IT Visionaries

Let’s be frank: the healthcare industry needs help. Medical records have far too many inconsistencies, patients struggle to find ways to transfer information from one doctor to another, and as the world slowly begins to reopen and the focus on health increases, the industry is going to have to lean on modern technology more than ever in order to track and maintain records as it relates to COVID-19. “There are several like electronic health information systems out there and their operability is pretty poor. You have to be able to get that information [to your doctors]. You have to be able to integrate it and make it accessible to your patients, as well as your primary care providers. And, that's something that we do better than anybody else.”Claire Hough is the CTO of Carbon Health, a tech-enabled healthcare provider that is developing data-driven programs in an effort to help modernize the healthcare industry by removing the boundaries of health care to create high-quality experiences. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Claire details how Carbon Health has used technology and data to solve a wide array of issues in healthcare, including the delivery care model. Plus, Claire dives into her past experiences scaling startups such as Netscape, Napster, and Udemy.Main TakeawaysUser Error: There’s a saying when it comes to data, “garbage in, garbage out.” When it comes to data entry, this still applies because there is still far too much room for user error. Workers are manually inputting data in spreadsheets allowing for a margin of error, and this is one of the biggest problems facing the healthcare industry. By using an automated system that removes the physical person from that process, you can access a clearer picture of your data without concerns about input accuracy.Not Enough Information: The healthcare industry is overrun with processes that are not streamlined or convenient for patients. When a patient gives information to a physician or an urgent care provider, that information remains only with those sources rather than shared widely to the patient’s broader healthcare team.. By creating a central record system that controls every aspect of the healthcare process, companies are able to not only have the most accurate information regardless of where a patient is seen, but it creates a better overall customer experience for your patient who no longer have to repeatedly provide the same information.Built to Scale: When you’re scaling your engineering teams, you have to think about what the company is going to look like in the near future and not just what you need in the present. Make sure the people you are bringing on can work in a fast-paced environment and possess multiple skill sets.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Move fast and break things. A famous adage adopted by many software companies. But what if you’re an industry giant where innovation is required, but failure is absolutely not an option. That doesn’t seem to be a mix for success.Meet Amdocs, a company withe more than 26,000 employees and generating more than $4.2 billion in revenue annually, the expectations for success are a little bit higher.“The difference between great companies and good companies is how much your endurance is to failure.”Avishai Sharlinis the Division President for Amdocs Technologies, a company that works with communication and media companies to help consumers complete more than 1.7 billion digital journeys every day. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Avishai explains how Amdocs uses open source tools to provide the scale and agility needed to operate some of the world’s most complex systems, and he reveals why and how Amdocs is helping to accelerate many companies' journeys to the cloud.Main TakeawaysWhat Separates Good From Great: The difference between a good company and a great one is a company's ability to deal with failure. In technology, failure is inevitable, but the key is to make sure that with each failure, your team is continually learning from your mistakes and building off of them.Different Ways to Architect Your Technology: There are no longer one-size-fits-all solutions for your digital products. Today, each individual piece of technology must be adaptable in order to meet a consumer's needs. This means that technology teams building products have to keep multiple solutions in mind and take into account the different ways users will use technology.  A Whole New World: With the rise of IoT devices, 5G networks will not only bring the bandwidth and low-latency needed to power today’s networks, but it will also enhance the ability for communication companies to better prioritize the amount of data they send to individual devices and how to protect them from cyber threats.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

