AWS for Software Companies Podcast

Ep080: When AI Meets Accounting - How Sage is Transforming Business Software Feb 25, 2025

From cost management to practical implementation, Sage's Amaya Souarez shares invaluable insights on building AI-powered business tools that deliver measurable value to customers.

Topics Include:

Amaya Souarez introduced as EVP Cloud Services at Sage
Overview of Sage: offers accounting, finance, HR and payroll tech for small businesses
Company emphasizes human values alongside technology development
Amaya oversees core cloud services and operations across 200+ products
Sage Co-Pilot announced as new AI assistant – helping automate invoicing and cash flow management
Common misconceptions with Generative AI
AI solutions aren’t always solution to every problem
Compares AI hype to previous blockchain enthusiasm
Emphasizes starting with clear use cases before implementation
Difference between task-based and reporting-based use cases
Partnering with AWS to build accounting-specific language models
Different accounting terminology varies by country
Using AWS Bedrock and Lex for a domain-specific language model development
Multiple AI models may be needed for single solution
Customer feedback drives project funding decisions
AI development integrated into regular product roadmaps
Focus on reducing cost per user for AI features
Success story: reducing 20-hour task to 5 minutes
Tracks AI usage costs per customer interaction
Early Gen AI hype caused confusion in the market
Plans to make domain-specific models available via API
Will offer language models on AWS Marketplace
Emphasizes practical AI application over blind implementation

Participants:

Amaya Souarez - EVP Cloud Services and Operations, Sage

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

Ep079: AI, Innovation, and the Enterprise: Box's Journey with AWS Feb 18, 2025

Box's Chief Product Officer Diego Dugatkin discusses how the enterprise content management platform is leveraging AI through partnerships with AWS Bedrock and continuing to innovate for their customers.

Topics Include:

Introduction of Diego Dugatkin as Box's Chief Product Officer
Box provides cloud content management for enterprise customers
Focus on Intelligent Content Management
Box serves 115,000 customers including 70% of Fortune 500
Company manages approximately one exabyte of enterprise data
Box expanding product portfolio to offer more customer value
Partnership with AWS Bedrock for AI implementation announced
Collaboration with Anthropic for LLM technology integration
Box offers neutral approach letting customers choose preferred LLMs
Common misconceptions about generative AI capabilities and limitations
Generative AI helps accelerate contract analysis and classification processes
Box Hubs enables content curation and multi-document queries
Success measured through hub creation and query accuracy metrics
Long-term AWS partnership continues expanding with new technologies
Amazon is major Box customer while Box uses AWS
API integration important for third-party developer implementations
AI development exceeding speed expectations in efficiency improvements
Challenges remain in defining AI agent roles and capabilities
Content strategy crucial for deploying intelligent content management
Companies must prepare for AI agents in workplace
Flexibility in tech stack recommended over single-vendor approach
Next 12-24 months will see accelerated industry changes
Box maintains innovative culture through intrapreneurship approach
Company regularly hosts internal and external hackathons
Focus on maintaining integrated platform while acquiring companies
Partnership between Box and AWS continues growing stronger

Participants:

Diego Dugatkin – Chief Product Officer, Box

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

Ep078: Scaling Through Partnerships: Snowflake's Cloud Engineering Success Feb 11, 2025

Through case studies of Graviton implementation and GPU integration, Justin Fitzhugh, Snowflake’s VP of Engineering, demonstrates how cloud-native architecture combined with strategic partnerships can drive technical innovation and build business value.

Topics Include:

Cloud engineering and AWS partnership
Traditional databases had fixed hardware ratios for compute/storage
Snowflake built cloud-native with separated storage and compute
Company has never owned physical infrastructure
Applications must be cloud-optimized to leverage elastic scaling
Snowflake uses credit system for customer billing
Credits loosely based on compute resources provided
Company maintains cloud-agnostic approach across providers
Initially aimed for identical pricing across cloud providers
Now allows price variation while maintaining consistent experience
Consumption-based revenue model ties to actual usage
Performance improvements can actually decrease revenue
Company tracked ARM's move to data centers
Initially skeptical of Graviton performance claims
Porting to ARM required complete pipeline reconstruction
Discovered floating point rounding differences between architectures
Amazon partnership crucial for library optimization
Graviton migration took two years instead of one
Achieved 25% performance gain with 20% cost reduction
Team requested thousands of GPUs within two months
GPU infrastructure was new territory for Snowflake
Needed flexible pricing for uncertain future needs
Signed three to five-year contracts with flexibility
Team pivoted from building to fine-tuning models
Partnership allowed adaptation to business changes
Emphasizes importance of leveraging provider expertise
Recommends early engagement with cloud providers
Build relationships before infrastructure needs arise
Maintain personal connections with provider executives

Participants:

Justin Fitzhugh – VP of Engineering, Snowflake

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

Ep077: Developing an AI Strategy for Software Companies Feb 04, 2025

In this AWS panel discussion, Naveen Rao, VP of AI of Databricks and Vijay Karunamurthy, Field CTO of Scale AI share practical insights on implementing generative AI in enterprises, leveraging private data effectively, and building reliable production systems.

Topics Include:

Sherry Marcus introduces panel discussion on generative AI adoption
Scale AI helps make AI models more reliable
Databricks focuses on customizing AI with company data
Companies often stressed about where to start with AI
Board-level pressure driving many enterprise AI initiatives
Start by defining specific goals and success metrics
Build evaluations first before implementing AI solutions
Avoid rushing into demos without proper planning
Enterprise data vastly exceeds public training data volume
Customer support histories valuable for AI training
Models learning to anticipate customer follow-up questions
Production concerns: cost, latency, and accuracy trade-offs
Good telemetry crucial for diagnosing AI application issues
Speed matters more for prose, accuracy for legal documents
Cost becomes important once systems begin scaling up
Organizations struggle with poor quality existing data
Privacy crucial when leveraging internal business data
Role-based access control essential for regulated industries
AI can help locate relevant data across legacy systems
Models need organizational awareness to find data effectively
Private data behind firewalls most valuable for AI
Customization gives competitive advantage over generic models
Current AI models primarily do flexible data recall
Next few years: focus on deriving business value
Future developments in causal inference expected post-5 years
Complex multi-agent systems becoming more important
Scale AI developing "humanity's last exam" evaluation metric
Discussion of responsibility and liability in AI decisions
Companies must stand behind their AI system outputs
Existing compliance frameworks can be adapted for AI

Participants:

Naveen Rao – VP of AI, Databricks
Vijay Karunamurthy – Field CTO, Scale AI
Sherry Marcus Ph.D. - Director, Applied Science, AWS

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

Ep076: Incident Response in the Age of Personal CISO Liability with Suresh Vasudevan of Sysdig Jan 28, 2025

Suresh Vasudevan, CEO of Sysdig, discusses the evolving challenges of cloud security incident response and the need for new approaches to mitigate organizational risk.

Topics Include:

Cybersecurity regulations mandate incident response reporting.
Challenges of cloud breach detection and response.
Complex cloud attack patterns: reconnaissance, lateral movement, exploit.
Rapid exploitation - minutes vs. days for on-prem.
Importance of runtime, identity, and control plane monitoring.
Limitations of EDR and SIEM tools for cloud.
Coordinated incident response across security, DevOps, executives.
Criticality of pre-defined incident response plans.
Increased CISO personal liability risk and mitigation.
Documenting security team's diligence to demonstrate due care.
Establishing strong partnerships with legal and audit teams.
Covering defensive steps in internal communications.
Sysdig's cloud-native security approach and Falco project.
Balancing prevention, detection, and response capabilities.
Integrating security tooling with customer workflows and SOCs.
Providing 24/7 monitoring and rapid response services.
Correlating workload, identity, and control plane activities.
Detecting unusual reconnaissance and lateral movement behaviors.
Daisy-chaining events to identify potential compromise chains.
Tracking historical identity activity patterns for anomaly detection.
Aligning security with business impact assessment and reporting.
Adapting SOC team skills for cloud-native environments.
Resource and disruption cost concerns for cloud agents.
Importance of "do no harm" philosophy for response.
Enhancing existing security data sources with cloud context.
Challenges of post-incident forensics vs. real-time response.
Bridging security, DevOps, and executive domains.
Establishing pre-approved incident response stakeholder roles.
Maintaining documentation to demonstrate proper investigation.
Evolving CISO role and personal liability considerations.
Proactive management of cyber risk at board level.
Developing strong general counsel and audit relationships.
Transparency in internal communications to avoid discovery risks.
Security teams as business partners, not just technicians.
Sysdig's cloud security expertise and open-source contributions.

Participants:

· Suresh Vasudevan – CEO, Sysdig

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

Ep075: Beyond Compliance: Crafting Effective Security Culture with leaders from Clumio, Mongo DB, Symphony and AWS Jan 21, 2025

From hard-coded credentials to boardroom buy-in, join four tech security leaders from Clumio, Mongo DB, Symphony and AWS, as they unpack how building the right security culture can be your organization's strongest defense against cyber threats.

Topics Include:

Security culture is crucial for managing organizational cyber risk
Good culture enables quick decision-making without constant expert consultation
Many security incidents occur from well-meaning people getting duped
Panel includes leaders from AWS, Symphony, MongoDB, and Clumio
Measuring security culture requires both quantitative and qualitative metrics
Board-level engagement indicates organizational security culture maturity
Self-reporting of security incidents shows positive cultural development
Security committees' participation helps measure cultural engagement
Hard-coded credentials remain persistent problem across organizations
Internal audits and risk committees strengthen security governance
Public security incidents change board conversations about priorities
Leadership vulnerability and transparency help build trust
Being pragmatic beats emotional responses in security leadership
Security programs should align with business revenue goals
Customer security requirements drive program improvements
Excessive security questionnaires drain resources from actual security
Security culture started as exclusionary, evolved toward collaboration
Financial institutions often create unnecessary compliance burden
Early security involvement in product development prevents delays
Security teams must match development team speed
Trust between security and development teams enables efficiency
Small security teams can support large enterprise requirements
Vendor partnerships help scale security capabilities
Process changes work better than adding security tools
Security leaders need deep business knowledge
Technical depth and breadth remain essential skills
Evangelism capability critical for security leadership success
Influencing without authority key for security effectiveness
Crisis moments create opportunities for security improvement
Socializing between security and development teams builds trust
DEF CON attendance helps developers understand security perspective
Bug bounty programs provide continuous security feedback
Regular informal meetings between teams improve collaboration
Building personal relationships improves security outcomes
Modern security leadership requires balance of IQ and EQ

Participants:

Jacob Berry – Head of Information Security, Clumio
George Gerchow – Interim CISO, Head of Trust, Mongo DB
Brad Levy – Chief Executive Officer, Symphony
Brendan Staveley – Global Sales Leader, Security Services, Amazon Web Services

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

Ep074: Unlocking Global Growth - Mastering Compliance Across Boundaries Jan 14, 2025

AWS executive Giancarlo Casella explains how organizations can navigate global privacy regulations and achieve compliant international expansion using AWS's privacy reference architecture.

