In the sport’s world, some teams have all the talent they need to win championships, but, oftentimes they can’t seem to put it all together to be the last team standing at the end of the season. On the other hand, there have been moments when the most unlikely teams come together to shock the world. But when you look back, their success is not so surprising. It’s simply that their culture, their togetherness, was underrated. Championship teams don’t just appear; instead they are built. Company cultures are a lot like teams. Winning is the work, and work must get done. This is especially true when complex software products have to be created that solve problems for customers. Himanshu Palsule, the President and Chief Product and Technology Officer at Epicor, explains how the team works together at Epicor.

“We operate pretty flat, including our CEO, Steve Murphy, who’s a process engineer himself. We  all roll up our sleeves and talk to the person that has the answer versus sort of go down a hierarchy of people. If you want to succeed at Epicor, you need to be comfortable with that.”

Part of building a great team is when leaders are members of the team too and not above it, and everyone works together. Another aspect of being on a successful team is being able to define what the team does well, stick to that core identity, and then having respect for other teams for what they do best. Every game is a series of problems and then solutions. Solve enough problems and the game is won. Great teams create cultures that identify each problem correctly and then work together to solve them.

On this episode of IT Visionaries, Himanshu discusses how the Epicor team works together to provide enterprise resource planning software. To do their job effectively, he describes a culture of teamwork that extends to even incorporating the fans, the customers, into the team too. Enjoy the episode!

Main Takeaways

• Being a Vendor/Coach: Sales go ary when salespeople either push a client too hard to take on more than they need or allow a client to overcommit to more than they require. Rather than thinking from only a sales perspective, it is helpful for a vendor to think of themselves as the client’s coach. With this mindset, they seek to help educate and support the customer so that their business can succeed. This mentality allows long-standing relationships based upon respect to develop.
• Core Identity Versus Respecting Other Players: As a large player in an industry, it’s important to identify core company work and stick to that. If there are other players with a specific technology to solve a particular problem, it’s good to respect their product and allow them to do what they do best too. A large player in the industry doesn’t have to do everything; they just need to do their thing.
• Creating a Problem-Solving Culture: A constructive culture is essential to solve project problems and get work done. Creating an environment where hierarchy is not rigid and communication is fluid is one key. Another key is providing some guardrails to brainstorming sessions in a group of can-do people. Parameters can drive creativity.
• Fielding a Good Team: Team building involves creating places for people to learn. Partnerships with academic institutions certainly can help. It’s also important to look for potential employees who have a specific skillet that can be adaptable even if they haven’t done the exact type of work before. These sorts of workers can be trained to be very productive members of the team.

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IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

In general, creative-types fall into two camps. The first camp loves the excitement of creating something flashy — things that people can identify, experience, and viscerally respond to. The second camp is made up of those who care about building a foundation so that other people can create great things upon it. If they do their jobs really well, their work may go relatively unnoticed. But that’s okay with them. They can sit back and smile, knowing they helped other creators do their best work. Tony Minessale, the Founder and CEO of SignalWire, describes the satisfaction that comes with building a strong foundation to help developers do what they do best.

Main Takeaways

• Creating Infrastructure so Developers Can Flourish: Some people are attracted to the bright lights of creating flashy applications. That’s fine and helpful too. It’s also necessary to have people that are focused on creating a strong foundation of infrastructure so that developers can build their artful products on top of it.
• Lessons From Open Source: Open-source work can teach developers a lot. There’s a sense of community that is often established. Also, there’s something meaningful in people doing work for its own sake, rather than for money. On the other hand, the open- source model does have its limitations. Often, a developer can end up serving too many masters because a solution for one person can be a problem for another. At some point, creating a company makes more sense as the capital allows focus and the ability to create a unified team to serve the vision.  
• The Benefit of Rolling out Tech Gradually: Consumers learn more about a new technology when it is delivered to them over time in multiple products that are successively more complex. This graduated process helps consumers to understand a given technology better. It also provides more sales.
• No Sympathy for the Buzzword: If buzzwords are rated, they’re overrated. Buzzwords can be bandied about by anyone wise enough to recognize them. Too often, however, they lose their meaning from overuse, are imprecise, or don't serve in educating other people and fostering effective communication.   
• An Internet Driven Telecom Industry is Inevitable: Legacy telecommunication models are still around, but an internet telecom industry is the future. Even now, satellite internet has enough bandwidth to stream content. Legacy telecom companies will evolve as they always do to make money. It may take a while for people to adapt but the technology is here. 

IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

One way to think about data is that it is like rain, and it is pouring outside. Imagine c-suite executives running around in a parking lot with huge buckets trying to capture as much as they can. Afterward, they return to the office, analyze the data, and then decide what to do based upon their discoveries.

But in this example, it’s not about how many buckets you come back with, it’s what’s in the buckets that matters most. Data is interpreted based upon a person’s values. In fact, certain types of data are acquired, or discarded, because of someone’s core principles -— their guiding light as to how they see the world and their role in it. Entire companies make decisions about how to use data based upon their mission. It all comes down to values whether at the personal level or at the overall company level.   

In business, data is leaned on because it is measurable. Data is useful, no doubt. It can guide decisions. But, really, the heart of decision-making is about a leader’s values. The underlying question is: What do you believe in? 

On this episode of IT Visionaries, guest host, Michael Rivo, Director, Salesforce LIVE, Virtual Events Content & Platform at Salesforce, is joined by Kimberly Paige, EVP and CMO of BET, and Dan Torunian, VP of Employee Technology &Experiences at Paypal. They discuss how their intuition and values drive how they use data and help make decisions for their respective companies.

Takeaways:

• Data Drives Decisions: Data is driving decisions all across companies. At BET, it is being used to adjust brand marketing. At Paypal, it is being used to increase the wellbeing of employees so that they can, in turn, serve customers more effectively. 
• Data Versus Instinct: Using data to make decisions certainly is important. Striking a balance between using data and using intuition is key for good leadership. It’s ideal to find an even balance between both data and intuition, while leaning slightly on common sense.
• Collaboration Through Mission: Shared values and a shared mission creates collaboration and helps break down silos of people and data. Data can be used to support a company’s mission, but values are the foundation. It’s important to remember that values are at the core of everything, including how data is gathered, interpreted, and acted upon.

IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Despite so many technological advances, the way people worked stayed fairly static for many years. Work has now changed suddenly; there is no doubt about that. Where work was mostly in person, now a lot of work is remote or in a hybrid model. Nobody wanted this change to happen in this way — by being forced to quickly adjust due to a global health crisis. It’s like the whole working world collectively face-planted. No one asks to fall. But with any fall, there is an opportunity to reassess, get back up, and change course. Now, there is a tremendous opportunity to redesign the rituals of work. Ashok Krish is the Global Head of Digital Workplace at Tata Consultancy Services, and he believes we are in a transitional phase of work where new routines and rituals are being established.

“A lot of new rituals of remote work had to be put in place. And I think that is the single biggest culture change that a lot of companies missed; more so than the technology. I think the technology, most companies already had it. They just accelerated the adoption and rollout of it.” 

The entire world is right in the middle of a work culture change. Employees are still learning to work and be productive from a distance. And companies are figuring out how to bring people together despite distance. But there is a way to bridge the divide between a company and it’s employees, wherever they may be physically working. Thoughtful analytics and technological design are the answer, and when applied effectively, they can create new digital norms that foster productivity and employee contentment.    

On this episode of IT Visionaries, Ashok explains how work must be reimagined with these new norms in mind. He details how new rituals must be designed and then incorporated, and he dives into how reshaping the old way of work can actually open up new possibilities and efficiencies within the technology companies already have under the hood. Enjoy the episode!

Main Takeaways

• Transitioning Work Rituals: Work has changed suddenly from mostly in person to often remote. The old rituals of work no longer apply today. Long, frequent meetings don’t work well remotely. Perhaps they were never really efficient in person either. New rituals must be established for remote work to be successful and for workers to be content.  
• Valuing Frontline Workers: Frontline workers are immensely valuable. Given the tumult of the last eighteen months, companies have learned to better appreciate their frontline workers. Historically, frontline workers were underserved by IT and had to find their own tech solutions. Now, there is more of a focus on providing frontline workers the IT support they need.
• New Work Norms: New norms must be established given more work is remote or hybrid now. Technology can be used to increase productivity and contentment in the workforce. Using tech to limit meeting times and messages increases the importance of these activities. It’s essential to get two-way communication going, perhaps especially in high power distance cultures. Interactive town halls, that aren’t too long, can create two-sided communication that connects leaders with their employees. 
• Creating a Culture of Connection: The challenge with remote work is that we can no longer rely on physical proximity to create connection between people and to identify when people are feeling disconnected. Analytics can be helpful to determine if people are overworked and stressed. Then, HR needs to reach out to establish contact to make sure employees are doing okay.
• Ritualization of Design: New IT design principles must be established that support today’s work and workers. Ritual can be helpful for many types of work because it establishes an efficient guide on how to efficiently get things done the right way.

IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Some people are super health conscious, with their days driven by early-morning trips to the gym and kale smoothies. Others try their very best to avoid thinking about anything health-related at all, pushing thoughts of vegetables or long walks right out of their minds. Regardless of which camp you fall in, your overall health is important and your medical history is critical data. So why is it so difficult to get access to important health information for ourselves and those we love? Is the onus on us? Or is it due to a breakdown within the system? Either way, we clearly need systems and technology that support our health. Vijay Anand is the EVP of Engineering at Castlight Health, and he believes that technology combined with the human touch can increase everyone’s health.

“What we actually do is a combination of things. [We] certainly help you with content that helps you understand, why is that important? And what is it? But it's also about now using the power of high touch, right? This is essentially a key element of what our care guides do. On their single panel as they support our users, they actually have your whole health profile, but also the key recommendations and the gaps that you need to be closing.” 

Healthcare can feel like the ocean. It’s huge, important, overwhelming at times, and its waves can crash down on a person if they’re not careful. There’s a sea of healthcare information out there. Without some assistance, no one person can gather it all, make sense of it, figure out a plan, and then act accordingly. Fortunately, we do have help. There is technology that can guide us through the data and help us figure out what to do. Well-intentioned people can be a great support too. The key is getting technology and humanity working together toward the common goal of individual and community health. 

On this episode of IT Visionaries, Vijay explains the steps we can take to create a system that aggregates health data, personalizes it, and then helps engage people in making healthy decisions. He also shares how future innovation can help those who need services the most by identifying need and targeting care. Enjoy the episode!

Takeaways:

• Three Tech Steps Toward a Healthy System: The first step is aggregating data from a variety of sources concerning health providers and procedures. Secondly, users need the ability to have personalized health information that is driven by the data. The last step involves engaging users so that they can adjust their behaviors to act on information that supports their health. 
• Commonality Between Taxes and Healthcare: Making technological advances for people is not only about taking something that is incredibly complex and making it more simple. People need confidence that they can actually do something in order to even give it a try. The need for confidence to complete one’s taxes is similar to the confidence required to care for one’s health, as it is in many other important endeavors. The human touch can help support people’s confidence and encourage their perseverance.
• Tech/Health Innovations: Targeting services to people who really need it is something to look forward to and be motivated to do. Information will hopefully become less siloed and more holistic. A.I. advances will target/personalize health even more and then drive healthy behavior changes.

IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

We talk to our computer by asking it a question and then the computer talks back, trying its best to answer it. At least that’s how the conversation generally happens between humans and A.I. Sometimes we’re happy with the computer’s answer and other times, not so much, and we either try again until we’re successful or give up. But real learning takes place with true dialogue, when there are successive exchanges that deepen understanding and where either a person or a computer can start the conversation. For people and computers to learn, good data is very important — as are ways to access it quickly. Even more important is constructive communication driven by language. Corey Patton is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pramana Labs, and he thinks prose and narrative conversations are the future in communication between A.I. and people.

“We created a way to learn about a relational database using training processes and NLP models that allows a user to just ask the question in free text. What are the most home runs that any Angels outfielder has had in seven at bats, and then instantly get the answer back. It comes back in tables and graphs, and then also human prose, narrative language.” 

Developments in natural-language processing are beginning to allow for dialogue between people and A.I., which in turn creates a foundation for learning. Many people point to the bright, shiny object of vehicle automation when thinking about the potential for A.I., but perhaps the most exciting aspect of A.I. overall is the future of conversation and the amazing opportunity for learning quality exchanges between people and computers will provide. After all, this thirst for learning, and our need to talk to do so, may draw humans and computers even closer together.

On this episode of IT Visionaries, Corey covers the bases about how natural-language processing is being incorporated into the sports world, with professional leagues such as the NHL and beloved publications like Baseball America relying on the technology to get information to audiences more accurately and quickly. And, as Corey says, that’s just the beginning for Pramana Labs as its applications are seeping into other industries spanning from commerce to finance to mortgage lending. Enjoy the episode!

