AWS for Software Companies Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Ep057: Gen AI in Cybersecurity: Innovations, Threats, and Defence Strategies with Darktrace Oct 01, 2024

Show notes

AWS's Shahid Mohammed and Darktrace's Michael Beck discuss how generative AI innovations are transforming cybersecurity by both enhancing defences and introducing new, sophisticated threat management strategies.

Topics Include:

Shahid Mohammed introduces himself as a lead solution architect at AWS.
Mike Beck is Global Chief Information Security Officer at Darktrace.
Darktrace specializes in AI-driven cybersecurity solutions for digital environments.
Darktrace secures multiple digital data pots: email, network, cloud, SaaS, and endpoint.
The conversation focuses on innovation in cybersecurity through AI.
Mike emphasizes the benefits of Gen AI despite its security risks.
Gen AI enables more complex, targeted attacks against organizations.
Attackers use Gen AI to tailor attacks through phishing and deepfakes.
Gen AI increases phishing complexity by eliminating common detection cues.
Data privacy risks arise when large models process sensitive business data.
Businesses must be mindful of AI’s impact on data sovereignty and security.
Shahid compares the cybersecurity space to an arms race due to Gen AI.
Mike stresses the importance of choosing the right AI for each task.
Darktrace uses unsupervised machine learning and Gen AI together for defense.
AI is essential for scaling cybersecurity efforts given today's threat complexity.
Darktrace relies on AWS cloud for compute power, scaling, and innovation.
AWS infrastructure helps accelerate Darktrace's R&D and operations securely.
Security leaders should implement Gen AI policies and training.
Mike advises technical controls and monitoring for safe Gen AI use.
Gen AI is here to stay, but businesses must handle its security implications carefully.

Participants:

Michael Beck – Global CISO - Darktrace
Shahid Mohammed – Solution Architect Manager – Amazon Web Services

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Ep056: Enable Salesforce applications with Amazon Bedrock Sep 24, 2024

Show notes

Daryl Martis of Salesforce and Rashna Chadha of AWS share how Amazon Bedrock integrates with Salesforce to enhance AI applications, highlighting the partnership's strategic benefits, AI model customization, and secure deployment options.

Topics Include:

Introduction to Amazon Bedrock and Salesforce partnership.
Overview of Amazon Bedrock as an API-based generative AI service.
The strategic collaboration between AWS and Salesforce.
Salesforce Data Cloud and its integration with Amazon Bedrock.
Overview of Salesforce Einstein and its use of Amazon SageMaker.
Recent AI launches between Salesforce and AWS, including Slack AI and MuleSoft.
Use cases of AI services like Amazon Textract within Salesforce.
Bringing Your Own Large Language Model (BYO LLM) with Bedrock.
Foundation models offered by Amazon Bedrock (Anthropic, Cohere, Llama).
Overview of security, privacy, and compliance in Bedrock AI services.
Salesforce Data Cloud’s unified customer data and real-time AI capabilities.
Bedrock’s support for custom AI model evaluation and metrics.
Consumption models in Bedrock: on-demand vs. provision throughput.
Bedrock’s agent capabilities for real-world applications like scheduling.
Demo of using Amazon Bedrock models within Salesforce.

Participants:

Daryl Martis – Director of Product Management, Einstein AI - Salesforce
Rashna Chadha – AI/ML Specialist – Principal Solution Architect – Amazon Web Services

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Ep055: Drive Product Adoption with Personalized AI-Powered Experiences with Autodesk Sep 17, 2024

Show notes

Ashish Arora, Head of Engineering & Machine Learning, Product Analytics at Autodesk, shares how personalized AI-powered experiences and real-time data can drive product adoption, featuring insights into Autodesk’s transformation journey, leveraging machine learning, and delivering actionable recommendations to millions of users.

Topics Include:

Real-time data description and examples
Leveraging AWS for real time and generative AI services
Autodesk’s journey leveraging AWS to transform architecture and deliver personalized insights
Overview of Autodesk and product portfolio
Utilizing data gathered for customers
Personalized data-driven insights for customers on Autocad and other products
Descriptive insights: providing usage data for customers
Prescriptive insights: Making recommendations to customers based on their workflows
Predictive insights: Using ML to recommend products and features
Autodesk processes 100+ billion events across all products, delivered 350+ million insights to customers, served to 3.5 million customers
Example walkthrough – Rachael
Architecture of Autodesk data and insight process
Leveraging LLMs – Sagemaker and Bedrock
Bringing it altogether
Session wrap up

Participants:

Ashish Arora – Head of Engineering & ML, Product Analytics - Autodesk
Brian Slater – Principal Solutions Architect – Amazon Web Services

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Ep054: Presenting Security to the Board of Directors with Diligent, Sentinel One & Tenable Sep 10, 2024

Show notes

A panel discussion on presenting on security and data to Boards of Directors, focusing on metrics, ROI, generative AI, securing intellectual property, and strategic board engagement.