Topics Include:

Welcome to executive forum on security and Gen AI
Introduction of Giancarlo Casella from AWS Security Assurance Services
AWS helps organizations with compliance and audit readiness
Global expansion requires understanding local privacy laws
Germany and France interpret GDPR differently
Germany has Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG)
France focuses on consumer privacy through CENIL
Risk of non-compliance includes fines and reputation damage
Privacy laws existed in only 10 countries in 2000
EU Privacy Directive of 1990 was prominent
By 2010, forty countries had privacy laws
HIPAA and GLBA introduced in United States
Now over 150 countries have privacy regulations
75% of world population under privacy laws soon
Regulations are vague and open to interpretation
GDPR example: encryption requirements lack specificity
Need right stakeholders for privacy compliance
Legal team must lead privacy interpretation
Engineering implements technical privacy aspects
Risk and compliance teams coordinate evidence gathering
Data Protection Officer oversees entire program
CIO, CTO, CISO alignment creates strong foundation
Security transforms from bureaucratic to revenue enabler
AWS develops cloud-specific privacy reference architecture
Industry standards provide guidance frameworks
AWS privacy reference architecture focuses on cloud specifics
Data minimization and individual autonomy are key
Case study: Middle Eastern AI company expands to Canada
Company used CCTV at gas stations
Created privacy baseline and roadmap
Data flow documentation essential for compliance
Continuous compliance strategy helps enable success
Aligning stakeholders across different organizational lines
Future of US federal privacy regulation discussed
Discussion of responsible AI usage requirements

Participants:

Giancarlo Casella - Head of Business Development and Growth Strategies, AWS Security Assurance Services

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

Ep073: The Evolving Threat Landscape – Reshaping Cybersecurity Practices Jan 07, 2025

Haggai Polak – Chief Product Officer, Securonix and a veteran cybersecurity expert examines how artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and resource constraints are fundamentally transforming the threat landscape for security leaders

Topics Include:

AI transformation of cybersecurity landscape from past tactical focus
CISO accountability and regulatory pressures increasing significantly
Attack surface expanding beyond traditional network boundaries
Quantum computing threatens current cryptographic protections
Defenders remain understaffed and outmatched against sophisticated threats
Securonix leads SIEM/SOAR space with 1000+ global customers
World Economic Forum identifies misinformation/disinformation as major crisis
AI benefits attackers more than defenders currently
Small/medium enterprises falling below cyber poverty line
AI enables faster, more sophisticated malware development
Deepfakes caused $25M loss in Hong Kong CFO impersonation
Digital tsunami: broadband, IoT, cloud everywhere expanding attack surface
50+ democracies face election security challenges in 2024
Cloud intrusions increased 75% between 2022-2023
Quantum-resistant cryptography transition needed within 10 years
SEC regulations require specific cybersecurity incident disclosure guidelines
4 million unfilled cybersecurity positions globally
Cybercrime-as-a-Service growing, estimated $1.6B annual revenue
81% of organizations faced ransomware attacks in 2023
Insider threats increasing with remote work adoption
30,000+ vulnerabilities published last year, half critical/high
Mean time to exploit now 44 days
Securonix Eon leverages AI to increase analyst efficiency
Dark web selling corporate credentials for $10,000
Balance needed between protection and detection/response investments

Participants:

Haggai Polak – Chief Product Officer, Securonix

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

Ep072: From Alerts to Action - How Datadog Manages Security Incidents with AI Dec 30, 2024

Dr. Yanbing Li, Chief Product Officer at Datadog, outlines how the company has integrated AI and automation into its incident response framework, helping customers manage both traditional security challenges and emerging AI-specific risks.

Topics Include:

Introduced talk about incident response and CISO liability
Datadog founded 14 years ago for cloud-based development
Platform unifies observability and security for cloud applications
Current environment has too many fragmented security products
SEC requires material incident reporting within four days
Datadog's incident response automates Slack room creation
Response team includes Legal, Security, Engineering, and Product
System tracks non-material incidents to identify concerning patterns
Real-time telemetry data drives incident management automation
On-call capabilities manage escalation workflows
Datadog uses own products internally for incident response
Company focuses on reducing time to incident detection
AI brings new risks: hallucination, data leaks, design exploitation
Bits.ai launched as LLM-based incident management co-pilot
Tool synthesizes events and generates incident summaries
Bits.ai suggests code remediation and creates synthetic tests
Security built into AI products from initial design
Prompt injection prevented through structured validation approach
Sensitive data anonymized before LLM processing
Engineering and security teams collaborate closely on AI
LLM observability becoming critical for production deployments
Customers need monitoring for hallucinations and token usage
Datadog extends infrastructure monitoring into security naturally
Company maintains strong partnership with AWS
Q&A covered Bits.ai proactive capabilities and enterprise differentiation

Participants:

Yanbing Li – Chief Product Officer - Datadog

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

Ep071: Protecting Your Enterprise in the Era of Generative AI with Sanjay Kalra of Zscaler Dec 24, 2024

Sanjay Kalra of Zscaler and Randy DeFauw of Amazon Web Services explore the hidden dangers of generative AI security—from invisible text manipulation and deep fakes to data poisoning and dark AI models—while offering practical strategies for protecting your enterprise in this era of generative AI.

Topics Include:

AI security threats grouped into data, malicious use, trust/safety
Data security critical for SaaS-based AI services
Model training data vulnerable to poisoning and manipulation
GenAI lacks traditional data deletion capabilities
Access controls difficult once data becomes model embeddings
Prompt injection attacks becoming widespread, with libraries available online
Deepfake scams increasing in sophistication and frequency
AI enhancing phishing attacks with better written content
Dark AI models emerging specifically for malicious purposes
Model hallucinations being exploited for security attacks
AI accelerating analysis of stolen data
Shadow AI usage by employees poses security risks
Existing vendor AI integration creating unexpected security challenges
Fine-grained access controls essential for AI applications
PII protection critical in both inputs and outputs
Comprehensive prompt and response logging necessary
Invisible text manipulation emerging in resumes and RFPs
Model fine-tuning can compromise built-in security guardrails
Multi-language inputs create new security considerations
Competition-sensitive content requires careful AI management
AI firewalls needed for input/output monitoring
Regular security testing required for AI models
AI compliance standards emerging globally
Multi-modal AI creating new security challenges
Browser isolation helping control AI application usage

Participants:

Sanjay Kalra – Product Management at Zscaler
Randy DeFauw – Senior 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/isv/

Ep070: How CyberArk Scaled SaaS Transformation: Insights from CyberArk’s SVP Corporate Finance Nili Serr-Reuven Dec 19, 2024

This illuminating conversation with CyberArk's SVP of Finance, Nili Serr-Reuven, reveals how the 25-year-old cybersecurity leader successfully transformed from a traditional software company to a SaaS business model in just five quarters - far faster than the industry standard of 2-2.5 years - while maintaining strong margins and customer trust throughout the transition.

Topics Include:

Introduction to SaaS transformation challenges and opportunities.
Tomaz Perc introduces Nili Serr Reuven from CyberArk.
Overview of CyberArk's 25-year history and milestones.
Transition from a perpetual model to SaaS.
CyberArk's accelerated transformation in just five quarters.
Challenges of shifting from product-centric to customer-centric.
Importance of market research and peer consultations.
Key role of cross-functional collaboration in success.
Explanation of "swallowing the fish" in SaaS.
Managing short-term revenue drops during SaaS transformation.
CyberArk's 70% SaaS revenue share post-transformation.
Impact of global economic challenges on business strategy.
CyberArk's robust demand for identity security solutions.
Strategic leadership's role in transformation execution.
CyberArk's disciplined financial planning during uncertainty.
Establishing KPIs like ARR and customer satisfaction.
Managing rising cloud costs with FinOps practices.
CyberArk's approach to pricing and packaging SaaS solutions.
Leveraging acquisitions to speed up SaaS capabilities.
Impact of transformation on CyberArk's finance department.
Evolution of finance roles to support SaaS growth.
Communication with investors during transformative periods.
The importance of cultural shifts in transformation success.
Continuous learning, transparency, and collaboration as cornerstones.
Advice for future SaaS leaders: plan, communicate, adapt.

Participants:

Nili Serr Reuven – SVP Corporate Finance, CyberArk
Tomaz Perc – SaaS Business Lead, Amazon Web Services

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

Ep069: AI and Cybersecurity - Navigating the New Threat Landscape with Soumya Banerjee of McKinsey and Company Dec 17, 2024

Soumya Banerjee, Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company, shares a comprehensive data-driven exploration of how generative AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape, revealing emerging threats, organizational challenges, and strategic opportunities for security professionals.

