Signed

Nobody in the building owns the cloud bill. Not IT, not finance, not engineering — and when a CEO finally gets desperate enough to set a hard ceiling, like getting spend below 9% of revenue or the business isn't viable, that's when everyone finds out the EDP they already signed made the target structurally impossible before the conversation even started. The problem wasn't technical. It was in the contract.

Max sits down with Robby Gulri, Field CTO at RapidScale, to trace how companies end up there. Nobody owns the bill. Nobody can read the bill. Engineering won't reprioritize to fix the architecture because it's not their KPI. Finance wants a magic pill. And the cloud's biggest promise — that you only pay for what you use — disappears the moment you sign a multi-year commitment to pay whether you use it or not.

If you're responsible for cloud spend, or you're about to sign a multi-year cloud commitment — watch this before you do.

What We Get Into

00:00 — The Daughter Analogy: Why Cloud Spend Feels Like Magic Money
01:30 — How RapidScale Evolved from DaaS into Public Cloud
05:00 — Why DaaS Never Became the Default (And Still Hasn't)
09:00 — What Killed Early VDI Adoption — And Why That's Changed
15:00 — The CapEx vs. OpEx Trap: You Escaped One Problem and Created Another
20:30 — Multi-Cloud in Theory vs. What Companies Actually Run
26:00 — Is AI Actually IT? The Question That Stumped a Room of CIOs
30:00 — Is IT a Cost Center or a Profit Center?
38:00 — Who Actually Owns Your Cloud Spend (Nobody Agrees)
44:00 — Why Companies Can't Read Their Own Cloud Bills
48:00 — Should FinOps Report to Finance or IT? (Still No Consensus)
51:30 — The CEO Spending 15% of Revenue on Cloud — and Locked In
55:00 — The EDP Trap: You Took the Discount. Now You Can't Spend Less.
58:00 — Why the Cloud Ephemerality Promise Disappears Fast
01:00:00 — Cost Tagging, Naming Conventions, and Why the Discipline Is Gone
01:01:00 — Cloud Is Not Cheaper Than Bare Metal
01:08:00 — Legacy Applications with No Source Code: The Migration Nobody Plans For
01:15:00 — Why ROI and TCO Are the Wrong Language for IT Decisions
01:17:00 — CFOs Blame IT. IT Says "It Depends." Nobody Moves.
01:22:00 — Microsoft Licensing: You Need a PhD to Understand What You're Buying
01:32:00 — Procurement Theater: The Magic 10% Was Already Priced In
01:45:00 — What a Mature FinOps Practice Actually Looks Like
01:59:00 — Agentic AI and What 2030 Actually Looks Like
02:01:00 — AI Won't Kill Jobs — It'll Shift Them (The CNC Operator Analogy)
02:05:00 — The Real Doomsday: Power and Water, Not LLMs

What we Mentioned

• AWS Enterprise Discount Programs (EDPs) and commitment lock-in
• AWS MAP (Migration Acceleration Program)
• Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
• FinOps as a discipline — cost tagging, naming conventions, resource classification
• VMware / Broadcom licensing changes and 3x price increases
• Microsoft 365 E1, E3, E5 licensing tiers
• Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)
• Multi-cloud strategy vs. single-region reality
• Cloud-to-bare-metal cost comparison
• Nutanix, Red Hat as VMware migration paths
• Agentic AI and multi-agent orchestration
• RapidScale's assessment and FinOps practice

About the Guest
Robby Gulri is Field CTO at RapidScale, a managed cloud services provider owned by Cox Communications, with practices across AWS, Azure, GCP, and a dedicated FinOps discipline. He spends his time with partners, CIOs, and business leaders navigating cloud cost, modernization, and AI strategy — which means he hears the same expensive mistakes repeat across industries, company sizes, and funding stages. His job, as he puts it: make complex things simple.

Connect with Robby: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbygulri/
RapidScale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rapidscale/

About Signed
Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. 
Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom 

Full Transcript
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You're making infrastructure decisions on a system you can't see. It's fast, stable, and invisible. That's the problem.

Underneath it, global capacity is planned years in advance, routes are shaped by geopolitics, and resilience depends on infrastructure you don't control. Max Clark sits down with TS Narayanan, CTIO of EXA Infrastructure, to explain the layer most enterprise buyers never see — and why it quietly determines whether your cloud strategy, your regional expansion, and your infrastructure commitments actually deliver what you paid for. They get into why AI isn't driving the traffic spike everyone assumes, what geopolitical risk actually does to a network route, why adding nodes costs more than buyers expect, and where the real constraint is right now (hint: it's not bandwidth).

