AWS for Software Companies Podcast

Go inside a massive, still-in-progress migration of 1,500+ servers out of two Canadian data centers, with candid lessons on what works, what was surprising, and what to do differently.

Topics Include:

• Inside a live migration: 1,500+ servers leaving two Canadian data centers.
• How BlackBerry became a secure communications and QNX vehicle software company.
• Decades of legacy systems, and why standing still became costlier.
• Three converging forces: VMware licensing, hardware end-of-life, and FinOps gaps.
• The goals: close data centers, exit VMware, modernize only what matters.
• Choosing partners and funding programs that work as one team.
• A five-week assessment with parallel workstreams and five key workshops.
• Rehost, re-platform, or refactor: pragmatism over migration ideology.
• Early lessons on discovery, cost transparency, and over-communicating.
• Building the landing zone: accounts, networking, identity, and security.
• Discovery, right-sizing, then migrating, validating, and cutting over workloads.
• Wave planning: start simple, save the most complex workloads for last.
• Day two: cost tagging, observability, and AI-assisted modernization backlogs.
• Final advice: business case first, migrate now, modernize later.

Participants:

• Jason Whissell – Vice President, IT & Business Application Solutions, Blackberry
• Mehran Najafi PhD - Principal AI Architect & Head of AI Solution Architects, AWS Canada, Amazon Web Services  

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

From data-center chaos to billion-dollar acquisitions: the real story behind Clio's cloud journey, compliance battles, and rapid AI-driven transformation.

Topics Include:

• AWS-Clio partnership: migrate, modernize, add AI, then co-sell
• Legal industry ran on WordPerfect, mainframes, and homemade billing
• Clio launched 2008, same year as AWS's first database
• Now serves 400,000+ legal professionals across 130 countries
• Landed legal tech's largest-ever acquisition, raised $500M Series G
• Ships code 50-100 times daily in a regulated industry
• Started split across a data center, Azure, AWS, some GCP
• Nine years of acquisitions, fundraising, and rapid team growth
• Sharded databases, added regions for compliance and low latency
• Engineering team grew from 40 to over 650 people
• Lawyers once feared cloud security and data ownership questions
• Three principles: data security, system resilience, data regionality
• Stage one: survival, learning EC2, RDS, S3 basics
• Stage two: earning trust through SOC 2, PCI compliance
• AWS became a compliance partner, not just a host
• Stage three: AI reshapes coding speed and company culture
• Integrating acquisitions scattered across Heroku, GCP, Azure, others
• VLUX deal added a billion-document legal case-law database
• Rapid acquisition-to-launch playbook: some products shipped in days
• Strategy: avoid single AI vendor, preserve maximum optionality

Participants:

• Jonathan Watson – Chief Technology Officer, Clio
• Martin Bazinet – Director of Technology, AWS Canada, Amazon Web Services  

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

Experts from Pegasystems and AWS reveal how AI-powered tools now modernize decades-old mainframe systems in weeks instead of years—unlocking trapped data faster than ever.

Topics Include:

• Session covers accelerating mainframe modernization using AWS Transform and Pega Blueprint
• Agenda: challenges, joint solution, value prop, customer story, rollout mechanism
• Mainframe costs rise 20-30% yearly, straining IT budgets significantly
• Monolithic systems create long time-to-market, hurting competitiveness against newer rivals
• Mainframe data stays locked away, blocking AI adoption and innovation
• Retiring mainframe skills outpace new workforce training, compounding the problem
• AI now enables analyzing decades-old code bases within weeks, not years
• AWS Transform extracts business logic; Pega Blueprint visualizes modernized target applications
• Five-step journey: Transform, Pega Foundry, Blueprint, then deployment via Infinity platform
• Three Transform agents handle code, data, and activity analysis separately
• Data analysis covers data lineage and data dictionary schema extraction
• Outputs feed a knowledge graph, enabling natural language queries anytime
• Transform deterministically identifies distinct data paths from mainframe systems
• Data paths get grouped into business functions, each modernizable independently
• Final steps extract business logic and generate plain-English requirements
• Blueprint agent enriches Transform outputs, enabling intuitive workflow design
• Blueprint offers runtime previews and is publicly accessible at pega.com
• Pega Infinity platform handles both batch and online mainframe workloads
• Insurance company Unum modernized 1.5M lines of COBOL in three months
• Experience-Based Acceleration program delivers modernized, working code within four-to-six weeks

Participants:

• Surender Kumar – Director, Mainframe Modernization, Pegasystems
• Ujwal Bukka – Sr Partner Solutions Architect, Business Apps, Amazon Web Services
• Sourav Sarkar – Sr Worldwide Specialist Solutions Architect, Mainframe & Legacy Modernization, Amazon Web Services

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

Discover how Zuora turned its own billing platform inward to track AI costs down to the individual engineer, giving CFOs the trust and auditability they demand.