Topics Include:

AI's transformative potential in cybersecurity
Survey of 500 cybersecurity professionals
Generative AI's impact on security landscape
Rising sophistication of phishing attacks
Threat actors leveraging generative AI
Deepfake technologies circumventing biometric controls
Cybersecurity companies' valuation and growth
Platform versus point solution debates
Expanding cybersecurity attack surfaces
Cloud security emerging as top priority
AI use cases in threat detection
Generative AI risks for organizations
Securing AI investments and budgets
Data protection and sensitive information challenges
Regulatory scrutiny of AI technologies
Talent gaps in cybersecurity sector
Evolving cyber insurance risk models
Identity and access management trends
API and machine identity security
LLM prompt and data protection
Enterprise strategies for AI adoption
Emerging technologies for cybersecurity defense
Partnerships between cybersecurity vendors
Disclosure risks in generative AI
Future of cybersecurity technology landscape

Participants:

· Soumya Banerjee – Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company

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

Ep068: Enhance Your Application with Generative AI – Presented by Zoom & AWS Dec 10, 2024

Brendan Ittelson, Chief Ecosystem Officer of Zoom and Fedrico Torreti of AWS share how Zoom and AWS are leveraging generative AI to revolutionize application development, enhance cross-app personalization, and streamline user experiences with intelligent communication tools.

Topics Include:

Introduction of speakers and session overview.
Generative AI's disruptive impact across industries.
Reimagining customer experiences with generative AI.
Driving productivity through AI-powered applications.
Challenges faced by application developers with AI integration.
Importance of AI as a collaborator, not replacement.
Cross-functional workplace complexity with multiple apps.
Reducing task redundancy via generative AI automation.
Case study: AI accelerating creative project briefings.
Business outcomes achieved through thoughtful AI implementation.
McKinsey and Gartner projections on generative AI's potential.
Top use cases: R&D, customer operations, sales, marketing.
Bridging data silos for richer user experiences.
Security and compliance challenges in AI implementations.
Zoom's federated model for adaptable AI architecture.
Meeting summaries powered by Zoom AI Companion.
Expanding generative AI into chat, whiteboards, voicemails.
Vision for AI amplifying, simplifying, and delegating tasks.
Integrating external data for personalized user experiences.
Open platform approach for seamless data exchange.
AI Companion empowering users with actionable insights.
Role of AWS in enabling AI-first solutions.
Addressing notification overload with smarter AI design.
Enhancing end-to-end workflows with unified AI tools.
Encouragement for developers to embrace thoughtful AI adoption.

Participants:

Brendan Ittelson - Chief Ecosystem Officer, Zoom
Fedrico Torreti - Head of Product, AppFabric, AWS

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

Ep067: Market Trends in the Software Industry with Jonathan Shulman, Senior Partner with McKinsey and Company Dec 03, 2024

Jonathan Shulman, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, highlights the transformative potential of AI in the software industry and the evolutions needed to capture emerging market opportunities.

Topics Include:

AI's transformative potential in the software industry.
Why AI is a massive business opportunity.
Software industry evolution: Mainframe to Cloud SaaS eras.
Potential entrance into a new AI-driven era.
AI spend forecast: $15B to $200B by 2026.
Most AI spend repurposed from existing IT budgets.
Legacy software spend likely shifting towards AI.
Importance of targeting specific, high-impact AI use cases.
Key areas disrupted: sales, marketing, software engineering.
AI's adoption rates vary by industry and function.
Four waves of AI: predictive to agent-based.
Most companies are still in early AI stages.
Prioritize building agentic, end-to-end AI solutions.
Winning companies invest disproportionately in AI innovation.
Position offerings to tap into AI-specific budgets.
Deliver complete workflows, not isolated point solutions.
Generative AI accelerates development and iteration cycles.
Scaling AI pilots remains a major industry challenge.
Tool fragmentation undermines productivity and innovation.
Change management critical for successful AI integration.
Rethinking team roles and processes for AI deployment.
Consumption-based pricing models gaining industry traction.
Shift from perpetual to subscription to consumption models.
Balancing value-driven and cost-efficient consumption pricing.
AI market poised to redefine IT and business landscapes.

Participants:

Jonathan Shulman – Senior Partner, McKinsey and Company

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

Ep066: Local to Global: Empowering European Software Leaders with Boardwave Nov 28, 2024

AWS's Miguel Álava and BoardWave's Phill Robinson explore how European software companies can overcome market fragmentation, leverage cloud and generative AI, and adopt global strategies to scale competitively.

Topics Include:

Introduction of Miguel Álava and Phill Robinson
Overview of BoardWave's mission and community
Challenges for European software companies in scaling globally
Comparison of US and European software market dynamics
Cloud adoption benefits for European software scalability
Modern licensing models to centralize operations in Europe
Impact of fragmented European markets on growth
COVID-19's effect on sales strategies and efficiency
Selling enterprise software across Europe via cloud tools
Role of centralized marketing in global competitiveness
Advantages of targeting the US before EMEA expansion
BoardWave's "Voyager" model for scaling internationally
Importance of solving universal versus local market problems
Using cloud infrastructure to penetrate diverse markets
Generative AI's role in product innovation and scaling
Generative AI's transformational impact on global software industry
European software companies' opportunity to lead in AI
Building a collaborative European ecosystem for innovation
Lessons from Silicon Valley's collaborative success model
BoardWave's mentoring programs for European software CEOs
AWS's support for cloud adoption and business scaling
The evolving role of Chief Product Officers (CPOs)
AI's potential to enhance cross-market product functionality
Strategic next steps for scaling European software businesses
Vision for Europe as a software superpower by 2034

Participants:

Phill Robinson – Founder, Boardwave
Miguel Alava – EMEA ISV General 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/isv/

Ep065: Delivering Exceptional Customer Experiences Through Innovation with RingCentral and Planview Nov 26, 2024

Richard Borstein of RingCentral and Richard Sonnenblick of Planview discuss how AI-driven innovations enhance customer and employee experiences, and unlock organizational growth through cutting-edge tools and strategies.

Topics Include:

Importance of integrated communication tools for businesses.
Challenges caused by disconnected communication platforms.
Role of data in enhancing business operations.
How RingCentral addresses communication and data integration issues.
Benefits of real-time conversational intelligence in organizations.
Leveraging AI to transform communication into actionable insights.
Unlocking customer and employee voices through AI.
How AI identifies patterns in customer interactions.
Overview of RingSense for Sales AI tool.
Real-world success story with RingSense for Sales.
Streamlining customer interactions using AI-powered analysis.
Enhancing employee productivity with AI-driven tools.
AI solutions for faster, accurate information searches.
Overview of RingCentral's Ring CX contact center solution.
Improving customer satisfaction through AI-powered call analysis.
Case study: Success with Ring CX at Worldwide Express.
Features and benefits of RingCentral Events platform.
Integrating event tech with existing customer workflows.
Personalizing events with branding and engagement tools.
PlanView’s use of AWS to drive innovation.
Solving governance challenges with PlanView’s solutions.
How generative AI accelerates productivity and decision-making.
Making every user a power user with AI.
Practical examples of generative AI in project management.
Unlocking growth with next-gen AI-driven business tools.

Participants:

Richard Bornstein - Chief Business Development Officer, RingCentral
Richard Sonnenblick Ph.D – Chief Data Scientist, Planview

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

Ep064: Agentic Gen AI Experiences with Atlas Vector Search and Amazon Bedrock Nov 19, 2024

Benjamin Flast, Director, Product Management at MongoDB discusses vector search capabilities, integration with AWS Bedrock, and its transformative role in enabling scalable, efficient, and AI-powered solutions.

Topics Include:

Introduction to MongoDB's vector search and AWS Bedrock
Core concepts of vectors and embeddings explained
High-dimensional space and vector similarity overview
Embedding model use in vector creation
Importance of distance functions in vector relations
Vector search uses k-nearest neighbor algorithm
Euclidean, Cosine, and Dot Product similarity functions
Applications for different similarity functions discussed
Large language models and vector search explained
Introduction to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
Combining external data with LLMs in RAG
MongoDB's document model for flexible data storage
MongoDB Atlas platform capabilities overview
Unified interface for MongoDB document model
Approximate nearest neighbor search for efficiency
Vector indexing in MongoDB for fast querying
Search nodes for scalable vector search processing
MongoDB AI integrations with third-party libraries
Semantic caching for efficient response retrieval
MongoDB's private link support on AWS Bedrock
Future potential of vector search and RAG applications
Example use case: Metaphor Data's data catalog
Example use case: Okta's conversational interface
Example use case: Delivery Hero product recommendations
Final takeaways on MongoDB Atlas vector search

Participants:

Benjamin Flast - Director, Product Management, MongoDB

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

Ep063: Building Generative AI for Speed and Cost Efficiency with Druva Nov 12, 2024

David Gildea of Druva shares their approach to building cost-effective, fast generative AI applications, focusing on cybersecurity, data protection, and the innovative use of LLMs for simplified, natural language threat detection.

Topics Include:

Introduction by Dave Gildea, VP of Product at Druva.
Focus on building generative AI applications.
Emphasis on cost and speed optimization.
Mention of Amazon's Matt Wood keynote.
AI experience with kids using "Party Rock."
Prediction: GenAI as future workplace standard.
Overview of Druva's data security platform.
Three key Druva components: protection, response, and compliance.
Druva's autonomous, rapid, and guaranteed recovery.
Benefits of Druva’s 100% SaaS platform.
Handling 7 billion backups annually.
Managing 450 petabytes across 20 global regions.
Druva’s high NPS score of 89.
Introduction to Dru Investigate AI platform.
Generative AI for cybersecurity and threat analysis.
Support for backup and security admins.
Simplified cybersecurity threat detection.
AI-based natural language query interpretation.
Historical analogy with Charles Babbage’s steam engine.
"Fail upwards" model for LLM optimization.
Using small models first, escalating to larger ones.
API security and customer data protection.
Amazon Bedrock and security guardrails.
Testing LLMs with Amazon’s new prompt evaluation tool.
Speculation on $100 billion future model costs.
Session wrap up

Participants:

· David Gildea - VP Product Generative AI, GM of CloudRanger, Druva

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

Ep062: Amazon Q - Your Generative AI Assistant with Urmila Kukreja of Smartsheet Nov 05, 2024

Urmila Kukreja of Smartsheet and Nick Simha of AWS discuss leveraging Amazon Q’s Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solution to enhance productivity by enabling employees to quickly access relevant information within secure, integrated workflows like Slack, improving efficiency across the organization.

