IT Visionaries

It used to be the case that we mostly proved our identity by offering up a piece of paper. Perhaps that seems silly now — at least a little. In the digital age, that is definitely no longer the situation — and for good reason. Right now, we have difficulties of our own. Today, our digital information seems like it is everywhere and available for anyone to access, whether they are well intentioned or not. Because there is so much information, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to prove who someone actually is or is not. Through the use of A.I., Persona answers the fundamental question: Are you who you say you are? Rick Song is the CEO and Co-Founder of Persona, and he believes removing humans from the verification process is part of the solution.Main Takeaways:Identity Service Tools: Building identity infrastructure can be incredibly challenging for companies if that is not their area of expertise. Rather than having to create that structure from scratch, integrating an A.I. platform can make identity verification much easier. Using A.I. technology increases speed, privacy, and specificity.Tailoring to Companies and People: Many companies and people suffer due to lack of trusted identity services geared directly for them. Companies typically have difficulty identifying their customers. Through the use of A.I. technology, customers can be reached that historically have not had access to important resources.Learning to Sell: It’s definitely not easy transitioning from engineering to selling. Good friends, mentors, practice, and lots of honesty help. Focusing on the customer rather than what the company does is the key. Find what the customer cares about and hone in on that. ---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 Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools.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 times we think about ideas in terms of debate — that there are only two ideas that are oppositional in nature and that one is superior to the other. This is true right now in the network conversation concerning an industry push toward either decentralized edge computing or more centralized network systems. What if, as is often the case, there is another way to think about duality where a unity lies somewhere in between? Raj Yavatkar, CTO of Juniper Networks, believes that to be the situation in terms of the debate for supremacy between decentralized versus centralized networks. “So before I get into the debate, which is a very interesting debate, you can say that three factors, a trio of trains, are coming together. People are putting more and more workloads to the public cloud, the 5G infrastructure, which is very densified, and there [are] micro cells.There's a densification of the traffic, which is at the edge. And third is the new applications based on A.I., M.L. and analytics. So when you look at all these three trends, it's not so much just sending the traffic to the public cloud. You're using edge from multiple lists.” In this episode of IT Visionaries, Raj proposes that, in truth, networks can be both things simultaneously as they become increasingly “aggregated at the edge.” He also shares that teleportation via quantum networking is occurring right now.Main TakeawayAggregation at the Edge: Rather than an either or proposition concerning decentralized edge computing or centralized network consolidation, there is a great deal of network aggregation at the edge. On one hand, there is a drive to centralize due to the ability to send traffic to the public cloud. Alternatively, issues concerning limits of data transfer across national boundaries due to GDPR regulations as well as the potential need for local networks for automation are promoting edge computing. In reality, aggregation is still occurring but simply on the edge.Customers Drive Tech Advances: Customers are the vanguard of technological advancement and driving development based upon their evolving needs. Customers increasingly want automation and predictive analytics to support maintenance. In terms of network service, this includes maintaining the physical products that support the network operating seamlessly.Quantum Networking is Real: Not only is computing capacity advancing rapidly but so is communications. Simply put, quantum networking is real. It is based upon the idea of encoding data into quantum bits in order to send it along a network. In other words, teleportation is not relegated to the realm of science fiction. It’s happening now.---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 solution starts with an idea. Consumers needed more home security, so the founders of Ring came up with the smart doorbell. Home owners had trouble finding time to complete recurring tasks like vacuuming, so Roomba automated the vacuum. But despite those great ideas, every founder needs some help along the way. Or more specifically, they often need financial backing to scale a business, and they need someone to believe in them when others won’t. “We often joke that our best investments are the ones that nobody else likes. We're investors in Dollar Shave Club and I was told that was stupid. It was acquired for a billion dollars. With Ring, people laughed at me and they're like, ‘You invested in a doorbell business?’ A lot of times the ones that aren't necessarily obvious are really the best opportunities. So it was digging in and understanding if this does work, is it going to be really valuable?”Kevin Dunlap is Co-founder and Managing Partner of Calibrate Ventures, a VC firm focused on funding early-stage A.I. and automation companies. Every year Kevin and his partners sift through hundreds of companies looking to take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey. But what separates the companies that receive funding from the ones that never make it past the pitch stage? And what trends is he seeing within the automation and A.I. space? On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kevin explains Calibrate process for picking companies to partner with and what questions start-ups should be answering before they step up to pitch to VCs. Enjoy this episode. Main TakeawaysIt’s All About Data: Data capturing and data labeling remains the two most important factors to developing functional A.I. solutions. When data is not effectively captured and/or labeled, the algorithm cannot effectively decipher what it needs to in real time. An example of this involves self-driving cars that need to not only be able to recognize the distance of a truck in front of them, but what kind of truck is in front of the vehicle, and all the other road conditions that could impact a drive.Honesty Gets you Far: Everyone wants to impress in their pitch to a VC, after all, the ability for them to fund a business could make or break a company. But one of the leading things that separates good pitches from great ones is the ability to admit where there is a gap in your business and how funding will help you close that gap. Going into a pitch meeting with all the answers is an early red flag and raises more questions than answers.Building a Better Tomorrow: With a growing labor shortage in tough skills and technical skills, companies and government programs must invest in STEM and STEAM programs to ensure that we are funding future generations of innovations, but also opening up more geographical regions as well. This also means that investors want to see how owners recruit talent to an organization, but also their strategy for training and retraining individuals to fit the needs of the business.---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.