Topics Include:

What security metrics are most valuable for Board of Directors
Articulating ROI of security program
Quantifying benefits of security program
Sales enablement of the security team
Driving efficiencies within the business with generative AI and more
Quantifying business and template-based reporting to Boards with Diligent software
Leveraging consultants and 3rd parties to leverage messages to Board of Directors
Managing and communicating data posture and risk management
Working with data leadership, securing intellectual property
Challenges of labelling data
Educating boards on software architecture principles and generative AI
High focus and techniques for securing IP
Enrolling Boards with generative AI use cases and innovation
Creating communities of excellence
Gamifying security and generative AI to increase internal knowledge
Q&A 1: Taking action on a summarized document
Q&A 2: Mental model for evaluative SaaS partners
Q&A 3: Using the board to influence budgetary decisions
Session wrap up

Participants:

Satheesh Ravala - Chief Technology Officer, Diligent
Josh Blackwelder – Deputy CISO, Sentinel One
Robert Huber - Chief Security Officer, Head of Tenable Research, President Tenable Public
Karen Henlsey - Principal WW Data & Generative AI Strategist, AWS

Ep053: Building Generative AI Powered Security Assistants with Amazon Bedrock Sep 03, 2024

Show notes

Lacework’s VP and Head of Engineering Arash Nikkar, and Product and Security Software Engineer Teddy Reed, discuss their work with generative AI and Amazon Bedrock, focusing on threat detection, chat interface improvements, and the rapid development of AI-driven solutions.

Topics Include:

Introducing Lacework with Arash Nikkar
Working with AWS and Bedrock
Focusing on threat detection
Lacework ingests over a trillion events each day
Composite alerts for detecting anomalies
Developing and improving the chat interface
Teddy Reed talking chat interface improvements
Reviewing the architecture
Fast engagement with generative AI / AWS Bedrock
The rapid delivery with Bedrock – took 20% of expected time
Best practice – build in time to review and verify responses
Measuring customer’s engagement and return frequency and feedback
Understanding customer sentiment and topic analysis
Achieving 60% completed results and feedback
Transparency of source, response
Enabling assistant to have more access to data from LLM
Using AWS’ model evaluator, raising the accuracy scores
Moving everything over to Bedrock for multiple reasons
Familiarity of AWS tools helpful for all development and security teams
Always challenging assumptions – is chat interface the right interface?
Q&A 1: Using vector database for analysis, using results as system prompt
Q&A 2: Approaching cost-optimization and balancing ROI
Q&A 3: Using as automated remediation for findings
Q&A 4: Data source Bedrock in leveraging

Session wrap up

Participants:

Arash Nikkar – VP, Head of Engineering – Lacework
Teddy Reed – Product and Security Software Engineer - Lacework

Ep052: Bridging the Cloud Finance Divide - Experts Reveal the Evolving Art of FinOps Aug 27, 2024

Show notes

Massimo Ghislandi from AWS interviews Frank Contrepois, Chief Innovation Officer of Strategic Blue and Dvir Mizrahi, Head of FinOps for WIX sharing perspectives and best practices for FinOps, implementation, challenges and future FinOps trends for software companies.

Topics Include:

FinOps is a new approach to managing cloud finances, bridging the gap between finance, engineering, and business stakeholders
The implementation of FinOps can take a top-down or bottom-up approach, requiring collaboration and a common language across teams
Shifting the conversation from "costs" to "investment" and "efficiency" has been an effective strategy for driving cultural change
Focusing on automation, governance, remediation, and anomaly detection can have a greater impact than just cost observability
Educating finance teams on technical cloud concepts and vice versa is crucial for building trust and alignment
The future of FinOps may involve expanding beyond just cloud to encompass all IT assets and aligning with a company's overall values and business objectives
Potential changes in legislation or accounting practices related to cloud could drastically impact the FinOps landscape

Participants:

Frank Contrepois – Chief Innovation Officer, Strategic Blue
Dvir Mizrahi – Head of Financial Engineering (FinOps), WIX
Massimo Ghislandi – ISV Marketing Leader, EMEA, AWS

Ep051: Selling to C-Suite Best Practices Aug 20, 2024

Show notes

We feature a panel of executives from ASAPP, Glean, Smarsh, Socotra and AWS sharing essential strategies, including the role of Generative AI, trust-building, and addressing legal challenges to secure executive buy-in for transformative initiatives.

