Rockin' IT - Where technology leaders talk.

With the recent cyber attack on a Florida water treatment plant, the conversation about critical infrastructure resilience heated up. Sara Freeman, an expert in these topics just released a book that helps organizations be better prepared to defend and react, and has been in the speaking circuit of many events, including RSA ’21.

We loved her position on how the language that we use about cyber attacks matters, and her arguments about how society and IT professionals might be numb to cyber security, aided by how vendors flex marketing language.

We've never had a guest that plays their own intro song. Scott is a different guy. He spent 30 years at Navistar, a Fortune 500 manufacturer of trucks and Diesel engines, in management roles of Security and Asset Management for IT.

You could say that Jason is a SAM pioneer. From his days at IBM and to his most recent stint at Nike managing a global team of Software Asset Managers, he has started, funded and managed global projects.

Now, as a recent addition to Flexera's Business Value Advisory team, Jason looks to share his experience with practitioners around the world.

This episode explores "obsolescence as a terrible disease in IT" and how important it is to both "run the business and change it at the same time" in an industry that usually evolves at a fast pace, while balancing their customer's needs to stay solidly reliable, as Angeles Blanco puts it. She is the Global Product Owner of Enterprise Service Management at Santander Global Tech, which serves the global IT projects of Grupo Santander, one of the largest financial institutions in the world.

When it comes to leading large global projects, Bryant knows a thing or two about getting buy-in from leadership to implement transformational projects for managing IT assets around the world. We talk to him about the possibilities that SAM offers for efficiency and security, not just for audit protection. We also explore the differences between ITAM and SAM, and how he believes this industry is continuing to evolve on SaaS and Cloud.  

Bryant is a senior leader of Global Software Asset Management at P&G, but also held similar roles at Great American Insurance, Cintas and Toyota. You can find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryantcaldwell/

Flexera is a sponsor of this episode because they help leaders like Bryant find savings through SAM in Datacenter, Desktops, SaaS and Cloud so organizations can fuel other initiatives. Check them out at www.flexera.com

Carlos is one of those very active IT executives who is working on more projects that we can fit in the description here. He is a strategic advisor and Board member for 9 organizations, but we focused on asking him about his recent past as a Global CIO for The Hershey Company, yes, the one that makes the Kisses.

Liz works at Mastercard in a position with the coolest title you've imagined. Think about leading a league of superheroes around the world that help the organization manage their IT assets to save money, reallocate investments to strategic priorities and reducing exposure to risk.  She mixes a background in sourcing with a new way to organize IT Asset Management with great efforts to build community, get buy-in based on early and continuous success  Find Liz on: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizreich/

Her choice of song brought us back to the late '80s. "Anything Tom Petty", she said, and we had to go with "I won't back down" from the album "Full Moon Fever

In this episode, a veteran IT rockstar from Switzerland chooses "Smoke on the Water" from Deep Purple as the background to talk about his experience in Software Asset Management. As a global Head of SAM for a Fortune 50 life sciences organizations, he has done a ton of good for our industry and inspired many colleagues, including a recent interest (and really good advice) on Free and Open Source when it comes to licensing and vulnerability risk management.  Find Jochen at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochen-hagenlocher-ba2b574/  Flexera sponsors this podcast, learn more at Flexera.com. They are Gartner's MQ leaders for Software Asset Managers and recently released a great report on the State of IT Spend. Can't miss it!.