IT Visionaries

Have you ever picked up a plant at the grocery store and wondered to yourself, can I really keep this alive? Or maybe you’ve planted seeds in the ground only to see them never sprout. Don’t worry, if you’ve struggled to find any success, you’re not alone. But imagine the pressure when the food industry’s supply chain is relying on your green thumb, so you have to find a way to plant trillions of seeds that yield crops covering millions of square miles to feed the world.. It’s no longer about having a green thumb. It’s a full on science and technology based operation, and it can’t fail. That’s where Bayer Crop Science and Elisha Herrmann step in to bring that supply chain to life.“We produce not only the seeds that the farmers plant, but we have to produce the fruits and the vegetables that produce the seeds that the farmers plant.”Elisha is a Global Supply Chain Strategy and Innovation Partner a Bayer Crop Science, a company that is currently utilizing all forms of science and technology, including drones, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics, to deliver the best produce from the moment seeds hit the dirt to the second you remove them from the shelves. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Elisha describes the unique ways Bayer Crop Science is utilizing technology to ensure quality from both ends of the supply chain, why blockchain is now an integral tool for the food industry when it comes to tracking and tracing products, and much more.Main TakeawaysCan You Track That: Being able to track the lifecycle of a plant is incredibly important when it comes to managing where certain plants and produce are shipped. If a plant or seed is infected with a fungus and is sent to a geographic location of the world that doesn’t have the resources to remedy the causes of that fungus, it could be detrimental in very severe ways.It’s Just Science: Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are used to track the overall health and life cycle of crops, but also to manage current and future food trends. By using A.I. and machine learning, scientists can let the growers know if they need to plan for different crops.Blockchain Grows in Necessity: A few years ago, most growers, suppliers, and distributors were tracking the whereabouts of their crops manually. This meant that regardless of where those crops ended up, the data they were inputting was done manually and could have discrepancies. With blockchain, they now have the ability to instantly track where their crops are going, to whom they are being shipped, and how they are getting there.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Smartphones are incredible pieces of technology. They allow users the ability to track stars, text people around the world, purchase items at the ease of a click, map their next destination, and so much more. Their individual capabilities are truly remarkable.“It's crazy. And all of that is powered by the battery and all of that and really what limits it, the engineer's imagination, you know, they're, they, they know how much, how much they can get out of that in terms of the energy. And so imagine now, if you could get 50% more energy from your phone and do 50% more, more tasks that we hadn't even thought of yet."That’s Rick Costantino, and while what he is saying may sound too good to be true, it’s not. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Rick dives into how Group 14 is reversing that trend by working to replace the traditional graphite anode with a silicon casing material. Plus, Rick touches on why silicon is the future of the battery industry, the impact it will have on devices that use lithium-ion batteries, and how Group 14 is thriving despite some early stage struggles.Main TakeawaysA New Home: For the last two decades, there has been very little innovation as it pertains to lithium-ion battery casings. Group 14 bucked that trend and by using a hybrid material of carbon and silicon, the company has found a way to eliminate the use of graphite, allowing batteries to weigh less, but produce more energyCan I get A Charge: It’s important to remember that while silicon allows for longer-lasting lithium-ion batteries, the real benefit is in unlocking the possibilities promised by that more powerful and energy-efficient battery.Built to Last: Another advantage of using a silicon-based battery is its sustainability benefits. The ability to consistently reuse silicon-based batteries means that there is less need to constantly dig into natural resources to constantly produce new batteries.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Early learning education programs are not new —they’ve been around for years in multiple forms. Whether that’s Dora the Explorer taking you on her latest adventure, or hopping on your computer to travel along the Oregon Trail, the traditional education system has been supplemented with various platforms and programs for ages. The issue is, though, very few of them actually show or measure tangible results.That’s Stephanie Dua, the Co-founder and President of HOMER, an early learning program that is primarily focused on helping children get the best possible start to their education. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Stephanie explains how she was in a unique opportunity to not only help jump-start her own daughter's education, but to bring a scalable education product to market. She also explains what separates HOMER from its competitors and why phonemic awareness is the secret to the product’s success.Main TakeawaysEducating and Entertaining: There are multiple gaps in the education system that have created complexity when it comes reading comprehension. By streamlining and simplifying the reading process for kids, HOMER is creating a less messy hand-off system that is providing kids with the foundational skills needed and it’s working in a way that can scale.Can I Get Some Feedback?: Feedback loops are incredibly important in designing a personalized education program for young children. The more a student engages with the program, the more the A.I. and machine learning abilities of the platform learn the likes and dislikes of the student, but also the comprehension level of the student. So not only is the program then offering personalized content to each student, it’s also continuously challenging them.Have to Give them a Reason to Learn: Studies by the HOMER team prove that kids have a natural desire to learn, but the key ingredient is finding a way to present learning to them to where it is fun and enjoyable. This means creating multiple programs based on a kid's individual likes and dislikes. If a kid naturally likes baseball, and you are constantly providing them with content that is centered around bugs, the likelihood of engagement drops, but if the same content is presented in the form of baseball, the child is much more likely to re engage with the process.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How many times over the last year have you visited a restaurant and sitting on the table right in front of you was bar code that led you to all the information you needed. From drinks, to desserts and entrees and everything in between, that simple code unlocked a handful of opportunities and experiences all through technologies that already exist within your phone. With more than 2 billion QRC- and NFC-enabled devices in use today (including the cell phone you might be listening to this podcast on), and in the midst of a global pandemic, QR codes have undergone a renaissance and companies such as RRD are rushing to meet your needs.“We create those touch points, something that triggers the experience, and that can happen way before you get to a payment machine, that can happen on a label on the outside of a product, on signage, outside of a building, on a post in front of a parking space, any number of different ways where a individual can engage a device, where they are basically triggering a touchless experience.”Making smartphones smarter and the user experience better through taps, snaps or scans is RRD’s latest piece of communication technology, Touchless World. Ken O’Brien is the EVP and CIO of RRD, a leading global provider of marketing and communications. And while you might not think RRD is known for its transformational technology, you’d be flat-out wrong. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Ken provides context for how RRD’s Touchless World operates and how the company is helping its clients leverage NFC technology to deliver seamless customer experiences. Plus, Ken dives into the challenges that the company currently faces, including how it is managing its technology debt after being in business for more than a century.Main TakeawaysIt’s a Tough World: When a company is more than a century old, that shows that it has adapted, grown, and changed with the times. As that happens, though, technical debt builds up and needs to be dealt with in order to stay agile.But What is A Touchless World?: A touchless world simply means eliminating some of the impediments that can cause a poor user experience, such as waiting in line to checkout at a kiosk. By developing scannable QR codes that incorporate a device's NFC system, RRD. has given the user a streamlined experience. Keeping Up with the Times: One of the most important things for any company is continuing to modernize its tech stack. Regardless of any technical debt that may have accumulated, it’s critical to always have a clear path for your digital transformation efforts.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The internet is a fascinating place and over the years it has provided tremendous resources to billions of people around the world. It’s brought us closer, and it’s divided us and at the same time. People feel more empowered to make their voices heard. The problem is anonymity has seemingly eroded basic standards of kindness and decency. At least that’s what it seems like when you look at the comments section on blogs, social posts, and more.“The way of communicating online is a massive problem, and it affects our mental health. It affects how we see ourselves and our confidence levels and, and everything about it. It's just this constant cesspool of just the worst parts of humanity. And we wanted to really try and solve that problem. And that's where Yappa differentiates itself.”Meet Kiaran Sim, Co-founder and COO of Yappa, an app that is hoping to make the internet a little more conversational, a little less hostile, and at the bare minimum, more empathetic. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kiaran discusses how their conversation integration tool monitors and censors bad actors, while simultaneously building a positive internet community and the benefits that brings to the internet as a whole. Plus, Kiaran also details the importance of keeping a clean revenue stream and more.Main Takeaways:Know Your Worth: As a start-up — especially in the social media industry — you don’t want to get in the habit of relying on ad revenue as your primary source of income. Instead, figure out a constant revenue model that takes the pressure and guesswork out of your financial status. If At First You Don’t Succeed: Always make sure you are listening to your users; they will guide your product in the direction that it needs to go in. For the Yappa team, that meant abandoning their initial social media app in order to integrate as part of larger programs. By listening to its customer base, and giving users what they wanted, Yappa overcame two obstacles at once.Taking out the Garbage: By removing the anonymous aspect of commenters, the Yappa team was able to dramatically reduce the number of inappropriate users from a traditional average of 18% down to 2%. When users are forced to verify their identities rather than hide behind accounts and usernames, an authentic community of like minded users can form without fear of anonymous online abusers.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Problem Solvers, pioneers, but more importantly data nerds. That’s how Sumo Logic describes itself, and well...it’s fitting. Rooted in big data and security, SumoLogic is among the most powerful machine data analytics services in the world, but to reach the pinnacle of any industry, requires a culture that strives to be the best.“There's a lot of discomfort in this type of a culture, because in order to really be willing to disrupt yourself so that you don't get disrupted by somebody else, you have to empower and enable people inside of your company to challenge decisions, to take risks, to take accountability for those risks. But it has to be a culture that relies on transparency, collaboration, risk, and essentially distributed decision-making.”Bruno Kurtic is the Founding Vice President of Product and Strategy for Sumo Logic and on this episode of IT Visionaries, Bruno delves into how the Sumo Logic platform operates, why the pace of change in the technology industry continues to keep them on their toes, and why more-and-more enterprises are utilizing multi-cloud approaches. Plus Bruno dives into what a successful technology culture looks like, how it should operate and every voice matters no matter where you sit in the company hierarchy.Problem Solvers, pioneers, but more importantly data nerds. That’s how Sumo Logic describes itself, and well...it’s fitting. Rooted in big data and security, SumoLogic is among the most powerful machine data analytics services in the world, but to reach the pinnacle of any industry, requires a culture that strives to be the best.Main TakeawaysPace of Change: With the speed that technology is changing, you can never rest on your laurels. Companies must constantly be reinventing themselves and the services that they provide to their clients. One of the best ways to stay ahead of the curve is to implement an agile approach, that lets you pivot on a moments notice.If You’re Note Reliable, What are You?: If you’re a digital business, your application services must be reliable and they must perform and they must consistently perform to the standards you sold the client on.Your product should always aim to be an industry leader in service and repair, because it what will always set you apart from your competitors is the reliability of your product.One Cloud, Two Cloud…: 70% of enterprises now deploy a multi-cloud approach, which is a major shift from just 10 years ago when most companies were getting familiar with the cloud and adopting single cloud strategies. Because of these multi-cloud strategies, it’s affected the way software has to be integrated into the infrastructure of your tech stack.