Topics Include:

• AWS's Achint Naveen opens, introduces Zuora as a key partner
• Audience poll reveals AI monetization is still a struggle
• Zuora's Katherine Shealy introduces the company's AI monetization focus
• Zuora powers monetization for global brands like Twilio, Zoom
• Their platform spans CPQ, billing, metering, and revenue recognition
• Usage-based pricing has flipped seat-based SaaS models upside down
• AI companies face a 20-point margin gap versus SaaS
• Companies juggling multiple pricing models face major hidden complexity
• Traditional pricing models are breaking down under AI's dynamic costs
• Zuora's framework aligns teams early through an NPI-style process
• Their tech lets companies iterate pricing at engineering speed
• Zuora now tracks its own AI costs internally too
• Zuora AI runs on AWS Bedrock and AgentCore infrastructure
• AWS's Achint details the full stack behind Zuora AI
• AgentCore Memory gives Zuora's agents secure, persistent context

Participants:

• Katherine Shealy – Principal Product Marketing Manager, Zuora
• Achint Naveen – Sr Account Manager, Amazon Web Services  

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

Sophos CSO Simon Reed reveals how attackers now operate like leveraged businesses—and how AI is making both sides of the cyber arms race dramatically more sophisticated.

Topics Include:

• Intro: Simon Reed, CSO at Sophos, joins Kamil Davidov.
• Sophos defends 625,000+ organizations with AI-native Fusion platform.
• Sophos MDR runs the world's largest agentic SOC.
• Simon's journey: cybersecurity since 2001, from graffiti to warfare.
• Cyber threats framed as constant toxicity, not occasional lightning strikes.
• Sophos spans small business to enterprise, giving unique threat visibility.
• Attackers now operate as leveraged, ecosystem-driven businesses, not lone actors.
• AI dramatically increases attack quality, speed, and sophistication.
• AWS Local Zones cut latency for Sophos's threat intelligence cloud.
• IntellX connects every product to real-time global threat data.
• "Good day" means finding novelty before attackers exploit it.
• Worst days: sudden, unpredictable supply chain compromise scenarios.
• Sophos updates protection across 600,000 customers within minutes.
• Decisions made fast, on incomplete data, balancing speed and risk.
• Sophos has pursued AI and deep learning for eight-plus years.
• Agentic AI's next phase reduces laborious human security work.
• Simon prioritizes class-based, automation-scale defenses over budgets.
• Sophos cut data platform costs 30%, migrated ahead of schedule.
• Advice: hyper-engage AWS account teams, push for more.
• Closing story: Sophos helped stop ransomware hitting hospitals during COVID.

Participants:

• Simon Reed – Chief Security Officer, Sophos
• Kamil Davidov – Sales Leader Israel ISV-BizApps, Amazon Web Services

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

Vibe coding is accelerating code development within the Enterprise, but at what cost of security? Retool’s CEO shares how you can accelerate software development while managing the risks effectively.

Topics Include:

• Internal software runs pharmacies, grocery checkouts, and airport check-ins daily
• Retool manages and de-risks environment from insecure code
• AI has driven a 10x surge in code volume since 2025
• More code plus less human review means falling code quality
• Non-engineers can now build working apps in minutes flat
• But deploying and securing those apps remains genuinely difficult
• Multiple CIOs found private company data exposed on the internet
• Uncontrolled model choice is quietly driving up company costs
• Attackers now deploy automated agent swarms, not lone hackers
• Defense is asymmetric: one flaw in, everything must hold
• Retool runs inside customers' own cloud, often on AWS
• A single data choke point enables logging, audits, authorization
• Guardrails, not their absence, actually let teams move faster
• Security audits reveal major gaps in nearly all companies checked
• Nearly all companies may face a serious hack within 18 months

Participants:

• David Hsu – Founder, CEO, Retool

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

In a fascinating panel discussion, executives from Couchbase, SentinelOne and AWS share strategies ensuring the highest adoption and ROI when deploying AI and the pitfalls to avoid along the way.

Topics Include:

• Agentic AI marks shift from clever data to autonomous agents
• Organizations sit at different AI maturity levels, not uniform
• Only 31% of adopters see measurable financial impact from AI
• Adoption friction, not access, is what stalls most AI value
• Segment your workforce: innovators, pragmatic majority, and reluctant laggards
• Give innovators tools, budget, and freedom before chasing laggards
• Visible recognition programs turn early innovators into internal role models
• AI-ready data infrastructure remains the top blocker to real adoption
• Future AI value concentrates at customer-facing, transaction-level touchpoints
• Coding tools see fast uptake; broader business adoption lags behind
• AI is quietly rewriting SEO, SEM, and lead-routing strategy
• Agent trust requires both clean data and strong safety guardrails
• Human-in-the-loop review lets AI handle investigation, humans decide outcomes
• In agentic AI, go-to-market partnerships matter more than past tech waves
• Strong tech-platform partnerships help smaller vendors punch above their weight
• Marketplace listings can cut sales cycles from months to weeks
• Best partnerships form around solving hard problems, not quarterly quotas
• Confidence gap: only 38% of employees feel AI-ready

Participants:

• Deirdre Toner – President & Chief Commercial Officer, Couchbase
• Eran Ashkenazi - Chief Business Officer, SentinelOne
• Connie de Lange – Director, AWS Strategic Customer & Partner Marketing, North America, Amazon Web Services
• Matt Wood – Chief AI & Technology Officer, Amazon Web Services  

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

Demandbase's Vice President of Product explains why they deleted a fully-approved AI architecture two months before launch — and how the rebuild surpassed some of their customer’s highest expectations.