Topics Include:

Introduction by Nick Simha, AWS.
Overview of Amazon Q’s role in data analytics and Gen AI.
Gen AI’s impact on productivity, ~30% improvement backed by Gartner study findings.
General productivity improvement seen across various departments.
Amazon Q’s developer code generation tool – rapid development
Gen AI and LLMs’ challenges: security, privacy, and data relevance.
Foundation models lack specific organizational knowledge by default.
Empowering Gen AI to grant system access can cause issues
Privacy concern: Sensitive data, like credit card info, can be central in data breaches
Compliance is critical for organizational reputation and data integrity.
Data integration techniques: prompt engineering, RAG, fine-tuning, custom training.
RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) balances cost and accuracy effectively.
Implementing RAG requires complex, resource-heavy integration steps.
Amazon Q simplifies RAG integration with "RAG as a service."
Amazon Q’s Gen AI stack overview, including Bedrock and model flexibility.
Amazon Q connects to 40+ applications, including Salesforce and ServiceNow.
Amazon Q respects existing security rules and data privacy constraints.
Plugin functionality enables backend actions directly from Amazon Q.
All configurations and permissions can be managed by administrators.
Urmila Kukreja from Smartsheet explains real-world Q implementation.
Smartsheet’s Ask Us Engineering Slack channel: origin of Q integration.
Q integration in Slack simplifies data access and user workflow.
"Ask Me" Slack bot lets employees query databases instantly.
Adoption across departments is high due to integrated workflow.
Future plans include adding data sources and personalized response features.
Session wrap up

Participants:

Urmila Kukreja – Director of Product Management, Smartsheet
Nick Simha - Solutions Architecture Leader - Data, Analytics, GenAI and Emerging ISVs, AWS

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

Ep061: Responsible Business Innovation with Generative AI with Harold Rivas, CISO of Trellix Oct 29, 2024

Harold Rivas – Chief Information Security Officer at Trellix, discusses the role of generative AI in cybersecurity, focusing on Trellix's adoption of AI for threat detection and model governance, while emphasizing the importance of privacy, responsible innovation, and cross-functional collaboration.

Topics Include:

Introduction to generative AI and its impact on cybersecurity
Harold’s background in financial services and cybersecurity roles
Trellix’s focus on product feedback through the Customer Zero Program
Overview of machine learning's role in anomaly detection at Trellix
Development of guided investigations to assist security operations teams
Generative AI's growing importance in cybersecurity at Trellix
Launch of Trellix WISE at the RSA Conference in 2024
Addressing the overload of security alerts with AI models
Integration of various AI models like Mistral and Anthropic
Reducing anomalies and workload for security operations teams
Importance of privacy in generative AI adoption and data governance
Challenges with GDPR and CPRA regulations in AI implementation
Focus on privacy frameworks like the NIST Privacy Framework
Need for multi-stakeholder involvement in AI governance
Discussion on model governance inspired by financial services practices
Importance of inventorying and testing AI models for security
Benefits of an AI Center of Excellence (AICOE) within organizations
Model governance in generative AI for regulatory and business outcomes
The impact of AI on labor, jobs, and decision-making processes
Addressing cyber risk and threat modeling in AI environments
The double-edged sword of AI in offensive and defensive cybersecurity
MITRE Atlas framework's role in AI-driven cybersecurity strategies
Potential negative consequences. Auto dealership hacked – Chevy Tahoe sold for $1
Importance of vulnerability management and developer training
Evolution of AI security tools and responsible use of generative AI
Collaboration, governance, and agility in AI adoption across organizations
Q&A 1: Outcomes and responsibilities an generative AI COE should have?
Q&A 2: Model governance and financial implications
Q&A 3: CISO response to model development, compliance and learning with customer data
Q&A 4: Thoughts and suggestions for rating systems for models
Q&A 5: Selecting and evaluating models
Q&A 6: Advice and experience for model deployment and technical controls
Q&A 7: Human reviewing AI responses to ensure accuracy
Q&A 8: Will AI help avoid major outages in the future?
Q&A 9: How to test and see maturity of models?
Session wrap up

Participants:

· Harold Rivas – CISO at Trellix

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

Ep060: Strategies to Enhance Organizational Security Culture with Arctic Wolf, Docker and Illumio Oct 22, 2024

Executive leaders from Arctic Wolf, Docker and Illumio share insights on fostering a strong security culture, balancing innovation with security, and addressing challenges in data protection and AI model development.

Topics Include:

Overview of security culture in different company teams
Importance of guidelines and secure IT infrastructure for AI models
Challenges of accessing customer data while maintaining security
Need for anonymization in early AI model development
Docker's open-source ecosystem and security integration
Dogfooding own products to ensure product reliability and trustworthiness
Illumio’s high customer trust and responsibility for strong security practices
Balancing security awareness with development speed at Illumio
Gamifying security training to increase awareness
Interlocking with customers to enhance security understanding for developers
Embedding security into the development process from the start
Illumio's approach to security in agile, cloud-native development
Adapting customer success strategies for evolving security needs
Rise of non-developers using AI in enterprises
Educating business leaders on security best practices
Scaling customer enablement and education through community engagement
Challenges of placing security responsibilities in the developer workflow
Arctic Wolf’s AI strategy for secure development
Use of anonymized data in secure AI model training
Generative AI’s potential to augment human creativity and efficiency
Panelists' views on private AI and segmented model development
Measuring security culture progress with gamification and development metrics
Addressing human factors in cybersecurity and social engineering threats
Emphasizing resiliency and containment in preventing widespread cyberattacks.

Participants:

Dean Teffer – Vice President of Artificial Intelligence, Arctic Wolf
Dixie Dunn – VP of Customer Success, Docker
Mario Espinoza – Chief Product Officer, Illumio
Brian Shadpour – General Manager, AWS

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

Ep059: Business Applications Transforming Industries with Cohere, Epiq and Forcura Oct 16, 2024

Hear the generative AI journeys of Cohere, Epiq, and Forcura, including their market assessments, use case prioritization, responses to ethical and security considerations, while discussing generative AI's impact on healthcare, legal industries, and business applications.

Topics Include:

Panel Introductions by David Cristini
Where is Focura at in their AI journey
Summary of Epiq’s AI journey to date
Cohere’s AI journey to date
Where did each company begin and assessing the market opportunities
Prioritizing of use cases for Epiq
Focura’s quick focus and results with generative AI
Simplifying healthcare and improving patient experience with generative AI
How do experiments and proof of concepts develop into production?
Indicators that Cohere uses to identify customers ready to move fast
Usecases that allows Forcura customers to move forward
Guidance on engaging the Executive Team – getting Executive alignment
How are legal and healthcare customers responding to AI solutions and challenges
Changes of priority from customer advisory panels
Evolving questions and concerns of functionality and data
Some customers reporting AI evaluation is slowing them down
Usecases that are easier to start off with to gain trust and traction
Dealing with AI concerns of ethics, security and privacy – managing objections
Understanding ethics concerns – privacy can often be about where data resides
Customers often want “traceability”
Accuracy and reducing hallucinations – AI comes with risk, business have to decide on business risk
Future facing – what are we excited about?
Generative AI is excellent at translation services – ROI is excellent
Business applications and social impact of generative AI

Participants:

MaryAnn Wofford – VP of Sales, Cohere
Paul O'Hagan - Senior Director Product Management – AI Platform, Epiq
Annie Mueller Erstling – COO, Forcura
David Cristini - Director, ISV Sales North America, AWS

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

Ep058: Boost Employee Productivity with AI agents powered by Amazon Q Oct 08, 2024

J.B. Brown, VP of Engineering at Smartsheet, shares how integrating Amazon Q with Smartsheet's flexible work management platform has streamlined productivity and enhanced employee support through AI-driven automation.

Topics Include:

Introduction by J.B. Brown, VP of Engineering at Smartsheet.
Story about improving productivity
Context about Smartsheet as an enterprise-scale work management platform.
Examples of Smartsheet use in healthcare, TV streaming, and small businesses.
Focus on not changing how companies work, offering flexibility.
Integration with popular enterprise tech stack tools like Okta and Slack.
Automations in Smartsheet for notifications and data synchronization.
Smartsheet’s customer base includes large enterprises and small businesses.
Overview of Smartsheet’s scale: 15 million users and $1 billion revenue.
Smartsheet’s employee support system, including 270+ "Ask Us" Slack channels.
Mention of AWS and the introduction of Amazon Q Business.
Building a Smartsheet Q Business app for streamlined employee support.
Setting up an Amazon Q Business app with proprietary data sources.
Implementation of Slack integration for Smartsheet employee support.
Example of AI summarizing Slack threads for improved efficiency.
Demo of Amazon Q Business outperforming human experts in knowledge retrieval.
Emphasizing the value of reducing response time and decision-making delays.
Future development plans: Smartsheet-Amazon Q connector.
Using AI to interrogate and manage Smartsheet project data.
Invitation to AI-minded Smartsheet customers to test the new connector.

Participants:

J.B. Brown - VP of Engineering at Smartsheet

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

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

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/isv/

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

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/isv/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ep047: Pricing Strategies for Generative AI with Sara Yamase of Simon-Kucher & Partners Jul 23, 2024

Sara Yamase, Partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners, Head of Software, Internet and Media Practice shares guidance and industry examples on generative AI pricing and GTM strategies.

Topics Include:

What percentage of companies are developing Gen AI features for customers
Projected returns on Gen AI investment
Articulating the value is 1st step in building pricing and monetization strategy
Almost half of VC funding in last 5 quarters were for AI solutions
Getting through the hype cycle and trough of disillusionment
Education, Marketing, Food industry examples of companies clarifying value of generative AI to customers
Having strong data sets for identifying trends
Pricing tenets for generative AI
Indirect monetization – more usage, faster, greater productivity, etc
Standalone Generative AI software with bespoke pricing
Ability to scale pricing per customer usage
Subscription selling for generative AI software
Choosing pricing model for generative AI solutions
Summaries and session wrap up

Ep046: AI and Cybersecurity - Navigating the Future with Darktrace Jul 16, 2024

Today Nicole Eagan, Chief Strategy and AI Officer and Michael Beck, Global CISO of Darktrace AI Research centre share experience, predictions and guidance on the future of AI and Cybersecurity.