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Companies flaunt the term digital transformation almost as if it’s a badge of honor. It’s a phrase that can signify an enterprise is on the cutting edge of innovation with a constant eye toward the future. But Joanne Friedman, CEO of Connektedminds, has another word for it.“It's a misnomer,” she said. “Any company that isn't constantly in some state of transformation isn't alive.”Joanne believes that companies don’t simply go through a digital transformation once and then pat themselves on the back — at least, the good ones don’t. No, she is of the mind that digital transformation is an ongoing process, and it’s one she’s been going through her entire career. An industry visionary, entrepreneur, and IT executive, Joanne envisions herself and Connektedminds as the leaders of the team helping companies reach their goals when it comes to their IT needs and how to constantly improve.“Coach Is the best description because we stay with the client throughout the whole process,” she said. “It's not just helping them choose technology. It's what do you want to be when you grow up as a digital business? You have to define the outcomes. You have to look at the business model of how that company is going to operate. This is what you're going to have to go through to get to that point. So we act as a coach.”On this episode of IT Visionaries, Joanne dives deep into the world of digital transformations, how companies should be thinking about the process, the role a proper analyst plays in helping to make those decisions, and why it might be time to alter the phase all together. Plus, Joanne discusses the intricacies of IoT and why it’s time to finally set some standards when it comes to connected devices.Main TakeawaysWhat is Digital Transformation: Digital transformation is a gradual process, it does not happen overnight and companies need to stop thinking they can take on large tasks in a swift manner. What they should be thinking about is their technology stack as a toolkit, filled with 15-20 different tools. Each of those tools should have one goal: does it drive value to the overall business? If it does not, it should not be in your tech stack.Coach Friedman: Analysts are coaches, there to help you reach your goals and accomplish the task at hand. When you are an analyst, you have to constantly be thinking about the company's future and what it could be in five to ten years and then reverse engineer strategies to help get them there.Can we Get Some Standards Up in Here?: Right now, one of the biggest problems surrounding the IoT space is the lack of defined standards between consumer IoT, which includes items such as iPads, phones and routers and industrial IoT devices. Currently, there is ambiguity about where industrial IoT falls and the list of guidelines it must adhere to.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

They say one of the biggest attributes any entrepreneur needs to have is the ability to problem solve. To be able to identify challenges large and small and effectively produce a solution for them. It seems simple, but it’s not. A vast number of start-ups fail, and the reason is although they identified and addressed an issue, it’s not the right issue. So how do you know when the problem your company is attempting to solve is the right one? Paul English, Founder and CTO of Moonbeam, has some noteworthy advice.“My advice to other entrepreneurs, when they ask when they should go for it and when should they quit their day job to go work on their new idea is when you have an idea, a problem that you want to solve, and the problem is more important than the solution. Most tech companies don't fail because the programmers couldn't write good code. Most tech companies fail because they solved the problem that no one cares about. What's most important is solving a big problem.”Paul has had a prolific career as a founder, with all the highs and lows you would expect. But for Paul, the thrill of the next big idea and the next adventure is what keeps him going, and his success has been rooted in his. ability to understand the big issues and develop and implement a plan to rectify them. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Paul goes into detail about that skill, and he explains why Moonbeam, his new company, is solving one of the biggest pain points in on-demand programming. Plus, Paul dives into his past experiences, details key pillars that make up a successful CTO, and predicts why Moonbeam is about to take-off.Main TakeawaysHey Now, You’re a Problem Solver: For any entrepreneur that is starting out, you have to answer a few questions before you get started. What problems are you solving, and is the problem something that will resonate with consumers? It’s very easy to get locked in on ideas that are important to you. But if your problem is not something that the rest of the public cares about, your business will most likely failSearch and Engagement: The two most important factors of any social platform are the ability to identify relevant content, make it searchable, and then drive engagement for its active users.The Power of the Algorithm: When you are designing a machine learning strategy, it’s very important to make sure that your algorithm is not just feeding users the same content over and over again. Instead, make sure that your platform has some level of randomness to it, so the user is exposed to new forms of media. IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In gambling there’s a common saying, the house always wins...After all, the majority of people who spend their nights and weekends throwing dice across the craps table, or contemplating their next blackjack hand are always relying on luck. Yuchun Lee, CEO and co-founder of Allego, is not one of those people.Yuchun is one of the founding members of the infamous MIT Blackjack card counting team portrayed in the movie 21.With his earnings, he was able to bootstrap Unica which was acquired by IBM for 400 million. Now, Yuchun is back building the next great software company with Allegro, an accelerated learning video-based sales platform. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Yuchun explains how his calculated decision-making removes risk and details how it is using A.I. and machine learning to empower every sales professional to close the next deal.Main TakeawaysCan You Hop on a Sales Call?: The way companies and sales professionals approach clients has changed drastically over the last year. No longer are tried and true sales techniques closing deals. Now, sales professionals must be able to make a personal connection through Zoom calls instead of one-to-one meetings, which is causing a lot of businesses to rethink their sales practices.Just in Time Learning: One of the ways businesses are altering those methods is through just-in-time learning, which are ways to educate sales professionals in real time, by empowering them with the required tools they need to close deals. These tactics are similar to YouTube videos, but instead are hyper-focused on a client’s needs and desires.Providing Value: While virtual assistants are becoming more popular in the sales world, there is still no equal to a personal human touch.So, while a lot of the more rudimentary work can be done by A.I. and RPA, there is still an overwhelming need for that one-to-one connection. IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The term “smart city” might bring to mind images from The Jetsons, maybe flying cars and robots serving humans. And while that’s possible, cities are getting smarter right now in very practical and useful ways. Building a smart city is about its citizens and how their lives can continuously be improved through data and incremental change.“The ultimate goal is very simple: Can we use the combination of innovative thinking, the right technology solution, the right policy making, and the right decision framework to ultimately improve the quality of life for the citizens. Smart cities are not about smartness. It's about a better life for the citizens.”Meet Sameer Sharma,General Manager of Smart Cities and Intelligent Transportation at Intel. He leads a global team that works to drive new IoT growth categories and revenue streams for Smart City Services. In this episode of IT Visionaries, Sameer defines the term smart city, and how cities can harness the massive amounts of data they produce. Plus he provides some case studies for what cities such as Singapore and New York are doing to increase the quality of life for their citizens. And Sameer also pinpoints key areas that cities that wish to take the next step in their smart city journey must identify in order to reach their goals.Main TakeawaysJohnny (Data) Tsunami: We are in the midst of a data tsunami, and how cities manage the massive amounts of data they collect on a daily basis has never been more critical to the future of those cities than it is today. By understanding the insights data provide, cities can advance things like traffic patterns, infrastructure, and other areas of everyday life that affect citizens. Think Big, But Start Small: City planners and policymakers should always be thinking about the next big project when it comes to improving their citizens’ lives. But while you should always be thinking big, you have to start small. Begin by thinking about how you are managing your networks, and this begins and ends with edge computing. How is your data being transferred back-and-forth? Are you deploying any form of edge computing? Start by answering those questions first because cities that lack that basic tech won’t have the infrastructure to solve many of their problems at the scale they need to.Changing Tide: Previously, CIOS were solely responsible for advancing and implementing technology. Things are different now, even at a city-wide level. Technology is not siloed in the way that it used to be, and with so many more people affected by all forms of technology, everyone needs to have a seat at the table.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There’s a saying that every company is becoming a software company. But what might be just as true is in that every company is becoming a publisher as well. Photos, blogs, designs, video, and sound is created and published at unthinkable rates… and it’s being used, EVERYWHERE. Web, Mobile, Signage, Kiosks, In-Store… it doesn’t matter. Businesses are creating content to match consumer appetite.So how does a company manage all of these assets, and what kind of content management systems are necessary to handle these massive distribution requirements?Nishant Patel is the Founder and CTO of Contentstack, an API-first headless content management system designed to deliver first-class digital experiences by making it easier to deliver and maintain content distribution anywhere. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Nishant explains how the Contentstack system integrates with various products to publish content at a moment’s notice and why companies are finding that to be a critical part of their success.Main TakeawaysAll in One Place: As the arms race for content delivery ramps up, having a secure and safe place to store and manage your content is increasingly important. An added benefit of Contentstack is while it can store your content, it can also deliver that same content across various channels, such as web, mobile, and digital signage Democratizing Content: One of the biggest issues within large corporations is the ability to make content accessible to their various teams across the world. With Contentstack, users have the power to instantly upload and share their content for anyone associated with the organization, whether that be domestic or international. The second the file is uploaded to the system, anyone with access to publishing abilities then possesses the power to deliver that content at scale.Can You Tag Me in That? Every day millions of images and videos are uploaded to websites and systems but are never tagged or IDed. Contentstack, thanks to its A.I. and machine learning techniques, has the ability to instantly identify and tag hundreds of millions of images. So if someone needs a picture of a yellow lab with a Coke, the system can instantly cycle through its system to find those pictures.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The No. 1 feature of technology is storage. Ok, so that’s not true. But, it’s one of the most critical pieces of hardware that enables software to function. How fast, how easy, and how much data can be accessed and leveraged inside of applications plays a critical part in technologies effectiveness and user experience. File systems have largely evolved unnoticed.“Existing file systems written 20 years ago are like Microsoft word. It works, but you can't collaborate with it. You don't get the full effectiveness. In fact, if you had a project that started at night, and had to be done the next morning, everyone would overwrite everyone else's work. And whoever was in charge would have a major headache, and the best work wouldn't be done. In the case of a parallel file system, everyone gets the full use every single day to do as much work as they can. So there's no latency, you're not waiting for anything.”Ken Grohe, President and CRO at WekaIO, a company that is working to solve those data and storage obstacles by eliminating and replacing legacy systems with a cloud-based collaborative file system structure, and we’re not talking about files like a spreadsheet. We’re talking about huge massive files like Electronic Medical Records, Gene Maps, and other critical files that now can be updated around the world like an excel file. Hear how WekaIO played a role in Covid Vaccine development in a way that would not have been possible just a few years ago. Learn more about that plus other applications of modern file systems next, on IT Visionaries. Main TakeawaysOut of Storage: Nobody buys computers just because of their storage capabilities. But while storage is often overlooked, it is also the engine that powers the speed of your system. Currently there are three types of storage: Cloud, GPU and Flash. In order to create the fastest and most reliable system, your storage needs must be optimized for all three.What is a Weka-Byte?: According to research conducted by the Weka team, nine out of 10 big data centers are now operated by Weka. The reasoning for the shift? While most storage systems are designed with terabytes in mind, which are units of information which are equal to one million 1012, which is how traditional storage companies operate, a Wekabyte is considered 10100 , so nearly 10 times of the size. The Rise of the Data Chief: The newest member of the C-Suite is also becoming one of the most important members of leadership teams: The Data Chief. As more companies possess unstructured data, they are going to need someone with the data literacy and requisite knowledge to understand how to properly use that data.