Topics Include:

• AWS's Achint Naveen introduces Demandbase's VP of Product, Chad Holdorf
• Demandbase unifies sales, marketing, and revenue data into one view
• November's architecture used many specialized agents, all committee-approved
• That design failed constantly — only a 30% conversation pass rate
• On May 11th, the team deleted the entire architecture
• Rebuilt in May with AWS Strands: one simpler, flexible agent
• Pass rate leapt from 30% to 94% almost overnight
• Week two retention rose from the low 20s to upper 80s
• Weekly active users grew 45% week-over-week after launch
• Real customer interviews play, calling the new AI a "dream"
• One user cut an hour-long report down to fifteen minutes
• Customers now trace ad impressions directly to closed deals
• Holdorf's advice: delete and rebuild when architecture gets too complex
• AWS's Naveen walks through Bedrock, AgentCore, and Strands
• AgentCore Memory highlighted as Demandbase's next area of exploration

Participants:

• Chad Holdorf – Vice President of Product Management, Demandbase
• Achint Naveen – Sr Account Manager, Amazon Web Services  

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

ServiceNow and AWS reveal how the DevOps Agent and MCP Server Console are turning incident response into a fast, autonomous, fully governed process.

Topics Include:

• Govind Menon (ServiceNow) and Arun Jacob (AWS) discuss MCP and A2A strategy.
• ServiceNow understands workflows; partners with AWS to power them with AI.
• AI Control Tower governs and secures agent access to enterprise data.
• MCP is the industry standard for how AI agents read and act.
• Action Fabric spans A2A, REST APIs, and MCP for agentic work.
• AWS DevOps Agent, built on Bedrock, resolves incidents through sub-agents.
• Admin and operator access patterns integrate with Dynatrace, Datadog, Slack, GitHub.
• Demo: ServiceNow incident automatically triggers DevOps Agent investigation and resolution.
• DevOps Agent writes findings live back into the ServiceNow incident ticket.
• ServiceNow champions capping MCP servers at 30 tools for performance.
• MCP Server Console lets teams build scoped, use-case-specific tool servers.
• NowAssist skills, Knowledge Graph, and REST APIs become MCP tools.
• Live demo connects a 38-tool custom MCP server to DevOps Agent.
• Role-based access ensures users only see their permitted MCP tools.
• ServiceNow's autonomous ITOM agents point toward unsupervised future operations.

Participants:

• Govind Menon – Head of MCP Product, ServiceNow
• Arunsingh Jeyasingh Jacob – Senior Solution Architect - ISV, Amazon Web Services  

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

Chief Strategy Officer Nick Reed unpacks the "architecture of trust," AI-native enterprise transformation, and why staying laser-focused on customer value is central to Bizzdesign's bold AI strategy.

Topics Include:

• Bizzdesign: global enterprise transformation SaaS company with Dutch roots, founded 2000, Main Capital-backed
• Customers include HSBC, Shell, KPMG, and Airbus globally
• Bold 12-month strategy: acquired Mega International and Alfabet from Software AG
• Acquisitions tripled revenue, created the first true end-to-end enterprise transformation suite
• Bizzdesign’s 18-year recognition as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader in Enterprise Architecture
• The launch of Bizzdesign Unify in April 2026, an AI-native transformation collaboration platform
• Nick Reed's journey: enterprise software, customer value, M&A strategy, and AI-driven transformation
• How Bizzdesign supports planning, design, and governance pillars across the transformation lifecycle
• How Bizzdesign Unify complements existing enterprise architecture and portfolio management environments
• Why Bizzdesign Unify is architecturally different: conversational AI-native experience, not traditional UI
• AI acts as a co-worker, supporting transformation work and decisions through curated skills
• New experience opens enterprise context to broader stakeholders
• Bizzdesign Unify bridges the gap between messy whiteboards and governed enterprise data
• Example walkthrough: mapping customer service transformation dependencies and impacts
• Generative AI creates transformation scenarios grounded in enterprise context
• Tech stack built on Amazon Bedrock, MCP clients, graph data
• Balancing agentic AI and automation with human-in-the-loop accountability
• "Architecture of trust": permissions, oversight, and decentralized control
• Pricing shifts from seat-based to AI credit consumption model
• Closing advice: stay laser-focused on core customer value creation

Participants:

• Nick Reed – Chief Strategy Officer, Bizzdesign
• Kamil Davidov – Sales Leader Israel ISV-BizApps, Amazon Web Services
• Johan Broman – EMEA ISV Head of Solutions Architecture, Amazon Web Services

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