Standing in line at an airport is a bad experience. Shuffling through your wallet once you reach the front of that line only to realize you don’t have your driver’s license, that’s a worse experience. From boarding airplanes to purchasing alcohol, the technology that enables digital driver’s licenses already exists, but with adoption levels still so slow, the question is what’s the hold up?“I always liken it to chess and checkers — checkers, super easy to play. And giving access to people is playing checkers. Giving access to people based upon them being who they say they are, that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, that they are where they're supposed to be, that they've been given approval for those assets, that's chess.There's this notion of authentication authorization approval, and today it's expanded into verification and proofing. So four key components and just like chess, you learn how to play it relatively quickly, but you spend the rest of your life mastering it.”At least 17 states in the continental US have considered or implemented digital driver’s licenses, but few have been able to create a system that leads to widespread adoption across the population and in government offices alike. On this episode ofIT Visionaries, Richard Bird, the Chief Customer Information Officer at Ping Identity, explains what the hold up is in getting digital driver’s licenses to all 50 states, and he sheds light on the biggest obstacle that is stalling the adoption process.Main TakeawayThe Privacy Paradox: From GDPR to CCPA, all data privacy legislation requires companies to protect consumers from harm that could come by way of using its product or services. But there are few or no rules or guidelines that protect users from their own digital identities. This means that companies must take on a larger role in not only making sure that users’ digital identities are secure, but that they are educating users on the proper ways to protect themselves.You’re So Predictable: Digital identity experiences need a vessel to live on such as smartphones or wearable devices, but one of the big concerns from implementing these pieces of equipment is the amount of data that will be gathered from these events. What is the appropriate level of data aggregation and how much is too much when it comes to being able to predict things such as human behaviors and predictability patterns?A More Inclusive Environment: Digital identity has the power to be a key driver to globalgrowth and digital transformation, but at the same time it can also lead to data biases that are collected from these. If someone fails to update an address on their driver’s license, that information could lead to misrepresentation of population.---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 way we learn is no longer unilateral. So why act as if still one teacher, standing in front of a group of students lecturing them on a particular subject is the best way for them to learn a second language? Instead of teaching simple words or phrases such as bike, or car, what if the focus was on developing the skills that actually help people advance their careers? “The old way of teaching, where you teach the same thing to everybody — teacher in front of the room, using a textbook that gets purchased — no one thinks that's a good way of doing it. Good teachers actually go out and try to find supplemental materials that were interesting to their students. They look for news articles, or short stories, or something, but they can't take all that content and curate it and deliver it to learners. It's impossible for humans to do that. However, machines are really good at doing that. When I realized that was the very best way to teach learners, I decided to try to use computers for what technology can do best, to let people do what teachers do best.”That’s Dr. Katie Nielson, who earned her PhD in the school of languages from the University of Maryland in 2013, where her research focused on technology-mediated language training. Katie has dedicated her career to making language learning more accessible and now, as the CEO and founder of Voxy EnGen, she’s using technology to deliver high-quality needs-based instruction to immigrants and refugees.On this episode of IT Visionaries Katie, dives into why the way we teach language in the states is a broken process and how to fix it. She also explains how her platform is delivering personalized learning at scale to those that need it most. Enjoy!Main TakeawaysIf There’s A Problem, Fix it: When you’re developing a solution to a problem, you have to think about how your solution can be applied across different verticals. This means taking time to research the various options you have when it comes to getting your product to market, but also thinking about what your unique identifier is.A Barrier to Success: English is often what holds workers back from succeeding at their jobs. Instead of non-English speakers having to go to class in order to advance their linguistic skills, they should be able to do that on their own time with a program that teaches them the basics, but real-world scenarios based on their jobs to help them  improve.Setting a Baseline: When you’re developing any kind of algorithm or personalized experience, the first thing you have to identify and establish is a baseline for your measurement. This is how you identify the areas where someone needs to grow, but it also can be used as a tool to identify how far a user has come with your program.---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 are built off profitability. The investments you make are designed to support the products or services you sell. But let's be honest for a moment, you like buying the things that are core to your business because that’s what you care about. The secondary expenses that occur, those are less fun. Whether you’re dealing in electronics, retail, mortgages, or hamburgers, inevitably there are expenses that arise that don’t support your product. So how do you cut down on those expenses? And how can all the data gathered from shipping and receiving actually improve your profit margins? “What's not core to you is core to us. What I mean by core to your businesses is at Harley Davidson, they make motorcycles. They source and buy steel, bolts, oil, leather, so on and so forth. But what they also need to operate their business is they need marketing. They need packaging, they need stores to sell their motorcycles in. Their retail operation. They need to ship things. It's everything else.”Craig Garno is the CTO at LogicSource and he’s helping companies such as LuluLemon, BIG Lots, and Tupperware cut down and streamline their spending. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Craig explains why companies that fail to focus on indirect services will struggle to scale the business while also paying more than fair market value. Plus he dives into how LogicSource is helping these businesses trim the fat on those investments, and the role data management plays in its efforts.Enjoy this episode.Main TakeawaysLost in Time: One of the main challenges to solving indirect procurement problems is the lack of attention these services are afforded. In most cases, the data input is still done manually, which also means most of the technology is behind as well. Businesses need to invest in these services in order to not only understand the areas within the supply chain where they are experiencing disruptions, but also to have a better idea of the costs they are incurring on items such as packaging and delivery services.Understanding How to Use Data: Once companies begin investing in their internal structures, they need to follow that action by doing a deep dive into understanding what data points are most important to the overall success of the business. But you also need to have a better understanding across the business of how to read and understand what the data is telling you. Once this is accomplished, you will have a better idea of how to fix some of the challenges the company is facing when it comes to procurement spend.Keep it Simple: The key to good product design is to not overcomplicate the application. When apps are easy to read, agile, easy to scale, and simple to understand, you have a greater chance of the product gaining traction and more adoption.---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 are 750 million transactions processed every day. Let that number sink in… Across ATMs, self-checkout machines, and online payments, NCR — through both hardware and software infrastructure — is helping you checkout faster. We already have tap-to-pay credit cards and payments-synced watches. So is there a way for transactions to actually get more seamless? And can creating that more effortless experience actually save you money?? Tim Vanderham, CTO and SVP at NCR, said it’s not that unrealistic.“We're going on this notion of frictionless, passive, and then us as consumers sharing our data where we want to share it so that we get benefits from it in our daily lives. If you're not a bank individual, but you start thinking about what's happening with decentralized finance around cryptocurrencies and blockchain, I can start to leverage that data in ways that I can ask for loans from my financial institution when I'm making larger purchases. It also gives me a way to save an extra $500 for a week.”In 2021, data is precious currency, especially when you’re a company that moves hundreds of billions of data points at a time. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Tim provides a new outlook on the future of your transactions Tim also goes into how NCR, a company established in 1884, is going through its own digital transformation to deliver customers the interactions with brands they desire. Enjoy this episode.Main TakeawaysInto the Serververse: Right now a majority of transactions are done with the swipe of a credit card or through physical cash. But that will change, and one way it will change is through the use of digital wallets on smartphones. These digital wallets will be able to store and read your information without you ever having to actually pull out a credit card.It’s Just a Transaction: NCR covers more than 750 million transactions a day, which means that hundreds of billions of data points pass through its system. These data points will eventually allow consumers to use that information to create better financial profiles — meaning if a user routinely invests 20 dollars into an account, the system will be able to automatically do that or that data will be used to create recurring buying profiles.From Hardware to Software: When you’re transforming a company that has been around for more than a century, you have to understand the verticals your company operates in. This means identifying where your technology is successful, and where you can improve. For NCR, that means moving away from just hardware products and developing a software platform that allows the three unique industries it serves to operate under one umbrella. ---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 think about this for a second — what is more important: the pace at which a business must change its technology in order to keep up with its competitors or the culture that makes the whole thing flow efficiently? It’s an interesting conundrum, and one that Gautham Pallapa, Senior Executive Advisor at VMware thinks about often.“I look at things through the lens of culture, organization and people and processes first, because it's very easy to bring in the right technology. Technology is much more discreet. It's people and the culture that's not.”The bottom line for Gautham: culture wins, and it’s time for companies of all sizes to invest in it. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Gautham, self described as a culture evangelist, author, and a founder, explains how he works with some of VMware’s biggest customers to help them transform their businesses. He talks about why he advocates for culture ahead of technology, and he gives his reasons for why focusing on workplace culture is going through a digital renaissance of its own. Enjoy this episode.Main TakeawaysTaking a Modern Approach: While every company goes through some kind of digital transformation, it is important to also make sure that while you’re investing in your technology, you also invest in your workplace culture. Oftentime companies focus solely on the things that drive value and profit margins and not enough on the components of the organization that make it run.Leading with Empathy: 87% of remote workers report working longer hours than the traditional nine-to-five. With more employees working remotely than ever before, businesses must adapt their leadership styles to reflect the changing workplace. This means taking into account the challenges remote workers face and working with them through those struggles.End the Day on High Note: One of the ways organizations can lead with empathy is by creating a workplace culture that not only motivates employees to accomplish their tasks, but also praises them for their accomplishments. This can include implementing meetings such as “spin downs,” which are end of the day conversations designed to praise employees for the work they did that day.---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.