Topics Include:

A brief history of Darktrace
Applying AI to the challenge of cyber security
Changes and evolution of cyber security threats
What are the key security challenges business are facing?
Generative AI provided a seismic shift with threat actors
Best practices for managing and scaling security teams
Guidance for leaders for baking AI into workflows
Responsible AI best practices for building trust
Trends of Generative AI on the security landscape
Leveraging Generative AI to transform the customer experience
Predictions for emerging technology trends over the next 10 years
Recommendations and parting wisdom for security and AI
Keeping a workforce trained and relevant for technology trends
Interview wrap up

Participants:

Nicole Eagan – Chief Strategy Officer and AI Officer, Darktrace
Michael Beck – Global CISO, Darktrace
Phil Le-Brun – Director, Enterprise Strategy, Amazon Web Services

Ep045: Selling to C-Suite Best Practices with ActionIQ, FloQast and Wiz Jul 09, 2024

A panel discussion with executives from ActionIQ, FloQast and Wiz on experiences and best practices for working and selling to customer C-suites.

Topics Include:

Panel introductions
Keeping products and sellers focused on C-Suite outcomes
Customer C-suite focus, identifying internal champions
Keeping sales motion concise for key C-Suite
Connecting value for enterprise space
Impact of Generative AI and inventing on behalf of customers
Customer impressions of GenAI and going beyond the hype
Helping customers reimagine / hack their business
C-suite concerns about Generative AI
Flipping objections into selling points for C-Suite
Building confidence for security, data and GenAI for Executives
Final thoughts, Session wrap-up

Participants:

Justin DeBrabant – Chief Product Officer, ActionIQ
Stefan van Duyvendijk – Accounting Operations Evangelist, FloQast
Rick Kickert – Senior Vice President of Revenue Growth & Strategy, Wiz
Veronica McCarthy – Senior Sales Manager, ISV, Amazon Web Services

Ep044: Generative AI and the Future of Global Identity Verification Jul 02, 2024

We feature a conversation with Yuelin (李玥琳)Li, Chief Product Officer of Onfido and Phil Le-Brun - Enterprise Strategist, Amazon Web Services, about the pivotal role of AI, machine learning, and generative AI in fraud prevention and security in the identity verification industry.

Topics Include:

Yuelin Li career journey
Overview and mission of Onfido
Use of AI and Machine Learning at Onfido
Successes in reducing fraud with identity verification
Challenges faced and overcome with Machine Learning
Secure rapid iteration and constant experimentation
Working with customers in highly regulated industries
Hot topics and ethics with Generative AI
Training, managing bias and maintaining accuracy of models
Staying aligned with customers
Skillets required, creating development paths for staff
Creating a culture of learning in the organisation
Deciding how to place bets on technology advances
What excites Yuelin Li most about Generative AI
Advice for other companies setting out on a similar journey
Session wrap-up

Ep043: Collaborating with AWS for Transformative Impact with Generative AI Jun 25, 2024

Executive Leaders from Proofpoint, Sumo Logic and Zendesk share their experiences and best practices for collaboration with AWS to deliver transformative impact to their business using Generative AI.

Panelists:

Patrick Wheeler, Director, Product Management, Proofpoint
Bashyam Anant, Senior Director, Product Management, Sumo Logic
Patrick Copeland, Chief Engineering & Product Officer, Zendesk
Olawale Oladehin, Director ISV Solutions Architecture, North America, AWS

Topics Include:

Introductions of Panel
Where each organization is doing with Generative AI
Designing data strategy around business outcomes
Making subject matter experts within the business
Defining what success metrics and value to focus on
Metrics and KPIs and framework for experiments
Thinking and leveraging partnerships for Generative AI
Developing skillsets, retraining teams and managing resources
Lessons learned, what would you change, advice for others
Session wrap-up

Ep042: Build & Leverage AI Within Enterprise Applications & Workflows – with Jimmy Hillis of Airtable Jun 18, 2024

Jimmy Hillis, Head of Engineering at Airtable, shares examples, guidance and major themes for how businesses can successfully build and leverage AI within their enterprise applications and workflows.

Topics Include:

Introductions and Airtable overview
Challenges businesses have articulating how AI will add value
Core insights: AI needs to leverage your own data
AI functionality needs to live within existing tools and workflows
Have workflow and business experts building prompts for the desired function
AI presents a new set of fears and restrictions
Examples for successful implementation of AI
Airtable AI field examples and automations feature
Example of leveraging technology to reduce manual activity
Data governance, training data for use
Network governance and Flexibility
Recapping the themes, session wrap up

Ep041: Driving Growth for SaaS on AWS - Best Practices, Learnings and Observations Jun 11, 2024

In this highly informative episode, we share strategies and best practices for driving growth for SaaS companies featuring Kulwinder Kalsi, head of UK and Ireland Enterprise Software and SaaS Architecture and Johan Broman, Head of Solutions Architecture for Independent Software Vendors for Europe, Middle East & Africa.

Topics Include:

Discover the main expectations end customers have of SaaS companies, including frictionless tenant onboarding, instrumentation/monitoring, pricing transparency, and focusing on core innovation.
Explore key trends shaping the SaaS industry, such as the shift towards consumption-based pricing models, complex pricing strategies that align packaging with customer segments, and leveraging other software partners to remove undifferentiated heavy lifting.
Learn how AWS can help SaaS companies with its global infrastructure, robust security measures, and rich ecosystem of services and partners to accelerate growth and innovation.
Get insights into monetizing data strategies that SaaS companies can adopt to unlock additional revenue streams from their tenant data.
Understand the different ways AWS partners, including systems integrators, professional services, and other software vendors, can support SaaS companies through their journey.
Receive practical advice on approaching cloud migration and modernization, including aligning leadership, assessing growth vs. retention goals, and choosing the right mix of lift-and-shift or full modernization.
Gain a nuanced perspective on developing AI solutions, covering use case identification, model selection, deployment techniques like prompt engineering and fine-tuning, and the importance of monitoring and management.
Hear expert tips on navigating the rapidly evolving generative AI landscape, leveraging AWS services like SageMaker and Bedrock, and utilizing specialized AI chips like Trainium and Inferentia.

Ep040: Business Applications Transforming Industries Jun 05, 2024

Business applications are catalyzing profound transformations across industries, streamlining operations, enhancing productivity, and fostering innovation. Leveraging advanced technologies such as generative AI, these applications are reshaping traditional business models, driving agility, and fueling competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Panelists:

Neboysa Omcikus - Head of Strategy, https://www.linkedin.com/company/gleanwork/Glean
Steve Antonakakis - Divisional COO, Enterprise Productivity, PDI Technologies
Shiv Sehgal - Executive Vice President, Audience Analytics, RSG Media, a Naviga Global company
Karen Hensley - Principal Data Strategist, AWS

Topics Include:

Panel Introductions
How did you decide where to focus with Generative AI?
Quantifying the value of projects with customers
Delivering the value and capability for customers
Do customers care deeply about the technology or the experience?
How did you move from “test and experiment” phase to production
How did you reevaluate your data strategy when developing software?
Working with customers on their data safety, security and ethics
Driving innovation within data regulatory and compliance requirements
Looking into the future – What’s the next wave of transformation for industry specific solutions?

Ep039: The Future of Generative AI Models with Anthropic May 28, 2024

Nicholas Marwell, Member of Technical Staff of Anthropic, shares predictions for Generative AI models as well as guidance on safely training and scaling them for the near future.

Topics Include:

Where are Generative AI Models heading
About Anthropic
Claude Opus, Claude 3 Sonnet & Claude 3 Haiku
Scaling laws impact on models
Training models for text, images and multimedia
AI Safety, high stakes and stewarding through potential dangers
Constitutional AI and interpretability research
Benefits of Features – combinations of neurons
Final thoughts – high growth and pace for coming months and years

Ep038: McKinsey's Top Software Trends - AI, Investment and Regional Opportunities Apr 30, 2024

Daniele Di Mattia, Partner at McKinsey and Company and Miguel Alava, General Manager of AWS for software companies in EMEA, discuss strategic software industry insights and trends in Europe, Middle East, Africa and beyond that will shape the future of investment, product development as well as opportunities for regional and global expansion.

Topics include:

Macro environment challenges and focus on cost optimization for software companies
Generative AI's massive impact and expanding total addressable market
The need for increased R&D investment in Europe, Middle East and Africa region
Leveraging cloud elasticity and optimization for cost-conscious environments
Impact of generative AI on product development and developer productivity
Embedding generative AI in sales, marketing and customer operations
Importance of data strategy and prioritizing high-value use cases
Being bold and courageous in investing during technological inflection points
Opportunities for software companies to lead in their respective market segments

Ep037: Market Trends in the Software Industry presented by IDC Apr 23, 2024

Frank Della Rosa, Research Vice President of SaaS, Business Platforms, and Industry Cloud at IDC, shares the recent trends of the software industry and how some successful software companies are adapting their strategies to best take advantage and create value.

Topics Include:

The worldwide forecast for SaaS and cloud software
Major growth stats for SaaS and Cloud software
North America growth deep dive
Top businesses investing in generative AI
Co-creation with individuals, teams and machines
Criticality of roadmap for generative AI
Monetizing generative AI’s impact on demand
Data’s role in the “Year of the Platform”
Purpose built platforms
Enterprise generative AI use cases
Opportunities and challenges of generative AI
Informing ISV and SaaS partners on tech buyer focus
Impact of software architecture from edge infrastructure
Generative AI and application modernization services
Enhanced productivity, operational excellence, Hyper personalization
Domain specific models and vertical SaaS companies
Where are we going? What’s ahead?
Reiterating the final points

Ep036: Profitable Growth Strategies for Software Companies with Simon Kucher Apr 16, 2024

Mark Billige, CEO of global consultancy firm Simon Kucher and Miguel Alava, General Manager of AWS for software companies in EMEA, discuss strategic software industry insights and trends that will shape the future of data, generative AI and cost optimization.