If you've ever signed a provider contract without fully understanding what sits underneath it, this is the episode that fills in the gap.

WHAT WE GET INTO
00:00 — The network layer your vendor isn't explaining to you
04:00 — Why capacity is locked in years before you make a decision
09:30 — The AI traffic myth: what's actually growing on the backbone
12:30 — Why your cloud usage growing doesn't mean what you think it does
15:40 — Bandwidth announcements and what they're not telling buyers
17:50 — How traffic patterns are shifting — and what that means for your architecture
20:40 — What hyperscalers are doing to the build equation (and what it means for everyone else)
23:50 — How subsea cable routes get planned and why it's harder than it looks
27:50 — Geopolitical risk is real: what the Mediterranean actually shows
31:30 — Why LATAM and Africa are underserved — and what's finally changing
35:20 — Data sovereignty: what compliance actually requires from your infrastructure
41:00 — Capacity vs. latency: which one should be driving your vendor decision
46:50 — The complexity cost of every node you add
52:30 — What you're actually buying when you buy network capacity
57:30 — Control vs. outsourcing: how buyers are splitting on this decision
1:02:00 — Power is the real constraint. Not bandwidth.
1:08:30 — Why infrastructure is always in upgrade mode and what that costs buyers
1:18:30 — Network as a Service: what it actually means and where it's going

WHAT WE MENTIONED

• EXA Infrastructure — https://www.linkedin.com/company/exa-infrastructure/
• TeleGeography subsea cable maps — https://www.submarinecablemap.com
• GÉANT (European R&D network, referenced in EU connectivity context)
• AMS-IX, DE-CIX (European internet exchange points)
• IRU (Indefeasible Right of Use) — the long-term capacity lease structure common in subsea contracts
• OVH, Hetzner (EU-based cloud providers referenced as demand drivers)

ABOUT TS NARAYANAN
TS Narayanan is the Chief Technology and Information Officer at EXA Infrastructure, one of the largest fiber and subsea backbone networks spanning Europe and North America. He's spent his career across enterprise IT, systems integration, and telecom — which means he's seen infrastructure decisions from both sides: the buyer who has to live with them and the operator who builds and maintains them. That makes him unusually direct about where capacity planning goes wrong and what buyers should have asked before they signed.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ts-narayanan-62b3617/
EXA Infrastructure: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exa-infrastructure/

ABOUT THE SHOW
Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals.
New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast.
If you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com.
Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom

FULL TRANSCRIPT
Click here to view the episode transcript.

SOC 2 certification has become shorthand for security. It isn't.

Max Clark breaks down what SOC 2 actually demonstrates — and the costly mistake most buyers make when building their controls: anchoring them to a specific vendor's tool. When you replace that tool, the control breaks. And you won't find out until your auditor does. 

You’re paying for your network in ways you don’t see. Most teams don’t catch it until the bill shows up.

Traffic leaves the cloud for inspection, then gets sent back in. Every step adds cost. Most teams never map the full path, so it goes unnoticed.

Max Clark sits down with Doug Houghton from Alkira to break down how double egress happens, why costs can spike by 300x, and how these decisions quietly lock you into inefficient infrastructure.

If you’re responsible for network or cloud spend, this is the kind of problem you only catch after it’s already costing you.

What We Get Into
00:34 — Why SD-WAN Didn’t Solve the Problem (And What Broke Instead)
06:31 — MPLS at $3,500/Month — The Problem That Started It All
14:30 — SD-WAN Promised Simplicity — It Delivered Complexity
18:08 — When “SD-WAN” Meant Anything (And Nothing)
20:31 — $54 Billion Lost in a Day — The Real Multi-Cloud Risk
25:35 — 500 Sites, One Mistake: Asking the Wrong Question
34:33 — Eight Figures in Cloud Spend — And No VPN
43:07 — SD-WAN Didn’t Fix It — It Doubled the Problem
53:00 — Why Most SASE Architectures Break in the Real World
01:05:58 — 1,400 Stores, One Bad Design: The Michaels Case
01:13:05 — Legacy vs. Broken: What Should Never Have Been Built
01:43:41 — The Double Egress Problem Explained: Why You’re Paying 2–3x Per Request

What We Mentioned
Cloud egress pricing models
Zscaler architecture and traffic inspection flow
SD-WAN design tradeoffs
Multi-cloud networking complexity

About Doug Houghton
Doug Houghton is Director of Global Channels at Alkira, where he works with enterprise teams designing and scaling multi-cloud network architectures. His focus is on helping organizations navigate the cost, complexity, and tradeoffs that come with modern cloud and network infrastructure.