Topics Include:

Introductions to panel
Example of ideal Executive Seller
Depth of business acumen and problem solving are important skills for Executive Sellers
Framing a customer problem and create the argument
Making selling to a C-Suite a team sport
Keeping sellers and produce C-suite relevant
Revolution and renaissance positioning
Trust with the C-suite – do salesperson have a texting relationship w decision makers?
How is Generative AI driving customer’s satisfaction and dissatisfaction?
Data is the new oil
Defining the business problem for insurance industry
Helping customers reimagine business with Generative AI
80% of customers report the chatbot makes them mad
The data journey is the precursor to the Generative AI journey
The top unique legal challenges with Generative AI
Legal now brought into early stage of sales process
Turning legal concerns into an opportunity
The book “Never Split the Difference” by Christopher Voss
Calls to action from each panellist
Session wrap-up

Participants:

Daniel Rood – Senior Vice President Marketing, ASAPP
AJ Tennant – Vice President Sales & Success, Glean
Neva DePalma – General Council, Smarsh
Ekine Akuiyibo – Chief Business Officer, Socotra
Lauren Larscheid – Sr. Sales Leader, Business Applications, AWS

Ep050: Prompt Engineering for Business Performance Aug 13, 2024

Show notes

Today Anthropic’s Zach Witten takes us on a deep dive into Anthropic’s cutting-edge AI models—Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus—exploring their safety-first approach to generative AI and sharing essential tips for prompt engineering.

Topics Include:

Introductions, about Anthropic
3 models: Haiku, Sonnet and Opus
Scaling laws for hardware, data and compute
Competing to be safest AI solutions, safety-first organization
Leader in jailbreak resistance
Interpretability features and breakthroughs for AI models
Basics of prompt engineering
Improving prompts with Claude
Details matter – small changes to spelling, context will greatly improve results
System prompt – role setting will improve results (i.e. “You are an expert mathematician…” for math query
Be clear and direct – use XML tags where possible
Encourage Claude to think step-by-step – answering fast comes with accuracy risk
Use examples to provide additional clarity to Claude
Bonus tips for image-based prompt engineering
Q&A 1) Who wrote the meta-prompts in the cookbook?
Q&A 2) Guidance for writing prompts for prompt generator
Q&A 3) Best practices for tabular and structured data
Q&A 4) Maintaining “tone” across hundreds/thousands of responses
Q&A 5) Reverse engineering a prompt

Ep049: Enriching the Digital Experience with Amazon Bedrock Aug 06, 2024

Show notes

Today, Dr. Ratinder Paul Singh Ahuja of Pure Storage takes us through how his organization is leveraging Amazon Bedrock to enrich the digital experience for end users and increase returns for the company.

Topics Include:

Introductions
Generative AI activity within Pure Storage
Ownership and expertise of team, role of generative AI
Rapid changes require dedicated team reporting to office of CTO
Where Pure Storage is investing – Productivity gains, Customer Experience, R&D
Vision starts with the needs of the business users
GenAI Ops – Content, Voctor databases for ingestion, query strategies & security
Example – Purchase Acquisition Process
Features for a mobile experience
Configurations and logs are getting more enhanced with generative AI
Defining schema and improving large language model for more accurate responses
Security models and deployment
Summary and session wrap up
Q&A 1) How did the team get trained to use the generative AI tools and systems?
Q&A 2) How did the team reduce the hallucinations?
Q&A 3) How did you decide on which foundation models to use?
Q&A 4) The ROI of this particular use case
Q&A 5) Models working with poly-morphic evolving inputs
Session conclusion

Ep048: Enhance Your Application with Generative AI Jul 30, 2024

Show notes

Federico Torreti and Tom Sly of AWS discuss how application developers can leverage Generative AI to enhance cross-app experiences, minimize custom integrations and increase the value-add of enhanced communication features.

Topics Include:

Federico Torreti intro: What is AWS’ vision for applications
Focus of Machine Learning & AI
Ability to build rapid prototypes, experimentation
Cambrian explosion of SaaS applications
The challenge of toggling of multiple applications
Bringing the world of disconnected apps
Data and focusing on the primary value for customer
Generating more content will raise number of alerts and potential of burnout
Tom Sly intro: Being delighted by businesses
Customers expect personalization from businesses
More than 150,000 customers leverage AWS for communications strategy
Leveraging messaging to increase customer delight
2 examples: restaurant and medical need
Session wrap up

Participants:

Federico Torreti – Head of Product – Amazon Q, Amazon Web Services
Tom Sly - Director, Special Projects, Amazon Web Services

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