Topics Include:

Shift from Growth-at-All-Costs to Profitable Growth Models
Monetizing the Value of Generative AI Offerings
Treating Data as a Monetizable Asset for Software Companies
Strategies for Expanding into the U.S. Software Market
Rethinking Software Pricing and Revenue Models
Organizational Changes Required for AI-Driven Innovation
Avoiding Undervaluing Software Offerings and Leaving Money on the Table
Balancing Cost Optimization with Investing in Growth
Leveraging Partnerships/Acquisitions for New Market Entry

Ep035: Data - The Differentiator for Generative AI Applications Apr 09, 2024

Ep035: Today's podcast features panel discussion from the "AWS for Software Companies Generative AI and Data Executive Forum" featuring leaders from Anyscale, Qlik and Rapid7 sharing insights on data models, policies and optimization for Generative AI applications.

Panelists:

Zhe Zang, Head of Open Source Engineering, Anyscale
Brendan Grady, EVP & GM, Analytics Business Unit, Qlik
Laura Ellis, VP - Data Engineering and Platform Analytics, Rapid7
Sherry Marcus Ph.D., Director, Applied Science, AWS

Topics Include:

Introductions of the panel
What big bets are you making with your companies and why?
What have the learnings been with data preparation?
Balancing present needs with the future of AI – growing data literacy
Cost optimization for AI and Data platforms
Constraints of hardware and growing expense
What models and solutions have customers been asking for?
High stakes risks for AI and Data
How customers are reacting to different compute models
Guardrails, filters and risk-mitigation best practices
Data and AI pain points
New global policies challenging data and AI development
Challenges with data quality
How has AI changed and evolved with digital natives?
Open and closed models in the market
Metrics and selection for models
Biggest lessons learned in the AI and data space
Session conclusion

Ep034: “Everyone in My Organization Needs Data” Panel Discussion Mar 26, 2024

A panel discussion from the AWS for Software Companies Generative AI and Data Executive Forum featuring leaders from DatologyAI, Gretal.ai and Zscaler sharing insights on data analytics, AI/ML and cost optimization.

Panelists:

Ari Morcos - CEO and Co-founder at DatologyAI
John Meyers - CTO and Co-Founder at Gretel.ai
Sanjay Kalra - Product Management at Zscaler
Andy Perkins – General Manager, Data, Analytics, GenAI at Amazon Web Services

Topics Include:

Top 3 keys to success integrating insights, AI-ML, generative AI
Big business opportunities for data curation, data analytics to reduce costs
Recent ML innovations for solving problems with data
Balancing utility and accuracy with synthetic data for privacy
What is the role synthetic data plays in AI/ML Ops
Benefits of synthetic data
Cost optimization existing data in AI/ML platform
Reinvesting cost savings into innovation with data and generative AI
Insights and predictions for data, AI/ML, generative AI to transform user journeys

Ep033: The Data-Driven Future of Healthcare with Brad Porter of Orion Health Mar 19, 2024

Phil Le-Brun of AWS speaks to Brad Porter, CEO of Orion Health about the exciting future healthcare, communities that have adopted a “Digital First” strategy and improving the healthcare experience through data and technology.

Topics Include:

The ambitious mission and vision for Orion Healthcare
Improving the clinician and patient experience through data
The role of data in healthcare
Opportunities for digitization and innovation in healthcare
AI and data for improving healthcare predictability & efficiency.
Using technology to “join the dots” for health trends of the population
Examples and benefits of communities that have a “Digital First” strategy for healthcare
The patient experience with their healthcare data
Building trust with personal health information
Learning about digital opportunities from personal experiences with healthcare

Ep032: Data Sprawl to Data Insights with Stephen Manley of Druva Mar 12, 2024

In this podcast we’ll hear from Stephen Manley, CTO of Druva, about the problem of data sprawl, and how AWS customers like Druva have prepared, orchestrated, and unified petabytes of data to analyze and perform at scale.

Topics Include:

Generative AI has flipped a lot of legacy AI in last few months
Overview of Druva / a SaaS backup company
How do we use generative AI to help customers get more value?
What problems did we not expect with generative AI?
Curating data to feed into LLMs
Integrating security and privacy into the product
Measuring performance with generative AI
AWS team helping solve the issues
Betting big on AWS Bedrock
Ingesting data into S3 with 5x performance improvement
Unified view of security, aggregating data for efficiency
Walking through an example query
Summary recommendations

Ep031: How SaaS Shapes Customer Engagement with Raviteja Dodda of MoEngage Mar 05, 2024

Today, in collaboration with Business Insider India, Raviteja Dodda, Founder and CEO of MoEngage shares the story of how MoEngage is shaping customer engagement and provides guidance for other software leaders wishing to make the same journey.

Topics Include:

Jeff Klaus and Raviteja Dotta Introductions
How has the Customer Engagement Space evolved in recent years?
How has SaaS help automate AI-driven personalization?
Maximizing existing customers
Steps and best practices for growing to multiple markets
Developing GTM approach for Asia, Europe and North American markets
Creating a “flywheel effect” by leveraging customer communities
Innovating to stay ahead of the curve in the software industry
MoEngage implemented AI in 2016 – how had that AI strategy evolved through to generative AI?
Recommendations and Lessons Learned

Ep030: Mega Trends in the Software Industry with Jeremy Schnieder, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company Feb 27, 2024

Today, a session from the AWS for Software Companies Executive Forum at re:Invent, Jeremy Schnieder, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, shares some mega trends of the software industry.

Topics Include:

Software is growing significantly.
Total value of Enterprise software industry has doubled in the last 5 years
IT spending rising, SaaS now over 50% of software revenue
Opportunities & major growth drivers with GenAI
Shifts balance of internal development and commercial software due to GenAI
GenAI influenced changes in various market segments
Tactics that product led sales are using
Productivity benefits from generative AI-assisted software development
Productivity metrics for generative AI

Ep029: Scaling SafetyCulture with CEO & Founder Luke Anear Feb 20, 2024

Gabriele Lasauskaite, Head of Growth & Community Programs at AWS, speaks with Luke Anear, CEO and Founder of SafetyCulture as he shares the story of SafetyCulture, becoming a critical app for businesses, supporting 75,000 customer globally and the plans for 100x growth in the coming years.

Topics Include:

How did SafetyCulture begin? What problem were you trying to solve?
Who are the customers of SafetyCulture?
Australian Open using SafetyCulture for their events
Airlines relying on SafetyCulture
The role of technology on SafetyCulture
The importance of User Experience
Growing the SafetyCulture business 100x by 2032
Interview wrap up

Ep028: Optimizing Amazon Connect with eGain Analytics Feb 13, 2024

James Hunt, Vice President of Product Management of eGain shares the story of how eGain Analytics is helping Amazon Connect customers to measure, manage and optimize their contact centers.

Topics Include:

Overview of eGain
eGain Solution hubs: Knowledge, Conversation & Analytics
Why enterprises choose eGain Analytics
Contact Center Analytics: Buy vs. Build
Navigating a migration from On-Premise to Amazon Connect – Best Practices & Pitfalls.
A real customer migration experience
Building trust with large enterprises and government clients
How eGain leverages AWS services
The Amazon/eGain partnership
Advice for other software executives
Find out more: eGain.com and eGain on AWS Marketplace
Navigating the migration from On-Premise Solutions to Amazon Connect – Best Practices & Pitfalls.

Ep027: Building and Sustaining a Successful Software Company Jan 23, 2024

We feature a panel discussion from the AWS for Software Companies Executive Forum at re:Invent, featuring software leaders, founders and co-founders from Cohesity, HashiCorp, Postman and SentinelOne sharing how they grew their software business, software trends they are seeing and growth plans for 2024

Panelists:

Mohit Aron, Founder and Chief Technology and Product Officer, Cohesity
Armon Dadgar, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer, HashiCorp
Ankit Sobti, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Postman
Ely Kahn, Vice President of Product for Cloud Security and AI/ML, SentinelOne
Carol Potts, Director ISV Sales, North America, Amazon Web Services

Topics Include:

Software trends being seen in the market today
Introductions from each panellist
Seeing a market opportunity and the founders’ journey
The evolving vision of software companies
Involvement & impact of AWS
Reactions to present day market conditions
Changes for various sized customers
Strategies for delivering value and staying nimble
Where are software companies pushing for growth?
Impact and approach to generative AI
Software and growth strategies for 2024
Session wrap up

Ep026: Driving a Culture of Innovation through Optimization Jan 16, 2024

We feature a panel discussion from the AWS for Software Companies Executive Forum at re:Invent, featuring software leaders from Appen, Coinbase, Rapid7 and AWS sharing strategies and best practices to optimize their businesses to free up budgets and enable further software innovations.

Panelists:

Bobby Smith, Vice President of IT and Engineering, Appen
Sumanth Sukumar, Vice President Engineering, Coinbase
Elaine Hardwick, Director of Engineering, Rapid7
Sree Ratnasinghe, Director, NAMER Tech, Amazon Web Services

Topics Include:

Potential future market and impact of driving optimization
How optimization drove innovation
Using optimization to free up budget & time for growth programs
Optimization becomes part of the organizational culture
Lessons learned through optimization
Running internal competitions to drive innovation and modernization
AWS’ “Experience Based Accelerator” 3 day hackathon-style optimization program
Leveraging AWS to help optimize to invest in generative AI
Investment returns in Bedrock and Code Whisperer
Ensuring team alignment for optimization focus
Making roadmap trade-offs – features v optimization
Final thoughts, panel wrap up

Ep025: Modern Data Strategies for Software Companies Jan 09, 2024

We feature a panel discussion from the AWS for Software Companies Executive Forum at re:Invent, featuring software leaders from Canva, Databricks, Okta, PagerDuty and AWS discussing modern data strategies for software companies.

Panelists:

Fawaz Ahmed, Senior Director of Engineering, Canva
David Meyer, SVP of Product Management, Databricks
Bhawna Singh, CTO, Okta
Tim Armandpour, CTO, PagerDuty
Barry Morris, GM, In-Memory and Emerging DB, AWS

Topics Include:

Sharing approach to data strategies
Canva providing and leveraging user analytics.
Databricks data strategy and architecture
Processing data with minimal latency
Governance and challenges with generative AI
Beyond the chatbots - fundamental shifts in data strategy with generative AI
Managing data for generative AI verification and trust
Training and fine-tuning data models
Prioritizing data integration and evolution
How will generative AI evolve data over the coming years
Can providing insights be monetized?
Technology requirements for driving data-based decision making
Predictions for data and generative AI

Ep024: Generative AI Disruption, Impact and Opportunities for Software Companies Dec 13, 2023

Description:

Today, a fascinating panel discussion from the AWS for Software Companies Executive Forum at re:Invent November 2023, featuring software leaders from Anthropic, Freshworks, Genesys, Snaplogic and AWS discussing the disruption, impact and opportunities of generative AI for software companies.