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every year millions of products and services hit the market with sky-high aspirations, and every year millions of those same products and services fail. The reason? Consumer expectations are rising, which means their tolerance for a bad experience, has all but disappeared.“We tend to remember the good experiences that we have, and that creates expectations across all other similar or comparable experiences,” Van De Loo said. “This was something we saw a lot of — the first experience with a new platform determines whether they’re going to work with them in the future or not. The bar keeps rising. It keeps getting higher and higher. Especially with these newer experiences.” Kaj Van De Loo is the CTO of UserTesting, a human insight platform that provides companies with the opportunity to gather real-time feedback, from real customers, regardless of where an item stands within the development process. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kaj joins me for a conversation centered on how UserTesting is creating real-time feedback loops based on the emotions and interactions real people experience with a product. Plus, Kaj goes under the hood and explains how UserTesting is using these insights to create actionable insights for their clients.Main TakeawaysSo Simple Even I Can Use It: Consumers are now evaluating a product or service on everything from design, to pick-up and drop-off location, but the number one thing that is making or breaking a consumer’s experience is overall ease of use. Products or services that have more steps to reach the same conclusion as a product that had a similar, more streamlined approach, always received negative feedback.Jury by Your Peers: One of the biggest influences in how new platforms are being evaluated now is based upon the experience shoppers have on a similar website. If a user has a tremendous shopping experience on a website such as Amazon, they are now more likely to evaluate a new platform based with the good experience setting a new bar. This means that first impressions, especially for new websites, are now more important than ever before.Can I Get Your Feedback?: By deploying an online community of verified users and testers, UserTesting has been able to create more accurate feedback loops that can be iterated and retested in real-time. By using humans instead of various testing services, clients can gauge how an individual interacts and connects with a site, while detailing what they like and don’t like about each product.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The customer experience has never been more important than it is today. Why is that? d Because consumers and enterprises are no longer just evaluating their needs based solely on a product’s pros and cons. Instead every purchase decision is being thought through on multiple levels, including whether or not a product is the right fit for personal and professional needs, and looking into the deeper value of a product as it relates to the bigger picture of a company. Simply put, if you are not placing an emphasis on delivering the best possible customer experience to make those decisions easier and more seamless, you’re fighting an uphill battle from day one.“From a competitive perspective, everyone's upping their game. Everyone's wanting to provide that latest, greatest experience and capability for our customers. As the technologies have evolved, particularly around things you can do in platforms, the opportunity for a digital experience is much more customer-driven now than ever before.”Mark Arnold is the Vice President of Digital Customer Experience at HPE Pointnext Service, a support and services arm of Hewlett Packard Enterprises. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mark dives into the changing needs and expectations of customers and why the experience you give them has to rise to new levels. Plus he explains why IT support centers such as call centers are having a harder time meeting consumers’ needs.Main TakeawaysThe One True King: The only way for companies to build a true digital customer experience is for those experiences to be completely tailored to the client or the person they are serving. This may sound simple in today’s day and age, but IT support centers, such as call centers, still struggle being able to tailor their customer service to the person they are speaking with.So Lonely, I’m So Lonely: One of the key reasons that IT support centers struggle with being able to personalize information is because the system is not constructed in a way that allows for the easy transfer of information. Removing the silos that are currently constructing this process is the only way to make it better. A New Driver for Success: From a customer perspective, the level of competition within the marketplace has risen to a point where the product by itself is no longer the reason that a customer makes decisions. Now, those decisions are being made in conjunction with how the buyer perceives the service experience and the offerings you are able to make them.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The digital world continues to evolve a rapid pace. Customers’ expectations have risen, and the user experience now must match the rising tide of their needs. So while cloud has made it faster and easier to deliver services, the same can’t be said for troubleshooting and solving issues caused by cloud connectivity. That is, until now...“Cloud A.I. changes both the experience between the business and his customer, between the business and his vendor. From a customer to business point of view, where it really ends up is fewer support tickets. So at that level, A.I. is basically proactively finding problems ahead of time. And when you reduce the number of support tickets, that translates into a better user experience.” Bob Friday is the Co-founder and CTO of Mist, a Juniper company. Mist is deploying artificial intelligence via the cloud to help revolutionize the world of IT. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Bob delves into how the Mist cloud network is helping companies save time and money with network automation, while also delivering a reliable and efficient network that creates a valuable customer experience. Plus, he previews the future of automated assistants in IT.Main TakeawaysA Real Problem Solver: One of the biggest advantages of cloud-based A.I. infrastructure is the ability for A.I. to quickly and efficiently identify network problems — such as poorly-configured routers or offline systems — and correct them before the user ever knows there is a problem. All About the... Insights!: While a system’s ability to identify and self-correct its own issues is important, being able to break down the data it is ingesting everyday is critical. By doing this, you will be able to understand where those same issues are coming from to prevent problems from ever occurring .The Next Big Thing: Automated assistants will be the next big shift for all IT departments. As IT administrators begin to trust A.I. on a deeper level, and trust the data that their systems are providing them, the use of A.I. and its abilities will continue to expand into assistants that can help administrators complete rudimentary tasks.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There is no way to sugar coat it: consumers are nervous about their privacy. And rightfully so. There is a trail of data bread crumbs you leave behind wherever you go, and people are watching and following along — some with good intentions, but not all. The internet as we know it is controlled by centralized networks, but one company is helping change the playing field by taking away the power of those networks and offering it to the masses.“You shouldn't have to be a security expert to know what applications you use in order to have the level of privacy that you prefer,” Dr. Waterhouse said. “We believe that things like a decentralized VPN are a step in the direction of decentralizing a lot of different kinds of messaging and communication platforms. There are definitely very layered challenges in what that means.”Dr. Steven Waterhouse is the CEO of Orchid Labs, an open-source decentralized VPN system that is allowing users to shield themselves from internet lurkers following their every move. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Steven describes what this open-source system could look like, and he dives into the rising tide of privacy issues, why regulation has gone too far, and the benefits of an open-source system.Main TakeawaysPower to the Users: Over the last few years, a rising tide of privacy concerns has continued to swell amongst internet users. By decentralizing communication, and masking a person’s ability to be tracked, users can freely surf the web without being worried about a third party tracking them or selling their data. What’s Mine Is Yours: As an open-source system, Orchid’s VPN code is made freely to be distributed around the world. This is important because the company believes that decentralized VPNs are a key component of creating a decentralized internet.Crypto-for-VPN? Since Orchid Labs allows its users to layer their VPN usage — which means they could be connected to multiple VPN sites at a time — the company uses a form of cryptocurrency as a central payment method, as opposed to using a credit card system. By using cryptocurrency instead of credit cards, users are able to free-send coins back and forth without a central authority figure and without a paper trail of data.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The best products and solutions are often born out of personal experiences. For Sam De Brouwer, CEO and Co-Founder of doc.ai, her breakthrough moment occurred after her son was hospitalized and induced into a coma as a result of a severe accident. Frustrated, anxious, and wanting to help, Sam found herself doing what any mother would; looking for ways she could make a difference.“What I was seeing at the hospital, and what I was trying to do for my son, I saw other parents trying to do the same thing. Trying to understand the machines, trying to understand those numbers, trying to understand the language, trying to access the information so that you could ask for second opinions, because the situation was too serious to not ask for a second or third opinion.”With a background at the intersection of technology, research, and healthcare, Sam and her husband launched doc.ai in 2016 in an effort to accelerate digital transformation in the healthcare space. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Sam details some of the issues within the healthcare space when it comes to utilizing data to produce actionable learning models, how neural nets are impacting data collection and the future of edge A.I. in healthcare.Main TakeawaysA Better Way: The biggest issue with how data is recorded and distributed within the healthcare industry is that all data is siloed and fragmented, meaning that instead of data being easily available to help with learning models and predictive science, the opposite is true, making digital tasks difficult for third party companies.Neural Nets for the Win: By utilizing neural nets, data collection has become as easy as taking a picture. Neural nets are a machine learning technique that gathers data and insights based on previous training data. Doc.ai uses these techniques to record information such as height, weight, and age and then uploads that information to the cloud in an effort to make that data accessible in real-time.iDoctor: The future of the healthcare industry hinges on technologies such as A.I. and federated learning. Doctors and healthcare professionals should be embracing automation techniques in order to not get bogged down by rudimentary tasks that take time away from them and their patients. -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The speed of search has altered our expectations when it comes to conducting research. We can search peer reviews for just about anything, but not enterprise software, not distributed working models, and definitely can’t easily research and search peer reviews on custom implementations, how to best work with a CEO, impacts of work from home initiatives, and other CIO and CTO interests.Meet Pulse Q&A is looking to change that. Pulse QA is the research platform designed and dedicated to helping CIOs and technology leaders make smarter decisions through the power of crowdsourced data, and it starts with building a massive powerful community of the top CIOs and CTOs in the industry.“The best way to describe Pulse is what Google is to search, Pulse is to research. People have gotten really used to being able to do a search and come up with fast, accurate, and free result. Informed decisions and research on the other hand is extremely hard where you have to set up an account, become a master in how to do surveys, figure out how to contact the right people, especially on the B2B side this is even more challenging.” Mayank Meht, Founder and CEO of Pulse Q&A, wants to close the gap between search and the latency of crowdsourced data. The goal: Get back real results, in real-time to help leadership executives make better and more informed decisions. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mayank discusses the platform and all of its benefits, and he gives some insight into some of the top conversations CIOs are having today.Main TakeawaysDo You Have Two Forms of ID? By sourcing and authenticating real CIOs, members of the C-Suite are able to confidently ask their peers questions, while gaining insights and information about struggles and solutions that other members have experienced. And this is all data that is not available or difficult to source on other platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Data and Real-time Responses: By limiting the people allowed in these communities to CIOs, Pulse Q&A has the ability to collect valuable insights while turning around real-time responses in order to give the question asker, actionable insights at the speed of search.The Three Big Issues: There are three main challenges that CIOs are facing today. The first is how businesses will effectively return to normal after the pandemic subsides. The second is digital transformations and how businesses can get actionable ROI from their technology stacks. And lastly, how to source through the endless amount of vendors in the space today.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You’ll rarely hear anyone say that you’re over-communicating. But what you will hear is that with the influx of communication platforms, especially when it comes to messaging and email services, there are more ways to communicate than ever before, and that causes some trickle-down effects. With so much data and messages coming and going through a system, and emails clogging out your in an outbox, finding a way to sift through each of those messages, decipher it, and identify what is meaningful is becoming increasingly more difficult.“Email has over 3 billion active users today and is rapidly growing, It will be over five and a half billion by 2025. That intuitively makes sense. Everyone with a smartphone has an email address, everyone with internet access at all, has an email address. And it's this repository of not only all your personal activity, but it's absolutely the database of how you run your business and do a lot of interaction from there across your calendar, across your address book, across your email, it handles a lot of information going in and out of it as a natural jumping-off point.” Gleb Polyakov is the CEO and co-founder of Nylas, where he leads strategy, operations and product innovation for the company’s communication API platform. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Gleb details how he led Nylas through a pivot moment three years ago when the product shifted from a consumer-facing software to a backend API. Plus, Gleb details how your first idea is never your best one.Main TakeawaysIf It’s Not Right, Fix It: Even if you have a company that is showing signs of growth and the metrics are positive but the peripheral numbers are not saying what you think they should be saying, don’t be scared to pivot and head in a different direction. The first idea for any company is not always going to be the most successful one. Keep iterating and keep building to find out what works best for your company.An Unstructured Mess: Finding a way to sort through data when it comes to communication platforms remains one of the most challenging and reliable obstacles for developers. The reason? Understanding how to decipher emails and text messages, and understanding various forms of language is difficult to pick apart.A Tipping Point: The communication sector remains at a tipping point. As more and more software services provide chat and messaging services, finding a way to properly decipher and break down the data in those messages is growing in importance with few providers that can properly and reliably source that data.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

With much of the workforce in 2020 operating from the friendly confines of their own homes, nothing became more clear than this: tech skills are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Leveling-up those skills, though, is a team effort, and it’s incumbent on employers to make sure they are providing their employees with the proper opportunities to expand their knowledge, and, in effect, their career potential. Joe Atkinson is the Vice Chair and Chief Products and Technology Officer at PwC, one of the largest professional services firms in the country, and a company that is setting a precedent when it comes to upskilling its workforce.“Everybody should have an opportunity to grow their skills. It doesn't matter where you are in the organization If you have a desire and an inclination, then we believe that employers have a degree of obligation, almost like an employee benefit. It's the new 401k to make those assets of learning technical skills available.”On this episode of IT Visionaries, Joe details why PwC places such an emphasis on upskilling, the importance of growth throughout an employee’s career journey, and how the employee experience is shifting how PwC conducts its business.Main TakeawaysLeveled Up: In order for your business to continue to evolve, so must your employees and their skills. Corporations need to start putting an emphasis on upskilling their employees, and that includes everyone from entry-level warehouse employees to those in upper management. If you don’t invest in your employees throughout their career life cycle, your business practices can stall and your workforce won’t be as agile.Bob the Builder: While it’s important to work with third-party vendors to fill your product needs, it is equally as important to continue to innovate and build your own products. By building your own products, you have an opportunity to fill in the gaps within the marketplace while providing your clients with products that are unique to them and fits their needs.Death of Billable Hours: The billable-hours approach is no longer a viable way of conducting business. By placing an emphasis on activity, the consequence is that you tend to overwork your employees, which eventually leads to diminishing returns and employee burnout.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The image of a hooded individual illuminated by the glare of a computer screen hacking into a company’s network is the classic picture of what a cyber attack looks like. The reality, though, is these attackers are almost never a one-man band, but rather a sophisticated team armed with the same technology companies often deploy against them. But what makes these threats from these attackers so devious is not the technology they use, but rather that they never use the same approach twice.“Cyber is big business and unfortunately it's causing a tremendous amount of business disruption. They continue to increase in sophistication and they have new and novel approaches. There are constantly unknown threats and new threat actors and that's part of the reason it gets very challenging. In some ways, a lot of the focus is people love to hear about all these cool techniques they use, but it's the fact that they're constantly evolving and changing the techniques that make it so difficult for security teams and for what I think of as static security tools to stay current against this range of threats.”Nicole Eagan is the Chief A.I. Officer at Darktrace, a leader in autonomous cybersecurity A.I. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Nicole dives into why A.I. is a good tool, but not one powerful enough to prevalent today’s cybercriminals. Plus, she explains how security systems must constantly be learning, the impact IoT devices have had on security threats, and why algorithms are at a war with one another.Main TakeawaysUpdate Available: Companies are utilizing A.I. to predict and prevent attacks, but there is one major issue: the data sets they are using to prevent attackers from entering their networks are often filled with old datasets. By using old data, your artificial intelligence cannot understand how to protect you from new attacks.The War of Algorithms: Future cyber attacks are no longer going to simply come from hackers infiltrating a network. Instead, these attackers are becoming more sophisticated and will use machine learning techniques to understand the type of behaviors the user is using in order to build a sophisticated attack. The only way to combat these types of attacks, is to use real-time self-learning A.I. systems that can detect abnormalities within a system.Stop Acting in Silos: Security prevention needs to stop operating in silos when it comes to preventing attacks. Cyber criminals are no long attacking users through email or through loca networks, so security teams need to stop focusing on a niche area. Instead, develop an all encompassing self-learning platform that is constantly monitoring all aspects of your business and your employees.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Thiele has spent his entire life in and around IT infrastructure, even building his own fair share of data centers. But if there is one thing about the entire process that he finds vexing, it’s the wasted time between when companies start negotiating contracts for data centers to when it actually launches.. So after a 27-year career working with other companies, he set out on his own and started Edgevana with a simple goal: to help companies get to the edge faster.“Getting to the edge may seem hard for some, but it's not for lack of capability,” he said. The problem for most is not that stuff isn't available, but how do I find it? And how do I make quick determinations about what combination of services or capabilities or partners do I need in order to solve the problem or create the opportunity that I'm pursuing for my business?”Mark joined IT Visionaries to discuss why streamlining the buying and implementation process is the key to moving quickly to the edge. Plus, Mark touches on why edge computing continues to be on the rise and what IT leaders should be looking for in edge technology.Main TakeawaysWhat To Solve For: At the end of the day, the main goal of edge computing is to solve two things: t latency, and how data is going to be used.Hit the Easy Button: The negotiation process and implementation of new data centers in the past has been a grueling and time-consuming process. Edgevana is simplifying that process by allowing companies to quickly negotiate contracts and string together equipment at various locations in partnership with other Edgevana users. By doing this, Edgevanaa is giving more users access to the market at a quicker pace.Data Centers Still Exist?: Even with cloud infrastructure, data centers will continue to thrive well into the future because they serve two main purposes: first, companies continue to use them as a more reliable source for some of their aging technologies. Second, even if most companies were to convert their old technology stacks over to the cloud, most of those technologies would still be running from the physical data centers, so enterprises would then be paying to store this data in two different spaces.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The imagery has been etched in our minds for decades. Thieves and vandals riding into town on the back of their horses with one mission in mind: robbing a bank to steal your cash. This is the bad actor archetype, and it has stayed much the same for years. But the problem is, Hollywood’s depiction of those events are no longer accurate in today’s digital world. Nobody is physically robbing banks anymore, because they don’t have to. “If you're a bad guy, you rob a bank and you're going to get caught immediately. And that person is definitely getting caught. But if you look at what cyber attackers are doing now, they're looking for ways to digitally impersonate someone or get to your employees. From there, they can get to your network, or your data. So then they can hold you hostage without really physically harming you, and you could lose tons of money.” Fleming Shi, the CTO of Barracuda Networks, a security software platform that is designed to prevent those robbers from accessing your accounts or your business. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Fleming discusses the evolution of cyber attacks and how botnets are infiltrating your system much like a virus finds its way into your body, and why fighting off those attacks is the biggest challenge facing cybersecurity teams today.Main TakeawaysBuilt with a Security Mindset: As cybersecurity threats become more advanced and personalized, the onus to protect the user should no longer fall solely on security teams. Instead, application developers must start building their cloud applications with security in mind. If they don’t, the bad actors will continue to find vulnerabilities within systems based on the way they are built. Not All Bots Are Good Bots: Bad bot personas are bots that are identified as malicious based on their pattern of behavior. These bots often disguise themselves as user-agent bots, which search sites in order to rank them, then infiltrate your network and mine for your data. How to Spot A Thief: One of the most effective ways to spot “bad bots” is to follow their behavior patterns. Typical bot activity peaks during the early morning and late at night, which may indicate if that bot is a safe bot or a cybercriminal.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every day, millions of truckers grab their keys, hop in their semis, start their engines, and head out on the open road to pick-up and deliver billions of products to millions of stores across the U.S. The trucking industry is an integral piece of what fuels America’s economy. And businesses around the country rely on these trucks to pick-up and receive orders on time, especially as the need for on-demand products and delivery has risen in conjunction with the rise of online shopping and mobile technology. So why then has the shipping industry been so slow to change and adopt new technologies? Grant Goodale, is a former Amazon employee and now the CTO of Convoy. When he learned that 40% of trucks you see on the road are often carrying empty loads because of a poor booking process, he and his partners asked themselves a simple question: how do they disrupt the trucking industry with software that optimizes the user experience and eliminates this inefficiency?