Takeaways

• Building a MVP: When creating a product, it’s important to solve one particular problem for a customer rather than trying to solve all of them. Lean on the customer to inform the scope of the product based on what they need.
• Making the NLP Reusable: Having reusable, paramentixed, and interchangeable pieces of NLP data cuts down the time required to get a question answered. Once a question is answered, another question can be asked with only a slight variation, and then another answer can be quickly provided. In this sense, both speed and delivery of accurate information increases.
• Answering Questions for Intent: The key in NLP is to discover what question a person is trying to ask and then offer up the correct answer. Looking at the entire sentence signature through an analysis of all the pieces that the computer has been trained for allows A.I. the ability to decipher the sentence and then respond accordingly. 
• A True Two-Way Conversation: The future of NLP is really tech that scans a database and then provides prose, narrative responses. In fact, A.I. will react to things that are happening in real time and create a narrative for what it is seeing without the user necessarily having to ask any questions. This will allow A.I. to initiate conversation and guide a person to the knowledge that they are seeking.

IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Each day, we’re coming into contact more and more with artificial intelligence and machine learning that is meant to make our lives better. We’ve all had some A.I. experiences that have gone really well. Perhaps, we didn’t even realize A.I. was helping us at first. On the other hand, getting help from A.I. doesn’t always work out perfectly, at least not right away. So why the inconsistency? If the human mind can take in so much complex information and make sense of it, why can’t our computers? Or can they if they have good data to learn from? Brad Porter, CTO of Scale AI, believes the key to A.I. learning efficiently is the right labeling:

“What you need is those samples to be labeled perfectly because if they're labeled ambiguously, then the model can't actually decide what exactly is signal versus noise. So one way to solve that is to throw more and more data at it. Eventually you have enough data that the algorithms learn, okay, this is the signal and all these other pieces are the noise. If you get [a] really high quality signal, though, you can learn that signal very quickly if there's not a lot of noise in it.”

Computers need lots of data to learn. More accurately, they really need lots of quality data labeled properly. Fundamentally, this just makes sense. The best way to learn something is through repeated exposure and practice. This is just as true for people as it is for computers. That’s where Brad comes in. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Brad explains how his diverse work experience, particularly his work in robotics, ultimately led him to focus on solving the problem of data labeling for A.I, which is setting us up for an exciting future. After all, if proper labeling is the key, and the key is becoming more readily available, then we can expect great things in the A.I. space. Brad discusses some of those great things, including how the tech will help us understand medical histories and its use in autonomous vehicles. Enjoy the episode!

Main Takeaways

• Breaking the Data Bottleneck: There is a lot of data in the world for A.I. to access. The primary issue for machine learning is for the computer to be able to distinguish what information is most important so it can learn. In this way, people and computers are similar. But computers need our help to know what data is essential. 
• Labeling Data is Key: It’s easy to get caught up in the glamorous possibilities of A.I. and how it can help us. Computers need data to learn, but they need the right data to learn effectively and efficiently. Labeling data is essential to speed up the pace in computer learning. 
• What is Signal Vs. What is Noise: Proper labeling helps A.I. distinguish between signal as opposed to noise. A.I. doesn’t necessarily need massive amounts of data to learn if the right, properly-labeled data is being provided.
• Quantity vs Quality: Without proper labeling, there has been a tendency to simply inundate A.I. with data so learning can happen eventually. Of course, this is inefficient and costly. Proper labeling streamlines this process. In an ideal situation for learning, there’s a tremendous amount of data that’s also all properly labeled. With large amounts of properly labeled, automated data, A.I. has a real chance to take off.

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IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

It used to be the case that we mostly proved our identity by offering up a piece of paper. Perhaps that seems silly now — at least a little. In the digital age, that is definitely no longer the situation — and for good reason. Right now, we have difficulties of our own. Today, our digital information seems like it is everywhere and available for anyone to access, whether they are well intentioned or not. Because there is so much information, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to prove who someone actually is or is not. Through the use of A.I., Persona answers the fundamental question: Are you who you say you are? Rick Song is the CEO and Co-Founder of Persona, and he believes removing humans from the verification process is part of the solution.

Main Takeaways:

• Identity Service Tools: Building identity infrastructure can be incredibly challenging for companies if that is not their area of expertise. Rather than having to create that structure from scratch, integrating an A.I. platform can make identity verification much easier. Using A.I. technology increases speed, privacy, and specificity.
• Tailoring to Companies and People: Many companies and people suffer due to lack of trusted identity services geared directly for them. Companies typically have difficulty identifying their customers. Through the use of A.I. technology, customers can be reached that historically have not had access to important resources.
• Learning to Sell: It’s definitely not easy transitioning from engineering to selling. Good friends, mentors, practice, and lots of honesty help. Focusing on the customer rather than what the company does is the key. Find what the customer cares about and hone in on that. 