NFTs, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Tokenization. There is more hype than ever for these technologies and endless debate on the utility of this technology. . While consumers are attempting  to understand the value of cryptocurrency, governments and private firms across the globe are doing the same, and they are experimenting with the idea of a central bank for digital currency that will adapt and meet changing consumer needs.Main TakeawaysBenefits of a Central Bank: The digitization of currency will not only simplify the distribution of government cash, but it will eliminate banking deserts, which are large populations of the country where traditional banking branches are not accessible to the general public. By moving to a digital currency, users will be able to easily complete transactions similar to how cash purchases are done, but without the time needed to complete a credit transaction.Programmable Money: One of the exciting innovations and benefits of digital tokens is the concept of “programmable” money. This means that during the design and build phase, the technology that houses the currency can be reconfigured to scale and add critical functions at any time.Easily Traceable: By modernizing currency and moving to a digital token, the flow of currency from one user to another will be much easier to track than physical transactions. When transactions are done digitally, you can trace that currency back to where it originated, making it simpler and easier to detect fraud.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  -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Gabe Gumbs has a deep-rooted passion for technology and information security, and his goal is to share that passion to push data security to the forefront of every business's agenda.“Security is all I've ever done. It's what I know, it's what I love. I enjoy every aspect of [security]. From building it, to talking about it, to marketing, into selling it to you, It's a passion.” Gabe is the Chief Innovation Officer at Spirion — a leader in rapid identification and protection of sensitive data— and these days he’s channeling that passion to make the digital world a safer place. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Gabe explains his vision for data privacy and why it’s time to kick siloed data to the curb. He also provides a detailed view on the future of work and why the talent shortage that security professionals have discussed may not be exactly as drastic as it seems.Main TakeawaysSilos are an Unnecessary Evil: Data professionals are ingesting data from various sources which is opening them up to unnecessary vulnerabilities. When data is sourced from multiple areas, such as datasets and the cloud, security models are spread thin, making that data harder to protect. By bringing that data into one single area, companies will have a better chance of not only understanding data, but protecting it as well.Your Off-the-Shelf Model Needs to Go: Organizations that use a cybersecurity maturity model as a framework to measure the progress of their security tactics are leaving themselves vulnerable to attackers. Every bad actor is different, which requires a unique model to prevent those attackers from infiltrating your network.The Security Skills Shortage That Wasn’t: Analysts have been writing about a cybersecurity shortage for years and some believe the data privacy sector will suffer a similar fate. The issue however is not a lack of talent, but rather data security professionals must broaden their hiring practices because security is no longer simply about keeping data safe, but it’s also about policy and compliance with new data rules.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Over the last quarter century, data and its ability to provide valuable insights for companies to plan, predict, and implement strategies has expanded exponentially. Organizations have grown more reliant on data, and the speed at which data is uploaded and analyzed now must match the pace at which it is generated.“Data has to be up to date and available almost immediately in order to just keep the business running.”Mark Van de Wiel is the CTO of HVR, a company that specializes in partnering with enterprises to realize the full potential of data through real-time data replication. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mark explains why data replication is an imperative step for companies wanting to take a more data-driven approach, how replication is providing real-time insight as opposed to batch data uploads, and why having a single source of truth when it comes to your data is just good business.Main TakeawaysHolistic Data View: Today, organizations are pulling data together from multiple sources. But regardless of whether your data pulls are from first-party or third-party sources, getting all of it into one unified space is paramount. Replicating data is a very quick way to migrate data from multiple sources in order to provide a holistic view of your data.Know Where Your Data is Coming From: Garbage in, garbage out is a philosophy every data leader is familiar with, which is why it's important to understand where your data is coming from. Be strategic about how you manage your data, what sources you are collecting your data from, and if the source is reliable.Real Time Data Application: Being able to replicate your data in real time and not have to wait on monthly or quarterly data uploads is an enabler for allowing an organization to be more data-driven.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

The modern worker needs access to multiple applications. And with every new piece of software implemented, the security and identity requirements grow exponentially.  Identity authentication is creating increasing headaches for IT professionals everywhere. Relying on usernames and passwords won’t be enough much longer.“We've been using usernames and passwords as the primary identity feature for 50 years. I really have been working in my career to help change that and come up with a better way. When I think of usernames and passwords, I think that is a lose, lose situation. It's a bad experience and it's bad security because everybody uses the same passwords and doesn't change them.” That’s Fran Rosch, the CEO of ForgeRock, a company that is helping users connect with the world and its software safely and simply with it’s A.I.-driven platform. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Fran explains how ForgeRock is pioneering next generation identity authentication that can help verify users through multiple passive data points such as domains, ip addresses, time of day, previous logins, concurrent logins, and many others. If his future comes into reality, you might be able to forget that username and password for good.Main TakeawaysUnder Pressure: IT organizations today are under immense pressure to not only create a secure and safe digital environment, but also where their employees feel safe. Today employees need to trust where they are storing their information, but that user experience must also be seamless.What’s the Username?: For more than 50 years, usernames and passwords have been one of the primary features used to secure a digital environment. The problem with this process is those passwords have to constantly be changed in order to remain secure, which creates a poor user experience. An emerging tool when it comes to creating a seamless experience is using face ID.Demanding control: Enterprises are now demanding control over where their identity lives. As more companies operate in the cloud — whether that’s a private or public cloud — they want their identity authentication to run separately and have control over it and not have to have multiple identity services based on where they’re running the technology.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