“We built what was probably the smartest pricing engine in the industry to help us understand all of those variables, all of those inputs as to what a trucking job should cost so that we can get the best pricing from shippers for a given job, and then help carriers get the right price for the work that they're doing.” On this episode of IT Visionaries, Grant discusses how Convoy has optimized the booking experience for shippers and drivers with its software, and how that new process has helped not just the bottom line, but the environment as a whole. Plus, Grant explains why the trucking industry has been slow to adopt new technologies, and some tips for early-stage start-ups on how to extend your runway.Main TakeawaysLost in Time: Most trucking companies employ less than six trucks, which means these small businesses often don’t have staffing for sales, marketing, or a website. Because of the structure of these businesses, most drivers were booking and negotiating jobs on Load Boards, which meant companies had to physically post jobs, drivers had to call to negotiate rates and book gigs themselves, all assuming the physical postings were up-to-date. It is a system in clear need for optimization.Better for the Environment: 40% of the trucks you see on the road are empty trucks shuttling between jobs. Because a majority of drivers don’t book their next job until one delivery is completed, their routes are not optimized, which means more time on the road and more time between jobs. If drivers can cut back just 1% from that 40%, they can eliminate nearly 380 million gallons of diesel gas used each year.Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew: As a start-up, every new job you take on chips away at your supply. Make sure you are as cautious about your supply fragmentation as much as possible to make sure you aren’t overextending yourself or your business’s capabilities.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s true what they say, “finding a job is a full-time job.” After all, as the hiring process becomes more global and recruiters are constantly inundated with an influx of applications, on the other end of that equation are the candidates submitting those applications, who grow weary as the days go by with no response.As with most things, processes change over time, but, with some technical exceptions, the hiring process has mostly remained the same. Until now. Vivek Ravisankar felt called to address the pain points of hiring after speaking with a recruiter. a“I remember walking up to a recruiter one day and asking, ‘Hey, can you tell me how this whole recruiting process works?’ He pulled out his Macbook and he had two folders: pass and fail. He would look at a resume for 10-15 seconds and determine which folder [the resume] was actually going to go into. I was thinking, ‘Man, you have way too much power in your hands.’ But I can also understand and empathize with them because if you're Amazon, you don’t have a better way to do it either. So that was a trigger point. This needs to be fixed.”The fix came in the form of HackerRank, a platform that helps developers put skills over pedigree. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Vivek explains what that means, and how it helps developers stand out from the crowd. Plus he explains the dangers of utilizing A.I. throughout the hiring process and why distributed workforces are great for company diversity.Main TakeawaysSupply and Demand: As companies continue to trend towards software companies, developers currently remain one of the most sought after candidates. However, that trend is drastically changing as the number of companies that employ developers rise.A.I. Is Not A Magic Pill: When it comes to the hiring process, A.I. should be used as a way to streamline your workflow, but not as an indicator of if a person is fit for a particular job or an identifier of their hard skills. Instead, use the technology to identify if candidates have similar skills to past hires and then sort them into individual piles to accelerate the process.Whatcha Going to Do With all That...Data: Data is what fuels HackerRank’s platform insights. In order to build a comprehensive candidate profile, the company conducts hundreds of thousands of challenges and assessments a day. The data that is then gathered, sorted and distributed to help construct a candidate profile, but is also used as a learning tool for each applicant to better understand where they rank amongst their peers.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Netskope CEO and founder Sanjay Beri left his role with well-known Juniper Networks, he knew the internet and the way that we protected ourselves virtually was changing. The issue is that while Sanjay knew companies needed to leave their old security tactics behind, convincing members of the C-Suite that they needed to invest in new security measures is a very difficult task. So he showed them why.“Without them telling us anything, we basically uncovered all their shadow IT, all their data that was being filtered not by malicious people, but by their own employees who just didn't know better,” he said. “It's so apparent that people don't know where their data is and by showing them where their data is they realize how exposed they really are.”Sanjay is working to make security more proactive, less reactive, and more educational via his new venture with Netskope. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Sanjay discusses how companies can uplevel their security techniques, why SaaS applications are leaving your data unprotected and exposed in areas you might not realize, and why it’s time security companies start educating their peers on best practices.Main TakeawaysLost in Translation: Every 10 to 15 years, the language of the internet changes. As that happens, your SaaS application must change with it. Software that is 15 years old, is unable to understand the new intricacies of the internet, which leaves companies and users vulnerable to various threats.Living on the Edge: Your security needs to live where your employees reside — which recently is at the edge — so that no matter where employees work, your system is there to protect them. With so many employees working remotely in 2021, most of a company’s data and documents are living in the cloud, even if your company is not cloud-native, so necessary security needs to be put in place to protect it.Here to Educate and Protect: Security teams have a responsibility to not only protect their end-users, but they also must be educating the end-users on why and how they are putting themselves at risk. The purpose of this educational philosophy is so that users can understand the risks once they have been briefed, and you can then take action to minimize risk.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have you ever wondered about how your favorite newsletter ended up in your inbox? Who sent it? Why was that email scheduled for that particular time? What is being tracked when you click that open button? Most likely, those questions haven’t crossed your mind, but that doesn’t change the fact that the digital trail a simple email creates can have a lasting impact on your online persona. Welcome to the world of email marketing, specifically the Mailchimp universe, which includes an all-in one marketing platform that delivers more emails daily than the average consumer can fathom.“We didn't send two billion emails on Black Friday, we delivered two billion emails. What's really interesting for Mailchimp as a platform is that delivery is hard and it's a big part of it but that's really where the story begins. At least when it comes to the email side of things, because delivering it starts it, and then they open it, which gets tracked. They click it. And then when they click it, and they go out to do a thing, they now land on a Mailchimp property. All of those activities the user is taking is going to drive their marketing properly.”Eric Muntz is the CTO of Mailchimp, and on this episode of IT Visionaries, he dives into the ins-and-outs of how the email delivery giant has expanded its offerings in an effort to democratize marketing tools. Eric also touches on why email delivery is just the beginning of any marketing journey and how Mailchimp effectively scaled from a few thousand users to millions of users.TakeawaysJust the Beginning: Email delivery is just the beginning when it comes to the world of email marketing. When you open up an email, that email collects various forms of data and multiple user touchpoints. From the link a user clicks on to determine if the email is secure, to the potential landing page where a person winds up, it all creates multiple responses within the Mailchimp platform, which will then trigger follow-up emails, promo codes, etc. Thundering Herd: Thundering Herd in technology circles refers to the amount of stress that is placed on servers that have traditionally been passive but are now being asked to carry high-traffic loads in a short amount of time. Think of ecommerce sites that get bombarded the second a highly anticipated product goes up for order. In order to avoid crashes and stresses on your infrastructure, you have to constantly be backing up and batching your servers. Started From the Bottom Now We Here: When you’re rising through the ranks of your organization, one of the most important skills to learn is how you go from working on a product to understanding how you can give your team the tools to effectively do their jobs. Likewise, when hiring a staff, it’s important to really focus on the applicants that are just as excited about the project and product as you were when you joined the company.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As the Senior Vice President of Product for Conga, Eric Carrasquilla knows two things: No. 1 products can fundamentally change the workflow of any business. And No. 2, more times than not, customers will tell you what they need, even if they don’t necessarily know how to describe it.“We keep going back to this Apple example, the famous one related to the iPod… No one asked for your entire music catalog in a deck of cards. They asked for a bunch of other stuff. But Steve Jobs, being able to come back and say, ‘I understand the problem you're trying to solve.’ You don't want to lug all this stuff around and it's difficult to go through and do, so what about this?’ And having people go, ‘Oh, yes, it's what I need. And didn't know what to ask for.’” That's the challenge faced by anyone in the business of product development: to deliver revolutionary products and services, without having to be asked to do so. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Eric details how his team goes about meeting that challenge by developing services with the customer experience at the forefront. Plus, he explains the importance of working hand-in-hand with your developers.Main TakeawaysMight Not Be the Product they Want, But it’s the Product They Need: One of the defining features of any company is how it listens and gathers information from its clients. When it comes to product development, this is key. Your clients might not always be able to convey to you the exact problem they need to be solved, but through discovery, research, and multiple conversations, similar themes will begin to emerge that will help your product team understand what needs should be addressed.This isn’t Monopoly: As a product team, it’s important to understand that your department does not have a monopoly on good ideas. Remember, ideas can come from all departments — clients, R&D, product, etc.. Don’t back yourself into a corner and think that only your team knows how to solve problems. Siloed and structured approaches rarely succeed.Acquired Remotely: When you are going through an acquisition, the first thing you need to ask yourself is how do our products complement each other? What areas of the acquiring company are useful and how can we integrate those into our network? When you are doing this in a remote environment, communication is of the utmost importance. You should be constantly over-communicating with your teams to make sure you are achieving the best result, but also making the transition as easy as possible.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Let's be frank. Security and the steps we take to protect ourselves are never top-of-mind. In fact, most users tend to operate under the mindset that bad things happen to other people and companies, never hitting too close to home. Until it does… Maybe it’s an email you click on, or a message that contains sensitive information you pass along to a coworker that ends up in an unsecured inbox. Regardless of the method or point of entry,, bad actors, or hackers will eventually attack if and when they can.“More and more people go into it with the same logic as when people are buying burglar alarms for [their] home. It usually sells greatly when a home in your neighborhood gets broken into. You hear about it and then say, ‘Maybe I should actually protect myself.’ Whenever something like that happens, then those circles start to resonate with it just unfortunately, they need to get burned in order to learn about it.”Alan Duric isn’t one of those kinds of people though. Alan is the CTO and COO of Wire, and he lives with three key terms always top of mind: Security, end-to-end encryption and prevention. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Alan discusses some of the leading trends happening in the security space — including addressing the age-old issue of how users should be more proactive and less reactive. Plus, Alan details why email continues to be the most troubling form of communication.Main TakeawaysYou are The Weakest Link, Goodbye!: Despite all the forms of cybersecurity, email attacks still remain the weakest link because it is tough to regulate and prevent outside actors from infiltrating a system. Instead, passing sensitive information back and forth through email, consider using encryption-protected messaging services.A Little Proactive and Less Reactive: The time is now for companies to take a hard look at how they are protecting themselves and evaluate all options. With various forms of security, including zero trust, encryption, etc. One of the biggest problems when it comes to security understanding the risk vs reward factor. So, Can you Hack this? One of the leading benefits of full end-to-end encryption is the ability to protect every message and every video conference — sending or receiving — from being attacked. When each individual form of communication is encrypted with its own unique key, it’s as if that message is being protected inside its own individual fortress.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The idea of virtual reality has captivated humans for the longest time. After all, the ability to live a second life, free of the physical obstacles that the real world presents is a dream worth falling into. But what if there was a bridge between the powers of virtual reality and its ability to impact the real world? That’s the mission that Ammad Khan, the CEO and Co-founder of IrisVision, set out to make possible.