Panelists:

Matt Bell, Member of Technical Staff, Anthropic
Siddhartha Agarwal, Senior Vice President, Product Strategy & Operations, Freshworks
Glenn Nethercutt, Chief Technology Officer, Genesys
Jeremiah Stone, Chief Technology Officer, Snaplogic
Sherry Marcus Ph.D, Director of Applied Science, Generative AI, AWS
Andy Perkins, Director ISV Sales, AWS

Topics Include:

Observations of the current state of generative AI
How will AI continue to disrupt industries?
Agents and bots to help employers scale
Impact of generative AI on retail and support
Leveraging generative AI and automation to become lean and reduce waste
Risk management for generative AI
Ethical concerns – Security, data accuracy and privacy
Managing/reducing “jailbreaks” – users attempting to break the models
Developing leadership clarity and in-house expertise for large language models
Increased power of Product Managers, evolution of engineering departments
How SaaS companies work with generative AI
Leveraging AWS Bedrock for acceleration
Advice for Software Executives going into generative AI
Partnering with AWS for POCs

Ep023: Metrics & Best Practices for Security in DevOps Organizations Dec 08, 2023

We present a panel discussion with software leaders from Contrast Security and Tenable sharing guidance and best practices for security in DevOps practices. Panelists are:

Mike Clausen - Director of Product Management, Contrast Security
Phillip Hayes - Director Information Security, Tenable
Temi Adebambo - Head of Security Solutions Architecture, AWS

Topics Include:

The significance of introducing security into the DevOps processes for Modern Architectures
Balancing need for speed & agility with need for security
Common challenges in security in DevOps
What does “Shift Left” mean to the panelists?
Considerations & guidance for “shifting left”
Best Practices for security testing & vulnerability management
Suggested metrics for organizational leaders

Ep022: Best Practices for Secure Data Management in the Cloud Nov 28, 2023

Enjoy our panel discussion with executive leaders from ChaosSearch, Sentra and ZeroFox and discuss some best practices for secure data management and compliance in the cloud.

Speakers:

Thomas Hazel, CTO & Chief Scientist, ChaosSearch
Yoav Regev, CEO and Co-founder, Sentra
Mike Price, Chief Technology Officer, ZeroFox
Mark Terenzoni, Service Leader, AWS, Amazon Inspector and Amazon Detective

Topics Include:

Customers concerned about size of data
How AWS manages large amounts of data
Challenges of compliance with data storage
People challenges with data security
Getting security info from customers isn’t always easy
Complexity of security options still challenging to many customers

Ep021: How Strong Security can be Your Strategic Advantage Nov 14, 2023

Today we have a panel of software industry leaders from Braze, N-able and Rapid 7 discussing how to use security as a strategic advantage

Speakers:

Mark Shasha, Head of Security, Braze
Ulrich Dangel, Director of Engineering, Rapid7
Stefan Voss, VP of Product Management, N-able
Clayton Smith, Global Startup Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Topics Include:

Thesis: Security is good for business
Is security a differentiator and lead to sales?
Is your customer base being more educated on security issues?
How have you built a culture of security?
How do you hire for a security culture
Are security teams involved in sales discussions?
Is security risk communication easier with the cloud?

Ep020: Leveraging Kubernetes for AI/ML Workloads Oct 31, 2023

We feature a roundtable discussion with several software industry leaders on how their organizations leveraged Kubernetes for their AI and ML workloads as well as lessons learned from the experience.

Featuring:

Amreth Chandrasehar - Director of MLOps, SRE and Observability, Informatica
Úlfar Erlingsson - Chief Architect, Lacework
Murli Thirumale - General Manager of the Cloud Native Business Unit, Pure Storage
Barry Cooks - VP Kubernetes, AWS

Topics include:

Huge amounts of AI/ML workloads at AWS
What is the path from data to value for customers?
What were challenges with leveraging Kubernetes?
What were the top wins, biggest regrets & lessons learned from leveraging Kubernetes?

Ep019: Reimagine Your Applications with Serverless Containers Oct 17, 2023

Register for AWS reInvent: NOV. 27 – DEC. 1, 2023 | LAS VEGAS, NV

Today we feature a roundtable discussion on organizational adoption, benefits and best practices for deploying serverless containers featuring Skylar Graika, Product & Engineering Leader of Smartsheet and Jeet Kaul, Senior Vice President of Jumio, moderated by Banjot Chanana of AWS.

Topics include:

Serverless session intros
Where does “Serverless” start and stop?
How did Serverless get adopted within the organization?
Reaction of developers and Operations teams to Serverless
Any unintended benefits from adopting Serverless?
Cost structures of shifting to serverless
How to approach 3rd parties with serverless
Obtaining executive sponsorship for business case
Session wrap-up

Ep018: Unleashing the Power of GenAI for Software Companies Oct 03, 2023

We share a roundtable discussion on Generative AI featuring Chris Cholette, Agile VP Engineering and SRE for Navan, Swapnil Paranjpe, Senior data Practitioner at Persistent, Gregor Stewart, VP of Artificial intelligence at SentinelOne and all hosted by Matt Thompson of AWS.

Topics include:

Intro to Matt Thompson
4 Pillars of Generative AI for AWS
Introductions of panel
How much is your day is GenAI?
How much retraining for techniques for data science or engineer teams?
Why are you incorporating GenAI?
How do we test for quality of output?
When to use an ML model or a foundation model?
Session wrap-up

Ep017: Accelerating Growth Through Global Expansion with Michael Brown of Auvik Networks & Rob Woolley of Benevity Sep 19, 2023

Register for AWS reInvent: NOV. 27 – DEC. 1, 2023 | LAS VEGAS, NV

We feature a panel discussion featuring Michael Brown, VP of Technology at Auvik Networks, Rob Woolley, VP of Technology Operations at Benevity moderated by Jeff Klaus of AWS sharing best practices on global expansion. Topics include:

The most successful AWS customers are on multiple continents
What are the goals for wanting to expand overseas?
Going global through acquisition
Copying services to various regions with AWS
AWS helping to establish beachheads in new markets
Managing challenges of data residency
Best practices for staffing in a new market
North American marketing often doesn’t work in other markets
Working with resellers in a new market
Session wrap up

Ep016: Software Security Models and Organizational Best Practices feat Arctic Wolf, Blackberry Athoc and Hootsuite Sep 05, 2023

Sign up for AWS reInvent: NOV. 27 – DEC. 1, 2023 | LAS VEGAS, NV

This week we’re sharing a panel discussion featuring Mohan Rao - Vice President, Cyber Security Platform at Arctic Wolf, Ramon Pinero - Vice President of Product and Services at BlackBerry AtHoc, Cuneyt Karul - Senior Director, Information Security and Product Privacy at Hootsuite and Wayne Duso, Vice President of Engineering and Product at AWS discussing security models and organizational best practices.

Management of the security function in various organizations
Security risk register and process best practices
Going from the “Department of ‘No’” to “Department of ‘Yes and..’”
Helping teams become security champions
Transformation of the AWS security organization
Security visibility of CxOs & Executives
Building security governance & compliance structure
Impact of generative AI on security practice

Ep015: Building Modern Data Strategies with Riaz Raihan of Alida & Barry Morris of AWS Aug 22, 2023

Barry Morris of AWS discusses Modern Data Strategies with Riaz Raihan, President of Products & Engineering at Alida, on how they have designed their data strategy to manage through the extraordinary complexities of handling large volumes of data.

Barry Morris introduction
Building modern data strategies
Data-driven product design
Riaz Raihan, President of Products & Engineering at Alida
Collecting large volumes of data
Managing security of large volumes of data beyond standard compliance
Rebooting Alida – focusing on customer outcomes
Driving growth, profit and enabling speed
Scaling Voice of Employee program for 225,000 employees in 2 days
Executive alignment is crucial for success
Management, security, protection of data in fundamental

Ep014: Creating a Culture of Data Enablement with Juan Sequeda of data.world Aug 08, 2023

Juan Sequeda, Principal Scientist and Head of AI Lab at data.world shares case studies and best practices for creating cultures of enablement around data quality and behaviours.

Topics Include:

Juan Sequeda introduction
Foundation of knowledge & data graphs for AI
2 million users in the OpenData catalogue, 40% of Fortune 500
OneWeb Case Study – data from satellites
The Culture of Enablement to empower your organization with data
OneWeb using AWS Sagemaker
Prologis Real Estate logistics data case study
Tying staff rewards to data quality and behaviours
Developing a culture of change
Session wrap up

Ep013: Empowering Data-Driven Marketing Teams with AdPredictive Jul 25, 2023

AdPredictive’s Ali Levitan, EVP of Business Development & Growth, and Laura Crossley, VP of Experience, join us to discuss how AdPredictive’s partnership with AWS Clean Rooms is empowering marketing teams with data-driven tools. Topics Include:

Introduction to Ali Levitan & Laura Crossley
Solving the big problems for Marketers
The challenges marketers are facing in current environment
The partnership of AWS Clean Rooms and AdPredictive
Use Cases and Success Stories
Expanding the power of data to non-technical marketing teams
Overcoming challenges throughout the integration
Innovating and staying focused
Advice for other software leaders
AdPredictive is passionate about supporting marketers
Accessing the AdPredictive solution
Interview wrap up

Free Trial of AdPredictive's tools are available here.

Ep012: Mergers & Acquisitions Best Practices Roundtable with Tim LoGrasso of Kickdrum Jul 11, 2023

Tim LoGrasso of Kickdrum and Matt Thompson of AWS host a roundtable sharing best practices for software mergers and acquisitions.