There’s a festering problem growing beneath the surface of small businesses everywhere, and it’s an issue that most SMBs are refusing to address. As large-scale companies invest big money in information security teams to protect themselves from data breaches and bad actors, their small business brethren simply refuse to invest in security at all.“People only spend money on things they can detect.”Gary Chan is an information security management consultant and president of Alfizo, a company that is helping SMBs and large-scale enterprises use IT as an enabler while meeting compliance, security and privacy obligations. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Gary dives into some of the biggest obstacles facing SMBs from a security perspective and why small businesses leave themselves vulnerable to cyber attacks. Plus he explains why regardless of how secure your network may be, the weakest link remains your staff.Main TakeawaysWalk in Through the Front Door: SMBs are leaving themselves vulnerable to security threats because they don’t believe they need to invest in the basic tools and services to protect themselves. SMBs are attacked at a far higher rate than large-scale organization because they often leave themselves open to attackersBasic Tips and Tricks: For SMBs that don’t want to invest high dollar amounts into a security tech stack, it’s still wise to invest in simple things that fit what you need, such as phishing training for your staff, which can help detect and report malicious emails, multi-function authentication, and password vaults.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Maggie Louie remembers the moment her career changed forever. Working with the L.A. Times on digital and mobile products, Maggie, now the founder and CEO of Otto, remembers a friend asking her to look into an issue they were having with their website.“[they asked] me to look at their ad tags and figure out why their traffic was going through the roof, but they weren't making any more money. They couldn't figure it out. I had suspected that their ad techs were either misconfigured or there's something easy there, and after 24 hours looking through their code. I discovered that they indeed were being stolen internally. The head developer was hijacking all of the ad tags and just doing all sorts of crazy stuff.” The lines of code hidden in the JavaScript were driving traffic and stealing money, and it was that revelation that opened Maggie’s eyes to underground ad fraud and bot traffic, and this ad fraud wreaked havoc. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Maggie details how that moment led her to launch Otto and she discusses the company’s efforts to democratize access to internet security for all, its Chrome extension to protect consumers when online shopping, and the variety of enterprise solutions for businesses her team has developed.Main TakeawaysNew Frontier: Hackers are always looking for new industries with vulnerabilities to disrupt. Ad tech is one of the fastest-growing industries underserved by cybersecurity solutions. This is due to the complex nature of ad tech, which makes it difficult for cyber security experts to easily shift solutions into.Safety is a Fallacy: Popular ecommerce platforms want you to believe that just because you use their service and tools that your company is safe from bad actors. The truth is that just because you use popular no-code or low-code operating systems, bad actors still target vulnerable people who don’t secure their code.Always Be Testing: Just because your platform is safe today, doesn’t mean that it is safe tomorrow. The more your platform is customizable the more vulnerable your JavaScript becomes to outside bad actors. A general rule of thumb when it comes to security is to constantly be testing and looking over your code.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

The journey to cloud is not the same for everyone. In fact, for some, it can be a grueling and daunting process. For CIOs and CTOs of century-year-old companies, they are burdened by server after server piling up and as they tackle the obstacle of migrating data to the cloud. Meanwhile, peers at digitally-native companies, born in the cloud, use their agility and ease of scale to soar past their old-school brethren. So what’s a legacy company to do?“The reality in the environment is that there are all stages of software in these companies and disentangling that and figuring out how to move to the cloud is a journey. And that's the thing where we're really excited about being able to help with at least kind of taking care of the infrastructure pieces. So CIOs and CTOs can focus on the application layers and not really have to worry about how the infrastructure gets operated.”  19:37That’s Preeti Somal, Vice President of Engineering at HashiCorp, a company constructed on the idea of building open-source communities to help users quickly implement the infrastructure necessary to run cloud applications. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Preeti unpacks how open-source tools are helping customers get to the cloud faster, how hybrid cloud models have evolved over the years, and more. Main TakeawaysAll Shapes and Sizes: There is not a one-size-fits-all method for companies trying to move to the cloud, but cloud adoption has been driven by organizations prioritizing the ability to quickly add applications and implement them within their network.Building a Secure Environment: The shift to operating in the cloud requires a different approach to security. Instead of focusing on a secure network perimeter with the assumption of trust, you must shift your focus to securing the infrastructure and application services themselves through a trusted source of identity managementBuilding a Remote-First Team: When you’re building a remote-first team, you have to be intentional about how you document your process so when you scale, your team members will have a complete understanding of the workflow.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 -- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.