“I have always believed that technology has the tremendous potential of really changing the way we do things every day. And it's become really evident, since the launch of the smartphones in our lives and using the platform capability on the smartphone that so many of the things that we previously could not even think of have become possible.”One way the impossible is becoming reality is through the work of IrisVision, which uses the powers of virtual reality tools to enable people who have been declared legally blind the ability to see again. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Ammad discusses the power of the IrisVision software and provides case studies on how the product is working in the real world. Plus, he details the company’s go-to-market strategy and why it was integral to develop multiple prototypes before making the product widely available. Main TakeawaysBut First, Science: Founded in 2016, IrisVision is based on Dr. Frank Werblin’s research around retinal functions. Werblin and Khan, who possessed a background in mobile technology, worked together to find a software solution for helping individuals with low-vision see again. Virtual reality, combined with the increasing use of technology, allows the eyes to put together pixels, in order to make blurred vision more clear. Test, Test, Test: Before you send any product to market, you need to make sure you have a sound basis for how the product works and perform multiple use cases. Rushing a product to market without understanding how it performs under varying variables could be disastrous. Make sure you take the proper time to prototype your device so when it hits shelves, you’re off and running---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office wants to modernize its technology stack, but to accomplish its ambitious goal, Jamie Holcombe, the CIO for USPTO has two main objectives: snapping out of a spell that binds people to age-old projects, and scaling its current way of doing things.“What I saw was the ability to actually outsource a lot of our infrastructure, and that means not actually having the data center that we currently do in Alexandria, although it's very efficient. What we need to do is have resiliency. And so what I'd like to do is create the ability for our applications to work in the cloud on the internet, instead of having to come to the USPTO data center. And so that's what we're doing right now. We've stabilized our core applications to the point where in COVID-19 we've been able actually to increase our productivity metrics. It's unbelievable how great we're doing in this limited environment.”On this episode of IT Visionaries, Jamie details how his office is bringing its technology stack into the 21st century and how they are expediting the time it takes for a patent to get approved through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.Main TakeawaysYou Better Check Yourself: The discovery process is integral when you are looking to deploy any kind of artificial intelligence or machine learning techniques. Before deploying these algorithms, you need to make sure that you are creating the necessary feedback loops and understand what the data is telling you and where your deficiencies are in your algorithms.Clean-Up Your Room: Before you embark on any digital transformation that affects your customer, you have to make sure that your house is in order first. This can mean updating your network’s infrastructure and finding new ways to manage your data. Same Old Song and Dance: Just because your department or office has been around for hundreds of years, does not mean your processes are perfect. When you have employees that stick around, that’s great! But make sure you are continuously challenging your team to think about new ways and processes to streamline your approach.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The old saying, “look good, feel good,'' fits Stitch Fix perfectly. The direct-to-consumer, online personal styling service has boomed due to its ability to not only match consumers with trendy and comfortable clothes, but to make it a personalized experience for each buyer.“At the end of the day, we want to be rooted in personalization. First and foremost, it's important for us that [consumers] not only come to Stitch Fix to complete a transaction, but that you really think about us as your partner style.”From curating stylish experiences, to matching each individual with their own personal stylist, Stitch Fix and taken eCommerce and the subscription model to the next level. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Tatsiana Maskalevich, the Director of Data Science at Stitch Fix, takes listeners into the algorithms that help curate those experiences and the science behind it all.Main TakeawaysKnow Your Data: With so many avenues to collect data on the internet, the collection process is not the difficult part. The hardest part is how you turn your data into actionable insights that can benefit your customers’ experience. In order to manage your data appropriately, you must be constantly creating feedback loops so you can best understand what is working and what is not working.It’s a Preference Thing: The customer experience is the number one pillar for any successful company. When you are creating curated experiences for your customers, you need to constantly be listening to what works for them and what does not work. Create a great experience by constantly giving your customers reasons to engage with your platform through quizzes and games or other interactive features.Rooted in Data: One of the keys to building a successful data-centric platform is through the individuals constructing it. The algorithm you construct has to accomplish two things: It needs to continuously be learning about the person inputting that data, and it needs to continuously be relaying information back to the source. Focus on the foundation and infrastructure of your algorithm first, then experience second.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if there was a software that could take the guesswork out of finding a career or an employee? And what if that software could not only analyze your technical skills, but also those that could lead you to leadership positions down the road? That would be great news for the hiring managers and everyday Americans who struggle with and feel anxious about the complexities of completing a job search. Lucky for them then, that Eightfold.ai is working to make those worries a thing of the past through artificial intelligence.“What we are doing is using the latest advances in deep learning and machine learning to really understand, not what people have done, but what they are capable of being next. What is their learning ability for a certain skill? If you know statistics and signal processing, you can learn machine learning very quickly. If you are good in programming, you can learn Python quickly. So really trying to understand the learning ability of each individual and using that to assess and understand who can be a great fit in what enterprise, in which function.” With more than 100 customers, including AT&T, Cisco and Liberty Mutual, Eightfold.ai is using the power of data to solve the complexities that come with hiring thousands of employees. On this episode, Ashutosh Garg, discusses how A.I. can be used to identify which candidates are an ideal fit for an organization, and he gives an inside look at their process and the variables they look at to identify that perfect candidate.Main TakeawaysIt’s a Problem Rooted in Data: When you’re building any application that’s rooted in A.I., the number one priority needs to be data collection. The more data you have, the more inferences you are able to make. When Eightfold.ai launched its platform, it only worked with companies that hired more than 10,000 employees over a few years. The idea is that for every 10,000 employees hired, more than 1 million people were called, screened, etc., thus making the data sets they are able to pull from very large.It’s About Fit: Finding the right employee should never be based solely on a candidate's skills. Instead, when you are going through the hiring process, think about how this particular person fits within a role and within your organization as a whole. Just because someone works at Google, does not mean they will fit at Facebook. Instead, evaluate an individual on all the variables a job requires, cultural fit included.The Art of Possibility: Artificial intelligence is unlocking the possibility of not only creating a more diverse workplace, but providing opportunities to people who might not have the traditional background, but who have still found success. The technology unlocks for them the ability to find and pursue many more opportunities.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For years, marketers and technologists have envisioned a world where technology would be advanced enough and smart enough, that they could reach consumers on a deeper and more emotional level. Turns out, through the power of automation, that world may now exist.“I'm really talking about designing your digital channels so that they are cognitive. So you're reacting to what a customer might be feeling or thinking, being compassionate. So you're responding to the customer situation with a genuine effort to help. So we talk about implementing bots. It's not just about trying to impersonate a real-life human being. You really shouldn't try to do that, but we're about creating these solutions around automation that's very much attuned to the customer's emotions, their motivations, their challenges that they're facing.”Robots in the workplace are not new, but automation as a driver of empathy and not a way to accomplish repetitive tasks is a game-changing advancement. Virgil Wong, who you just heard from, is the Chief Digital Officer for HGS Digital, a company focused on making empathy a driving force behind the customer experience. Virgil joins IT Visionaries to discuss how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and intelligent automation are more than just buzzwords. In fact, they are actionable pieces of technology that can drive brand loyalty and create the optimal customer experience.Main TakeawaysLet’s Be a Bit More Empathetic: Whether your customer is interacting with you on a website, mobile app, or via chatbot, the experience they have with your technology must be based on empathy. When customers are working with bots, that automation needs to be able to identify that customers' pain points, and then react in a compassionate manner.Walk Before You Run: When it comes to implementing sweeping customer experience changes, it’s important to start slow and discover what the pain points are, the processes involved, and how the technology can better serve the customer. Time to Upgrade: Your data sets should be driving your roadmap and how you interact with your customers. When you have millions of conversations, take time to digest the themes of those calls and where some of your customers’ common pain points are. Then use that data to drive a better, more empathetic experience.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If there is one thing 2020 made abundantly clear, it’s that the way in which workers operate will never be the same. As employees rushed to set up monitors and home offices in their new environments, businesses across the world were recognizing an inevitable reality:: that this new lifestyle was here to stay.“As this progresses, the next normal is going to be about mobility and flexibility. We've got a taste of this working from home thing that [we’ve] never had before, and they're going to want to do both, which is going to bring on new challenges.”Welcome to the “Next Normal,” where new remote working demands are establishing a host of lifestyle changes for employees, and concurrently creating a larger list of challenges for their employers. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kim Huffman, the VP of Global IT at Elastic, opens up about distributed workforces and why Elastic believes strongly in them. But she is honest about the obstacles that work from anywhere creates when it comes to managing the endpoints of your fleet, and she discusses how IT leaders can handle the transition.Main TakeawaysKnow Your Fleet: For distributed teams, having an understanding of your endpoints is critically important. You need to always be thinking about where you are most vulnerable at those endpoints, and the points of attack they may be opening themselves up to to understand how they can be as secure as possible. Managing your endpointDrink Your Own Champagne: One of the more important operating principals at Elastic is its ability and willingness to test its own products in-house. When you beta test your apps with your own team, it affords you the opportunity to fix bugs or breakdowns within the system prior to that product ever reaching the customer.Is This Secure? Just because you are operating on a VPN network, does not necessarily mean your network is secure. Even when you are on VPN, the user is still subjected to various forms of cyberattacks. As IT leaders, it’s important to constantly be evaluating the incoming information from your devices and managing them at their endpoints.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It is only fitting that Sylvie Veilleux’s current adventure finds her wandering the backroads of the continental United States, cruising across America’s highways in search of her next stop. It’s an odyssey that’s reminiscent of her career path: From a start-up, to Apple, with a pitstop in financial services in between, before finally landing at the powerhouse that is Dropbox as its CIO, Sylvie’s career has been anything but linear.“As an individual, I can get pretty bored easily. And if there was ever a moment that I felt bored, that's when opportunities came to me. I love adventure. I love being challenged. I love being busy. And if I can combine all those things together, then why not? It's been quite fun. This last experience, where I've been working virtually in an RV, is just another place that I've done something so new and different that's kept me going.”While Dropbox is known for its file-sharing prowess, the company, like Sylvie, has expanded its horizons and its footprint in order to aid distributed workforces. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Sylvie discusses her personal journey, the work she’s doing now at Dropbox, and why Dropbox is proving that remote work is here to stay.Main TakeawaysA Remote Worker, Living in A Virtual World: The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed companies to be more agile with their workforces. Just because your team is distributed, doesn’t mean simple company values like culture and team building don’t matter. Time to Unplug: Remote workers shouldn’t be accessible 24/7. Sure, an employee has the ability to be connected to their device at all times, but that does not mean the company should exploit that. When utilizing a remote workforce, find ways to allow employees to disconnect from the company on their days off so they don’t feel required to check things such as emails, or answer calls.Ready, Player One: The ways employees and teams meet in the future will change from the way they are meeting today. CIO’s and technology leaders need to constantly be evaluating the technology they use amongst their teams. This includes taking a hard look at it if it makes the overall experience better for the employee and if it’s not, finding a better solution.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When you’re labeled by Forbes as a “Billion Dollar Start-Up,” the expectations are set pretty high. But for Truepill President and Co-Founder Sid Viswanathan, the goal was never about earning accolades, it was about re-energizing and modernizing an aging healthcare system. “As consumers, we live in a world that's driven by [the fact that] you can order something on your phone and it shows up in that same hour, or that following day. Behind the scenes, that's been really hard to do in healthcare because of all the different interconnected dependencies, and all the complexities of our healthcare system in America. For us, it was really important to simplify that because at the end of the day, the consumer cares about getting their medication on time or getting that lab test in their home. So it was critical for us to make sure that we built our entire infrastructure with that consumer in mind.” The journey from the idea of simplifying the healthcare system to established start-up doing that and more wasn’t an easy one — but Sid knew it wouldn’t be. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Sid discusses how his first entrepreneurial adventure helped pave the way for Truepill, and he explains why the healthcare industry has been slow to implement new technologies. Plus he reveals that oftentimes you might not know your company’s true mission until a few years down the road. Main TakeawaysAdopt and Adapt: In healthcare, the adoption of new technologies has been extremely slow. While the industry as a whole has implemented new measures and techniques, the underlying issue for the lack of adoption centers on the fact that there is no real incentive for pharmacies to change their practices.If You Build it, They Will Come: When you’re first launching a platform, start with the mindset of doing the entire project yourself - no contractors, no DevOps personnel, or software engineers. When you develop the platform yourself it sets your team up to have a longer runway to success and allows you to build longer because you are not taking on the front-end cost of development.Customer Centric: One of the biggest challenges the healthcare industry has faced is the process has not been designed with the customer experience in mind. Regardless of which industry you are in, when you begin to build your products and services with the customer experience in mind, it provides you with the ability to streamline processes that dampen the overall experience.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if instead of saying, “There’s an app for that,” the saying was, “There’s a bot for that?” And what if, instead of spending hours of your day performing repetitive tasks, a bot beneath the surface of your screen was doing the work for you?“With RPA, you're able to make the lives of people at work much, much easier. It improves their own lives, and improves the end customer's life. It improves their business. It improves the value prop they provide. So that is the way I think about it. when you bring [RPA] together and say, I won't sell you A.I., or I won't sell you a cloud-native product. What I will sell you is an experience that allows you to do the things that you want to do in a way that makes sense to you and will be a delight for you to use and your end-user.”That’s Prince Kohli, the CTO of Automation Anywhere, a global enterprise RPA solution platform that brings robotic process automation to industries worldwide. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Prince discusses how RPA is changing the game when it comes to office efficiency. Plus, he details the future of RPA and whether we’ll see a future where everyone eventually will have a digital assistant.Main TakeawaysiRobot: Robotics Process Automation is not about physical robots completing tasks. Instead, RPA is automated software that builds off a set of rules in order to complete repetitive tasks, such as invoicing. The software works in the background on computers, allowing employees to be more productive and creative with their time.Discovery and Auditing: There are two core functions the Automation Anywhere teams follow when they begin working with a client. The first is the discovery process, when they go in and observe what processes could be automated. The second is through auditing, when they gather insights and data in order to build a secure botThere’s a Bot for That: In the future, most employees will have a digital assistant in some capacity, whether that is for filling out calendars or answering emails the technology is already there. It’s adoption that is the issue.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Since the early days of dial-up internet, messenger services have been connecting people around the globe. What started as simple instant messenger text conversations have evolved into an entirely new language filled with emojis, gifs, and videos. Without question, the internet has forever changed the norms around how people communicate.“I was at Facebook at the time, loving Facebook, and the Facebook [ I was at] was unrecognizable from Facebook today. This is back in 2013. The reason I joined when I was at Facebook, I was working on social products and at the time Facebook was seeing explosive growth as people were starting to use the messenger and go talking to their friends on the platform. So we're seeing these new changes in how society communicates because of these new technologies, like Facebook, Twitter, et cetera.That’s Paul Adams, the Senior Vice President of Product at Intercom, a company that took those same ideas and implemented them with the goal of making communication between customers and businesses a two-way street. Paul joined IT Visionaries to discuss why Intercom views its product as a relationship-based platform and what that means for businesses in today’s world. Plus he talks about recognizing the need to pivot when necessary, and the evolution of the chatbot.Main TakeawaysMore than a Bot: In order to engage with your customers in a way that is both effective and scalable, you have to deploy a strategy that is three things: proactive, automated, and human. Proactive in the sense that you are thinking about ways to reach customers, automated in that your system utilizes some form of a chatbot, and human so when the conversation needs more attention, someone is there to assist.Competition Breeds Success: Never look at competition within your space as a negative. Instead, use your competitors as a source of validation that your product is on the right track. Then use that same inspiration to find ways to ideate your platform.Building Relationships: A conversation platform must focus on building relationships — not just with clients, but also with customers. Messaging platforms should integrate ways that users can have a personal and intimate relationship with the end-user, which will ultimately help to drive their engagement.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We can all agree with Ben Hood when he said this about electricity: “Electricity hopefully should be like an Apple product. It just works and you don't have to think about it.”The problem, though, is millions of Americans do have to worry about their electricity. From high energy bills, to understanding the complexity of switching to solar and wind power, consumers around the world are struggling with the burden of not knowing the best and or cheapest alternatives to their current electricity providers. Ben is hoping to bring some answers to the table for those folks. Hood is the co-founder and CTO of WattBuy, a platform that helps people take charge of their electricity, and on this episode of IT Visionaries, he explains why deregulation is helping to solve some of the problems consumers have faced for quite some time. Plus, Ben talks about why the data WattBuy is gathering now will benefit consumers in the future.Main TakeawaysRegulate This: When it comes to electricity, there are a few states within the U.S. that do not regulate electricity. This means that consumers have the option to choose their provider. WattBuy works to streamline this process by providing consumers with estimates on what electricity providers are best for them.The Answer Lies Within the Data: When you are trying to solve complicated problems, such as estimating the cost of electricity, the more data you have, the easier it is to solve your problem. Utilize as many third-party vendors as possible in order to gather the best information possible.1.21 Gigawatts? What the Heck is Gigawatt?: You must always be educating yourself and your consumer. If your goal is to help consumers save as much money as possible, you have to educate them on why the prices are the way that they are.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Never before have product teams been forced to absorb the pain points of their users first-hand like they are today. As companies deploy distributed workforces around the globe, the teams that are tasked with developing and implementing new products are now often utilizing products the same way their consumers are.“Everybody talks about digital transformation, but the COVID-19 situation rapidly accelerated and expanded that. Now you have businesses like a fitness center or restaurant that have gone like completely digital. All their classes are via zoom and they're doing contactless delivery, ordering and payments. These businesses that maybe never thought of the term digital transformation are now completely digital. And the team that I work with every day is helping enable that — whether it's by deploying wifi platforms or making sure that the broadband network has the right type of bandwidth products. And so it's a really great position to be in, to be able to help people get through all this.”That’s Christian Nascimento, the Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for Comcast Business. Christian joined IT Visionaries to discuss how Comcast was able to adjust its infrastructure to account for the mass influx of employees working from home, and he gives some insight into the products they’ve developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to ease the employee experience. Plus, he lets us know why the silver lining to times like these is the ability to gather high-value feedback.Main TakeawaysMeeting A Demand: The ability to scale and meet the growing needs of your customers has never been more important than it is today. When Comcast Business was met with an influx of customers working from home, the company had to make sure that its infrastructure could not only meet the demand of new customers, but also manage the large influx of traffic.Can you Validate This?: When you are developing products and services, make sure the products you’re producing satisfy a need and not just a want. Before you start producing something, gather feedback from your users to make sure that it’s solving a problem for them.Office Space: Distributed workforces now mean workers are no longer forced to work within the confines of an office building. One of the things that has made remote work more readily available is the development of cloud-based applications.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Many of us know that familiar chime. It’s the sound you hear when someone messages you inside a channel on Slack, the business world’s leading communications platform. It’s a sound that has become synonymous with the company, which, as a matter of fact was never supposed to be the platform it has become. Cal Henderson, the co-founder and CTO of Slack, will tell you that the platform that has helped transform the way distributed workforces operate, was actually originally designed as a simple tool his team used to work on a game they hoped to launch. And when that video game failed to take-off and the team was looking for a way to salvage all of the work they did, they saw a light at the end of the tunnel.“We knew we wanted to keep working together and we realized that the way we had been collaborating and working together while working on this game, the set of tools that we'd built, we realized we always wanted to keep working together in that way. We wanted to use a set of tools like that. And if we did, maybe other small development companies like us would, and so we turned that into the product and that became Slack.”On this episode of IT Visionaries, Cal discusses Slack’s journey. He dives into its initial struggle as a video game developer, and details the pivot they made to turn it into one of the premiere platforms for distributed workforces used around the world. Main TakeawaysPivot! Pivot!: During its infancy, the Slack team was focused on developing a video game. But once they realized the product-market fit wasn’t there, they quickly realized that the tools they were using to communicate were great for collaborating, which led to a complete pivot in the business model. Tweet Tweet: When you’re developing a platform that is built around the user experience, one of the easiest and fastest ways to build a feedback loop is through social media. When Slack wants to get an idea of what issues customers are having in real-time, they look at what users are saying to them on social media. Then, once they have an idea of those pain points, they work with them to rectify those issues.The Office: While more and more employees begin working from home, distributed workforces are only growing. However, that doesn’t mean the physical office is going away. Teams will still use office spaces for collaborating and ideating. The use of platforms such as Slack, serve as tools to amplify those creative sessions.