IT Visionaries

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 -- 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.

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 -- 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.

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 -- 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.

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 -- 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.

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 -- 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 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 -- 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.

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 -- 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 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 -- 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.

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 -- 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.

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 -- 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.