Topic include:

Karthik Krishnamurthy introduction
Tim LoGrasso, Kickdrum introduction
Maturity model for calculating risk in M&A
M&A changes and challenges in 2023
Matt Thompson, AWS introduction
Is architecture a focus when considering M&A?
Most M&A struggles due to product team misalignment
Containers, APIs in compute infrastructure easier to integrate than Monoliths
M&As are often driven by Finance and Business Development, not so much Product Teams
Time metric to measure success and failure for M&As
Building a case for M&A vs build
Preethi Srinivasan (Druva, DataStax) on due diligence for M&A considerations
Pre-integration Proof of Concepts increase the success rate
90 day and 12 month plans with funding models to deliver the joint opportunity
Understand the ‘white space’ to address with the combination of products
What can product teams do to accelerate value?
Identify potential friction points and how to address
Access to cheap compute power is important
Guidance on managing customer data during M&A
The customer data to review
Managing people risk during an M&A
Session wrap up

Ep011: Software Data Architectures with McAfee and Tealium Jun 27, 2023

Deepak Thakral, VP of eCommerce at McAfee and Bob Page, SVP of Product at Tealium discuss Software Data Architectures and share best practices in a roundtable hosted by AWS’s Denise Zelt.

Topics include:

Deepak Thakral of McAfee introduction
Bob Page of Tealium introduction
Bob Page on helping customers with their end users and creating business value
Setting up priorities for data architecture and roadmap
Lessons learned from Tealium
Deepak: How McAfee manages high performance & security with increasing data
Shankar Venkataraman of Jivox on scaling and processing 10 times data volume in past 3 years
Steven Tiell of DataStax on performing real time AI of time series data
Bob Page on adoption of microservices and best practices
Tradeoffs of transitioning from monolithic to micro services
Yuan Liu of Stripe on service oriented architecture vs microservices
Amit Pande of Dhruva providing SaaS based data protection
Final thoughts and recommendations from Bob Page and Deepak Thakral

Ep010: Digital Transformation leveraging Purpose-Built Databases with Sailpoint Jun 13, 2023

Grady Summers and Marty Bowers of Sailpoint share how their partnership with AWS resulted in their product running 1800x faster at 1/50th of the cost.

Grady Summers & Marty Bowers introduction
Automating access and recertification
Leveraging Infrequent Access Tables in Dynamo DB for cost reduction and autoscaling
Guidance and lessons learned

Ep009: Transform Manufacturing with Data Driven Innovations with Sam Lakkundi of BMC May 30, 2023

Sam Lakkundi, Vice President of Innovation and Head of Innovation Labs at BMC, share insight on the roadmap and massive benefits applying the power of data and the cloud to the Manufacturing industry.

Topics include:

About BMC Software
Moving their stack to AWS
The rapid change of the manufacturing industry
Predicting and simulating downtime w a digital model
Creation of BMC Helix
Leveraging AWS Sagemaker and Twinmaker
Simulating manufacturing changes to identify opportunities to action
Presentation wrap up

Ep008: Generating Value from Data with Dr Lou Kratz of Bazaarvoice May 16, 2023

Dr Lou Kratz, Principle Research Engineer of Bazaarvoice, shares how his organization generates value from data, cutting time to value by 6x and leveraging AWS to save big on cloud costs.

Topics include:

Making smart decisions automatically from data with machine learning
Bazaarvoice business model
Understanding value is the most important part of any machine learning project
Leveraging AI/ML for content moderation
Leveraging AWS Sagemaker
Being cost effective with serverless options
Cutting time to value by 6x with savings of 82%
Investing in ML Ops
Final recommendations for data and ML Ops

Ep007: Data-Driven Enterprise - Vision to Value with Tom Godden May 02, 2023

Tom Godden, Enterprise Strategist with AWS and Executive advisor shares his experience as both a CIO and CTO on how to drive higher value from data strategies.

Topics include:

About the Enterprise Strategy team
Learning from customers using data to go from vision to value
Speed and agility is the only differentiator
What it means to be a data-driven enterprise
How companies like Disney, Formula 1 and Amazon use data as a differentiator
“Data is the new oil” – CIO Magazine
79% of the challenges around the adoption of data are cultural
4 “Es” of data – Engage, Enable, Educate, Eliminate
Insist on having the data
One way and two-way doors & Two pizza teams
Decentralize data producers, distribute throughout organization
Be prepared to re-evaluate your metrics
Govern to enable, not to restrict
Building tenets for data policies and procedures
A data asset is not successfully deployed until it is fully automated
Think big and execute small
Building a smarter organization leveraging machine learning
A mission statements needs to mean something
Work to eliminate biases
Avoiding “The Frozen Middle”
Be clear on the “why” for implementing machine learning
Start small and think big with AI
Presentation wrap up

Ep006: Leading and Innovating Through a Major Disruption with Jonathan Barouch of Local Measure Apr 18, 2023

Jonathan Barouch, CEO of Local Measure, joins us to discuss their journey of leading and innovating through a major business disruption.

Topics Include:

Intro to Local Measure
The pre-Covid business model and customers
Impact of Covid
Losing 75% of their revenue within months
Teams navigating the early months of Covid
Reinventing the business
Testing, iterating new business models
Leveraging AWS APIs for Amazon Connect Cloud Contact Center solution
Balancing the former focus and contact centre pivot
The importance of a call centre in lean times
Migrating call centres of airlines and banks within 30 days
Change management and the Local Measure solution
Leveraging AI/ML for additional customer efficiencies
Shaving seconds off calls equate to huge savings
Leveraging AI/ML to turbocharge agents
Additional industries for the Local Measure solution
Transforming data for tangible benefit
Proactive, predictive and outbound engagements
Guidance for other Software Executives going through disruption
What’s next for Local Measure
Interview wrap up

Ep005: Building a Roadmap for SaaS Apr 04, 2023

Multiple software industry leaders speak about their journey in building a resilient SaaS business.

Speakers:

Adrian Deluca - Director of Solutions Architecture – AWS
Ashley Kramer - CMO, CSO, Acting CTO at GITLAB
Kochira Okamoto - CEO at Yayoi
Tendü Yoğurtçu, PHD - Chief Technology Officer at Precisely
Mathias Golombek - Member of the Executive Board and Chief Technology Officer at Exasol
Akshay Patel - Principal SaaS Business Development Lead at AWS

Topics Covered:

Introduction by Adrian Deluca
Balancing growth and profitability Q/A by Tendü Yoğurtçu
Building and keeping both Exasol’s product lines running Q/A by Mathias Golombek
What do Enterprise customers value most? Q/A by Ashley Kramer
Balancing growth and profitability in Japanese countries & pivoting the company in a new direction Q/A by Kochira Okamoto
What strategies are used through SaaS factoring engagements Q/A by Akshay Patel
Favorite Metric for growth and profitability Q/A by Kochira Okamoto and Tendü Yoğurtçu
What were you unprepared for, when you were releasing your SaaS products? Q/A by Mathias Golombek and Tendü Yoğurtçu and Ashley Kramer
What sort of attributes do you look for in your developer you hire? Q/A by Ashley Kramer and Kochira Okamoto and Tendü Yoğurtçu
How is diversity playing out particularly in your business? Q/A by Tendü Yoğurtçu, Ashley Kramer and Akshay Patel
What do you think about Re-skilling? Q/A by Mathias Golombek, Kochira Okamoto, Ashley Kramer, Akshay Patel and Tendü Yoğurtçu
What do you do to invest in yourself for personal growth? by Mathias Golombek, K, Ashley Kramer, Akshay Patel and Tendü Yoğurtçu
End – Conclusion by Adrian Deluca

Ep004: Accelerate Machine Learning for SaaS Projects with Veeva Systems Mar 22, 2023

Alessandro Maoggi, Senior Manager of Engineering at Veeva Systems, shares their journey and lessons learnt developing AI/ML tools with AWS Sagemaker.

Topics Include:

Intro to Veeva Systems
Background of Veeva TMF Bot
Leveraging AWS SageMaker
Scaling horizontally with smaller instances

Ep003: Accelerate Machine Learning for SaaS Projects with Rokt Mar 14, 2023

Kanishka Mohaia, VP of Engineering (Data and Machine Learning) at Rokt, shares their journey and lessons learnt in developing AI/ML teams.

Topics Include:

Introduction: Kanishka Mohaia, VP of Engineering (Data and Machine Learning) at Rokt

Machine Learning focused on improving eCommerce

Why 85% of AI project fail

Hiring, structures & best practices for AL/ML teams

Rokt architecture overview and AWS Services

Ep002: Accelerate Machine Learning for SaaS Projects with Proofpoint Feb 21, 2023

Machine Learning is critical for software teams. Adam Starr, Senior Global Engineering Manager, Data Science at Proofpoint, shares their journey to successfully building and deploying AI/ML solutions using Amazon SageMaker.

Topics Include:

Adam Starr, Senior Global Engineering Manager, Data Science at Proofpoint Inc
How Proofpoint leverages AI in security model
ML Ops leverages AWS SageMaker
AWS Innovation – Going from idea to prototype to production (Sagemaker Studio, Ground Truth, GitPush, Sagemaker Pipeline, Sagemaker Endpoints)
Critical success factors and which AWS services to use
Partnering with AWS on Machine Learning Operational platform

Ep001: Data - The Engine for Growth Feb 07, 2023

Listen in as Industry Leaders from Coupang, Snowflake and Wiz discuss strategies for using data as a business driver and share their experiences. Topics include:

Intro by Barry Morris of AWS
Yinon Costica of Wiz - introduction
Elise Bergeron of Snowflake - introduction
Seshu Adunuthula of Coupang – introduction
What is the biggest opportunity going forward using data in developing software products?
Integration of disparate data and power of combining it
Elimination of data silos and focusing on how to use it
Culture gaps in data analysis
Deploying AI to address data requirements
Centralized and decentralized data models
Team structure for data management
Graph data model
Technology enablers for data management
How can customer data be leveraged?
Building a data-driven culture internally and w customers
What lessons should customers avoid?
Staying close to customers and ensuring alignment
Building roadmaps with customers
Data monitoring & management tips
Advice for software companies on data platforms

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