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For years, cybersecurity teams have worked at length to solve one common problem: email attacks. But how do you prevent bad actors from infiltrating an employee’s inbox? And how do you prevent that same employee from opening a malicious email that doesn’t look or feel suspicious? Eyal Benishti is the CEO of Ironscales, a self-learning email security platform that is attempting to answer those simple questions.On this episode of IT Visionaries, Eyal discusses how the Ironscales platform uses self-learning technology to help provide a safe email experience for all, and why the pathway to this safer internet is through a decentralized solution.Main TakeawaysBad Actors: Phishing attacks are becoming much more sophisticated. One way you can help prevent malicious emails entering an employees inbox, is to have a better understanding of the types of emails that person receives on a day-to-day basis. If your platform is personalizing your security based on the individual, you have a better chance of noticing which emails are not supposed to be there.Humans are the Solution, Not the Problem: For years there was an idea that humans could not detect bad actors, or prevent phishing attacks. Instead, there was an over reliance on technology. If you simply rely on technology, your system will fall behind very quickly. Instead, deploy an active and passive platform that is continually learning while also gaining insights from its user.Decentralized: Centralized solutions are dependent on data points and research from one specific source. In order to have a system that can detect and prevent multiple types of bad actors, you need a decentralized approach that can gather research from multiple sources.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Never before have companies adopted digital transformations at such a rapid pace. But as the speed of those digital agendas are accelerated, should engineers and software developers around the globe be the ones responsible for protecting your data?Cillian Kieran, CEO and Co-founder of Ethyca, a company focused on helping enterprises with managing their privacy concerns by automating the process. Cillian joined IT Visionaries to discuss a host of topics including how companies can protect their users through simple design functions, the confusion between security and privacy, and why an autonomous digital presence may never exist again.Main TakeawaysYou Gotta Comply: As governments get a better handle on how information gathering needs to be regulated, companies can no longer rely on manually updated data maps. It’s important to have a clear and concise understanding of where your data is coming from, who has access to your data, and how that data is being used.Designed with You in Mind: Software has v become part of the central infrastructure for society over the last 30 years. Software engineers can no longer be cavalier about how they collect their data. Instead, they need to understand that the fundamental way that systems are built and designed has to be with privacy in mind. If engineers don’t make this shift themselves, they’ll be forced to make the change by regulations.Right Tool for the Job: In order for engineers to keep up with regulations surrounding privacy, they need to be empowered with the proper tool for the job. An ecosystem of designed software built with privacy in mind that maps data appropriately will help organizations keep up with the changing environment.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It’s no secret that for year’s CIO and CTO’s have stressed about the idea of undergoing digital transformations. After all, the adoption and implementation of new technologies can be stressful, but the timeline to complete this roadmap is often littered with obstacles and delays. Jay Jamison knows this all too well. It was during his time at Hewlett Packard Enterprises that he began wondering if there was a better, more efficient route. Turns out, there was.“I don't want to go to a CIO and say [their digital transformations] are going to take three years, when it really is going to be five,” Jamison said. “I want to be able to go to a CIO and say ‘We're going to get you a solution in place that's going to create value for your business in this quarter.’”The solution Jay is referring to is the growing use of low-code application platforms. Today, Jay serves as the Chief Product and Technology Officer at QuickBase, a low-code solution that is being deployed by Fortune 500 companies such as Southwest Airlines, Columbia and SiriusXM Satellite radio. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Jay takes us into what that low-code solution looks like, and why it might be the remedy to the stress of digital transformations.Main TakeawaysMind the Gap: One of the biggest advantages low-code provides is the ability to help companies deploy and iterate applications at a rapid pace. Low-code also helps democratize DevOps, which is allowing non-developers to work on deploying software.Operation Agility: When your customers have the ability to be deeply involved in the research and development of applications that they are going to use, it leads to a process known as operational agility. When that happens, your customers will adopt and deploy the application at a quicker pace.The Road Less Traveled: Companies often stress about their digital transformation roadmaps — which can take years to implement. Instead, focus on a dual-track solution. Work on changing over your bedrock technologies and allow low-code software to handle your smaller issues. This way you can still pivot and scale applications as needed.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The information superhighway was a term coined in the 90s, but it’s still a useful term in 2020. Never before has the internet been more accessible — or more needed — than it is today. But even with technological advancements such as connected devices in most homes and accessible network connections in many cities and towns, there still remains almost a third of households in the United States that don’t have access to the internet. Morgan Kurk is the CTO of Commscope, a company you’ve probably never heard of, but one that more than likely powers the internet lines that run to your home. Morgan joined IT Visionaries to discuss the growing digital divide across the country, how the information superhighway actually works, and why some types of data lines that power your internet connection are on their way out.Main TakeawaysThere’s a Lag: Currently one of the biggest issues surrounding communication networks is that of latency. While the lag experienced in Zoom calls and movie buffering is annoying, the bigger issue actually revolves around software. Most internet-based software is designed to operate at the highest capacity and if networks can’t keep up, consumers are going to experience vexing results.A Growing Divide: Currently a third of the continental United States is without access to broadband internet. But there are two ways companies are working to close this gap: the first is through a subsidized government internet, and the second is through a series of satellites that will help provide access to more rural areas.Converging Network: Currently, a lot of internet infrastructures are going through a convergence. Whether it’s a network like 5G, a coax or fiber line, many of the networks these sources operate on are converging to operate more efficiently with one another.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Irina Krechmer has been the CTO of Blue Apron for a little more than a year. When she was hired, her objective was to help guide the company through the process of upgrading its technology stack. While that remains one of her primary responsibilities to date, but certain world events have shifted priorities in ways neither she nor anyone else could have expected. So what happens when your company goes from an important business to an essential one? And how do you properly pivot to make sure your technology stack is scalable when called upon? Irina joined IT Visionaries to discuss how Blue Apron made those changes and she explains the role food delivery services will play moving forward.Main TakeawaysScale, Scale, Scale: Having scalable technology is more important than ever. When Blue Apron was hit with an influx of orders overnight, its main priority was to make sure its technology stack could handle those orders without delay. Design your stack with the mindset that it might need to change overnight and design it with the idea that you will need to make changes at a moments.Don’t Stop Innovating: Never be satisfied with the status quo. Just because Blue Apron suddenly had an influx of new customers didn’t mean the company could sit back on its laurels. It needed to continue to satisfy customer needs in new and different ways. This meant continuing to come up with new ideas —, like implementing the ability to order multiple boxes a week — to figure out how to meet customers’ needsThe Beauty of Collaboration: Listen to your teammates and trust in their abilities. Never before has collaboration across teams been as important as it is in today’s work environment.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There’s no bigger buzzword in technology than the term digital transformation. Stressed with the burden of fading legacy technologies, for years companies have viewed the process of upgrading their technology stack as a luxury rather than a necessity. Now, as more employees abide by work from home orders, that directive has shifted and those transformations are at the forefront of companies' needs. Christopher Rigg is the COO of EKI Digital, a company with the mission of simplifying the daunting task of upgrading technology stacks through quantitative analysis. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Christopher discusses the growing need for putting the employee experience first, the war to accumulate and retain talent and why low-code offerings are helping organizations around the world operate efficiently.Main TakeawaysAnalysis by Paralysis: By taking a quantitative approach when looking at your tech stack, you can have a better understanding of the steps you need to take in order to successfully manage your digital transformation. Look past your legacy technologies and focus on the hard numbers so you can tell where you can spend money, what software you can eliminate, and focus on the areas of need.Retain Talent: In order to retain talent, you must deploy an employee experience that is seamless and efficient, but also one that is appealing. Focus on software that enables your employees to do their job where they are, and focus on the pieces of technology that make working remotely more appealing.No-Code, Low-Code: Low-code offerings are enabling organizations to operate at a much more efficient level. While engineering is a competitive field, by offering low-code opportunities, organizations can operate at a more efficient pace while deploying coders who might not be as skilled but have a better understanding of the organization---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All good things must come to an end and on this episode of IT Visionaries, after more than 200 episodes, countless conversations and numerous trips to the top of the Apple charts, Ian Faison is stepping down as host of the show and passing the baton to Albert Chou. Albert joins Ian to give some background on who he is and his background in tech and entrepreneurship, and then the two chat about the evolution of the show during its first two years, and the trends in the IT industry that are setting the stage for the future. Key TakeawaysYour Host For The Evening Is: After more than 220 episodes, Ian Faison is stepping down as host of IT Visionaries. In his place, Albert Chou will assume the role of host. Accelerating the Digital Agenda: Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations were forced to accelerate their digital agendas. With more employees working remotely, along with more C-level executives feeling those same pains, employee experience has been put at the forefront of company needs. Digital transformations have moved from being a wish-list item to being a priority.Owning It: The employee experience takeover has quickly risen as a hot-button issue among the C-suite. But who should be taking ownership of a digital employee renaissance and what role does the CTO and CIO play in managing it?---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you ask most CIOs and CTOs what their biggest concern is, a majority of those leaders might respond with one simple question: How do we manage risk in a way that is effective and cost-efficient? Jon Siegler is the Chief Product Officer at LogicGate, a company that’s working to solve that very question with its platform. In this episode of IT Visionaries, Jon discusses how the platform is revolutionizing the risk-management industry, while putting its customers at the center of attention. Main Takeaways Experience Matters: When deploying software, the customer experience and user interface has to be at the forefront of your thinking. As more and more CEOs become familiar with applications in the cloud, your software must adopt that same design thinking. Software has to be easily accessible and easily understandable. Feedback Loop: When launching products, it’s important to maintain some kind of feedback loop with customers. When LogicGate launches new products, they are tested time and time again before they are ever deployed. In order to keep these feedback loops open, deploy focus groups and continually send out surveys to constantly funnel in those insights. Budget Matters: Implementing security costs money, and, unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges companies face when it comes to governing risk is simply a lack of budget. Many risk and security departments lack the necessary funding in order to upscale their technology stack, which is a problem that needs to be solved with cooperation with other members of the C-Suite. --- IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.