An A.I. the model is similar to a boat in that it needs constant maintenance to perform. The reality is  A.I. models need adjusted boundaries and guidelines to remain efficient.  And when you live in a world where everyone is trying to get bigger and faster and have a certain edge, Scott Clark is helping make that possible with his finely-tuned A.I. modeling techniques.“As you're building up these rules and constructs for how that system will even learn itself, there's a lot of parameters that you need to set and tune. There's all these magical numbers that go into these systems. If you don't have a system of record for this, if you're just throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, and then only checking the best one, and you don't have a system of what you tried, what the trade-offs were, which parameters were the most important, and how it traded off different metrics it can seem like a very opaque process. At least that hyper parameter optimization and neural architecture search and kind of tuning part of the process can be a little bit more explainable, a little bit more repeatable and a little bit more optimal.”More explainable, and more optimal, but most importantly scaleable and reproducible. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Scott, the CEO and Co-founder of SigOpt, a company that’s on a mission to empower modeling systems to reach their fullest potential, explains the basic steps that go into successful models, how his team tweaks and optimizes those models to build more efficient processes. Plus, Scott touches on the future of algorithmic models — including how they will improve and where they struggle. Enjoy this episode.Main TakeawaysBad Data, Bad!: When you’re building algorithm models you have to not only focus on the data you are putting into those models, but you have to know where that data is coming from and if that data is trustworthy. When you have untrustworthy data — either its coming from an unknown source or is bias in any way — this can lead to models that deliver poor results.Delivering Consistency: While every algorithm needs to be tweaked and tuned at the start, the best way to deliver consistent, scalable algorithmic models is to make sure you are able to define hyper-specific patterns that the algorithm can abide by. When algorithms know what rules they are looking for (such as this person only likes medium sized shirts with stripes) it has a set of hyper-specific boundaries it can operate off of in order to deliver the best results.Where is the Band Conductor?: Algorithms will continue to infiltrate our everyday lives, but the truth is they still need humans to effectively run them, to tune them, and to make sure that the decisions they are making are the right ones. ---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 we make a choice — to recycle, to compost, or to simply discard an item. But regardless of what decision the consumer makes, corporations are one of the biggest contributors to environmental damage. “Recycling and composting and all that stuff. It's great, but it's not where the real problem is, the real problem is the way we make things and move things around. It's the factories, and supply chains. If you want to reduce waste in the world, that's where you target.”Reducing waste is an ambitious challenge to tackle, but it's one Steve Pratt, Founder and CEO of Noodle.ai, is facing head-on. The strategy: use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help manufacturers and supply chain distributors limit the amount of waste they produce everyday. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Steve explains just how much waste is produced yearly by industrial operations  and the monetary ramifications that waste brings. He also explains the way his team is using A.I. to help manufacturers predict hiccups with their machines, and why it's time for users to overcome their fear of A.I. Enjoy this episode. Main Takeaways:It’s Not a Hardware Problem: The biggest problem facing industrial machines remains the software that runs them. In order to cut down on waste, the software must be consistently updated and optimized based on the working conditions.Data Library, Data Lake, Data Everywhere: There’s been an explosion of data, and yet corporations still can’t figure out how to put it all to good use.One way to use data is by extracting it from industrial machines, which can be in operation for decades, and then using it to design A.I. solutions based on variables a machine needs to run on.You Have to Test Your Models: When you are trying to build an effective modeling solution, you should consistently test your models to understand if your predictive models are working as they should. Make sure you take your time and test over and over again before implementing. A vast majority of A.I. solutions fail because they are not properly tested.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.