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IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Many times we think about ideas in terms of debate — that there are only two ideas that are oppositional in nature and that one is superior to the other. This is true right now in the network conversation concerning an industry push toward either decentralized edge computing or more centralized network systems. What if, as is often the case, there is another way to think about duality where a unity lies somewhere in between? Raj Yavatkar, CTO of Juniper Networks, believes that to be the situation in terms of the debate for supremacy between decentralized versus centralized networks. 

“So before I get into the debate, which is a very interesting debate, you can say that three factors, a trio of trains, are coming together. People are putting more and more workloads to the public cloud, the 5G infrastructure, which is very densified, and there [are] micro cells.There's a densification of the traffic, which is at the edge. And third is the new applications based on A.I., M.L. and analytics. So when you look at all these three trends, it's not so much just sending the traffic to the public cloud. You're using edge from multiple lists.” 

In this episode of IT Visionaries, Raj proposes that, in truth, networks can be both things simultaneously as they become increasingly “aggregated at the edge.” He also shares that teleportation via quantum networking is occurring right now.

Main Takeaway

• Aggregation at the Edge: Rather than an either or proposition concerning decentralized edge computing or centralized network consolidation, there is a great deal of network aggregation at the edge. On one hand, there is a drive to centralize due to the ability to send traffic to the public cloud. Alternatively, issues concerning limits of data transfer across national boundaries due to GDPR regulations as well as the potential need for local networks for automation are promoting edge computing. In reality, aggregation is still occurring but simply on the edge.
• Customers Drive Tech Advances: Customers are the vanguard of technological advancement and driving development based upon their evolving needs. Customers increasingly want automation and predictive analytics to support maintenance. In terms of network service, this includes maintaining the physical products that support the network operating seamlessly.
• Quantum Networking is Real: Not only is computing capacity advancing rapidly but so is communications. Simply put, quantum networking is real. It is based upon the idea of encoding data into quantum bits in order to send it along a network. In other words, teleportation is not relegated to the realm of science fiction. It’s happening now.

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IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

-- 

Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. 

Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. 

Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. 

Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.

---

This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Every solution starts with an idea. Consumers needed more home security, so the founders of Ring came up with the smart doorbell. Home owners had trouble finding time to complete recurring tasks like vacuuming, so Roomba automated the vacuum. But despite those great ideas, every founder needs some help along the way. Or more specifically, they often need financial backing to scale a business, and they need someone to believe in them when others won’t. 

“We often joke that our best investments are the ones that nobody else likes. We're investors in Dollar Shave Club and I was told that was stupid. It was acquired for a billion dollars. With Ring, people laughed at me and they're like, ‘You invested in a doorbell business?’ A lot of times the ones that aren't necessarily obvious are really the best opportunities. So it was digging in and understanding if this does work, is it going to be really valuable?”

Kevin Dunlap is Co-founder and Managing Partner of Calibrate Ventures, a VC firm focused on funding early-stage A.I. and automation companies. Every year Kevin and his partners sift through hundreds of companies looking to take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey. But what separates the companies that receive funding from the ones that never make it past the pitch stage? And what trends is he seeing within the automation and A.I. space? On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kevin explains Calibrate process for picking companies to partner with and what questions start-ups should be answering before they step up to pitch to VCs. Enjoy this episode.

Main Takeaways

• It’s All About Data: Data capturing and data labeling remains the two most important factors to developing functional A.I. solutions. When data is not effectively captured and/or labeled, the algorithm cannot effectively decipher what it needs to in real time. An example of this involves self-driving cars that need to not only be able to recognize the distance of a truck in front of them, but what kind of truck is in front of the vehicle, and all the other road conditions that could impact a drive.
• Honesty Gets you Far: Everyone wants to impress in their pitch to a VC, after all, the ability for them to fund a business could make or break a company. But one of the leading things that separates good pitches from great ones is the ability to admit where there is a gap in your business and how funding will help you close that gap. Going into a pitch meeting with all the answers is an early red flag and raises more questions than answers.
• Building a Better Tomorrow: With a growing labor shortage in tough skills and technical skills, companies and government programs must invest in STEM and STEAM programs to ensure that we are funding future generations of innovations, but also opening up more geographical regions as well. This also means that investors want to see how owners recruit talent to an organization, but also their strategy for training and retraining individuals to fit the needs of the business.

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