times faster or whatever you want to do for the right speed. And I'll interrupt it. The cool part is, I'll say, “Hey, wait a second. I didn't really understand that that part of the book. Break it down for me in simpler terms.” And it'll actually pause, explain it to me and put it in terms that my fighter pilot mind can understand, or I'll even say, “Yeah, tell me about that theme in the context of the company that I'm in, 8x8, and tell me how we can apply that right now, and look at our industry. And how can I take some of this to that team?” And so it takes a book that was generically written and makes it customized for my experience by leveraging AI to do that. So once again, it's a thought partner in literally everything that I do. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 43:42 What's the last book that you read in which you were able to take some of those things to, or maybe that you'd recommend to some of our listeners to listen in via ChatGPT. Joel Neeb 43:51 I just finished reading the Teddy Roosevelt biography, which is phenomenal. What an incredible American, and it was inspiring to read. And I was able to pause it in parts and challenge some parts of the books and say, “Did that really happen?” And,  “Tell me more about this incident in history.” And it explains some historical pieces that I wasn't aware of and the book didn't delve into as much as I would have liked it to. That's a little bit of a boring historian-nerd kind of answer, but that's what I took away from it. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 44:17 Well, thank you for sharing that. So Joel, is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you would really like to make sure that we touch on? Because this has been a really exciting and fascinating conversation for me, but I want to make sure, because this has been your leadership journey, and there's so many facets to that that that we hit on the things that are important? Joel Neeb 44:33 The thing that I've learned in my time is that the foundation that we receive in the military, whether that's the cultural foundation, how we are all aligned with similar values, with a common mission that's inspiring the adherence to what we call in the business world, standard operating procedures, what you would call in the military, a checklist, effectively. That foundation that we have is easily the most valuable resource that I carried into the business world and the teams that I've been on. And I think we underestimate just how powerful that experience is, that during our 20s, we're in this incredibly disciplined environment with a really strong culture, really strong sense of value, really strong sense of mission. Pay attention to that while you have that opportunity. While you're being exposed to it, pay attention to how it was built. Pay attention to how they that accelerated our success in those teams. Because I promise you, you'll want to someday carry those concepts to every team that you're on in the future. And so I think it's an opportunity for us to leverage the incredible team that we're on in the military, and talk about that in an exciting way with whatever team that we participate on down the road. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 45:50 Thank you for sharing that. And if I could just pull on that thread a little bit more in that just in that transition, and taking those to those teams, I want to just jump to your very first transition from military to Afterburner? How did that come about for you? And I think that just our folks will be curious on that. Joel Neeb 46:10 Yeah, so Afterburner is a company that's been around since 1996 and they basically took some of those things from the military that I just spoke to, brought it into a corporate setting and helped them to adopt the same levels of positive outcomes. And when I saw this company, I said, “Wow, they really tapped into something that I that I knew as well intuitively, that if we apply some of these same themes, we could really take over anything in the business world. And so I reached out to the CEO and kept bugging him and continue to stay on his radar until he agreed to bring me into the office in Atlanta. I was living in San Antonio, and I went out there on my own dime and did an interview with them, and it went well. And of course, the rest is history after that point. But I found the thing I wanted to do and pursue, and then a very aggressively got in front of the people that could make it happen and definitely was part of the journey for me that I needed in order to be successful. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 47:04 Yes, I definitely wanted you to share that, because I knew, obviously, you had that experience. You took those things that you learned, and you wanted to hone in as you led other teams. But I think the critical piece was you pursued it, and you continue to pursue it, and you continue to pursue it until you got there, right? And so I think that's a critical part of moving forward and getting what we want. So I really am glad that you shared that, because it may seem that it's really easy just to make the transition, right? You can check all these boxes and so you're the shoe in, but it sounds like that wasn't the case, and you had to make a case for yourself. Joel Neeb 47:39 One-hundred percent. I had to be my own biggest advocate, and not in an arrogant way, in a way that I could show I could add value for that team. And that was, that was a lesson that I've taken and tried to apply since then. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 47:51 Well, I'll tell you what, it's been, gosh, 1999. How many years is that? 25 years for us? I mean, I feel like, you know, this has been a true honor to be able to sit with you. I mean, I've always watched your journey and just really been cheering you on, but I think what's incredible is how you're able to now really give back to our Long Blue Line. So Joel, thank you so much for this time today. It's been really wonderful having on Long Blue Leadership. Joel Neeb 48:14 What a privilege, Naviere. And I would say, you know, you had just asked me back in 1999 if there's a dozen people from the Academy that I thought would be very successful, your name would have been one of them. I don't think there's another person at the Academy who would have said my name. So we came from very different starting points, but I'm super excited to see the success you created, and, more importantly, the impact that you have on our graduate community, because it is noticed by everyone that I talked to. So thank you for how you lean into that our community as well. Col. Naviere Walkewicz 48:43 Thank you for saying that. And as we come to a close, I'd love to offer a few thoughts before we go. What stands out to me today from our conversation is how leadership is both timeless and adaptive. Joel's journey from commanding F-15 missions to leading global organizations and navigating AI reminds us that leadership fundamentals remain steadfast, just like you said, yet in the context in which we lead, it's always evolving, and the ability to adapt is what sets exceptional leaders apart. His story of personal resilience, overcoming stage four cancer diagnosis underscores that leadership is defined by how we respond to challenges and how we make lasting impact. From lessons in the cockpit to corporate transformation and personal discipline. Joel offers a blueprint for leading with confidence in uncertain times. Thank you for investing your time and listening in Long Blue Leadership. I encourage you to share this episode with others who are also in their personal journeys, especially because it's my classmate and he's phenomenal. Thank you for listening to Long Blue Leadership. I'm Naviere Walkewicz; until next time.   KEYWORDS Leadership, leadership development, modern leadership, leadership mindset, growth mindset, resilient leadership, adaptive leadership, transformational leadership, leadership under pressure, leading through adversity, leadership lessons, executive leadership, high performance teams, elite teams, leadership philosophy, leadership strategy, personal growth, professional development, continuous improvement, reinvention, career transition, imposter syndrome, mental toughness, discipline, time management, prioritization, decision making, strategic thinking, innovation leadership, change leadership, leading through change, disruption, self leadership, accountability, peak performance, overcoming fear, stepping outside comfort zone, leadership habits, future of leadership, AI leadership, leadership in the age of AI, digital transformation, organizational culture, team culture, mission driven leadership, purpose driven leadership, high impact leadership.   The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association & Foundation    

Episode SummaryIn this episode, Dave Weil from Ithaca College and Mark Richards from Omnissa explore how a small liberal arts IT team built an AI tool that freed up 150 at-risk student meetings - and why human-to-human connection has to stay at the center of any real AI strategy.FeaturingDave Weil is Senior Vice President of Strategic Services and Initiatives at Ithaca College - overseeing HR, IT, Analytics, and AI, and a longtime contributor to EDUCAUSE leadership development including the Senior Director Institute and the EDUCAUSE Leaders Academy.Mark Richards is Senior Manager at Omnissa - formerly the end user computing division of VMware, now an independent company with over 30 years of experience designing and implementing endpoint and virtual desktop solutions across higher education and public sector. Episode Highlights- AI cut ICare research from an hour to a minute - and freed 150 student meetings- “We don't lead technology, we lead people that lead the technology” - Dave Weil- Virtual labs turning physical computer rooms into classrooms at community colleges- The Four Rights: right person, right seat, right things, right time- Patch management is still your biggest security gap in higher edListen now: YouTube x Apple x SpotifyWhenever you're ready, there are 3 ways you can connect with TechTables:1.

In this sponsored episode, FluidCloud co-founders Sharad Kumar and Harshit Omar sit down with William and Eyvonne to discuss how FluidCloud tackles multi-cloud portability. They detail how FluidCloud acts as a cloning platform that scans an existing cloud or VMware environment, extracts complex infrastructure configurations (including compute and storage, as well as firewall rules and... Read more »