Connect with Doug: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-houghton-9b77882/
Learn more about Alkira: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alkiranet/

About Signed
The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers.

Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can tell you what actually determined whether the deal worked, not what the deck promised.

New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.

Full Transcript
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Most enterprise networks weren’t designed for what they’re carrying today. The problem isn’t traffic—it’s the decisions underneath it.

Those decisions weren’t made for today’s reality. They were made years ago—then inherited, layered on, and never fully revisited. Over time, that turns into performance issues, rising costs, and risk that only shows up when something breaks. 

In this episode of Signed, Max Clark sits down with Scott Nicols (Chief Commercial Officer at Aurelion) to break down how those decisions actually get made and where they go wrong. They unpack why SD-WAN often masks deeper architectural problems, how cloud and AI are exposing weak infrastructure choices, and why delivery and support—not price—ultimately determine whether a decision succeeds or fails.

If you’ve inherited your network or you’re about to make a major infrastructure decision—this is the conversation to hear before you sign.

WHAT WE GET INTO
00:28 — Why Most Tech Decisions Go Unquestioned
02:00 — You’re Buying Tech Without Fully Understanding It
04:53 — The Old Decisions Still Driving Your Network
07:10 — Why Enterprises Stay Stuck (Even When It’s Wrong)
08:55 — SD-WAN Isn’t the Fix — It’s the Warning Sign
15:00 — Where Network Problems Actually Start
17:40 — AI Isn’t Strategy — It Just Increases Demand
20:00 — The Talent Gap Behind Bad Decisions
24:30 — Why Network Planning Breaks at Scale
28:00 — You Never Catch Up on Capacity
31:00 — Why Infrastructure Is Moving Away from Major Markets
36:30 — Cloud Isn’t Cheaper — So Why Are You Paying More?
39:30 — The 300x Cost Problem Most Teams Miss
42:00 — Network as a Service: Helpful or Just Repackaged?
46:30 — Why Providers Lose Focus (And You Pay for It)
50:00 — Security Isn’t Optional Anymore (DDoS Reality)
1:14:30 — What Actually Differentiates a Network Provider
1:25:00 — Self-Service Sounds Good… Until It Breaks
1:33:00 — What Actually Matters When You’re Buying Network

WHAT WE MENTIONED

• Aurelion (global IP transit and backbone provider)
• SD-WAN architecture and deployment models
• Cloud egress cost structures
• AI-driven network traffic growth

ABOUT SCOTT NICHOLS
Scott Nichols is the Chief Commercial Officer at Arelion, one of the world’s largest global IP transit and backbone providers. He works directly with enterprise customers on network strategy, performance, and large-scale infrastructure decisions.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-nichols-53b14440
Company: https://se.linkedin.com/company/arelion

ABOUT THE SHOW
Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers.
Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals.

New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast.

If you’re in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com.
Buy tech without regret.

Follow: @itbrokerdotcom

The IT market is built for sellers.

After 200+ episodes of Tech Deep Dive, one pattern kept showing up. The technology wasn't the hard part. The decision was.

What got approved. What finance pushed back on. What vendors didn't say. What broke after the contract was signed.

This is where the focus shifts — from the technology itself to the decisions behind it and what actually happens once you sign.

Each episode is a real conversation with someone who's lived inside a real enterprise tech decision. Not the polished version. The actual version. What got missed. And what they'd do differently.

This is Signed. Buy tech without regret.
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New episodes weekly → itbroker.com/podcast
Book an intro call → itbroker.com/contact
Follow → @itbrokerdotcom
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Topics covered: enterprise technology procurement, vendor selection, IT contract negotiation, SaaS renewals, cloud migration, cybersecurity, compliance mandates, M&A due diligence, CFO conversations, IT leadership
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Previously Tech Deep Dive — same feed, new name.

Full Transcript
Click here to view the episode transcript.

Max Clark is joined by Ed Bailey, Field CISO at Cribl, to discuss why many companies invest heavily in collecting data but struggle to turn it into meaningful outcomes. They explore common mistakes in data strategy, the gap between tools and skills, and what organizations should consider before collecting more data.

What you’ll learn:

• Why companies are spending millions collecting data without clear outcomes
• The gap between data collection and real decision-making
• How tools, skills, and strategy need to align
• Why collecting more data doesn’t automatically create value
• Questions leaders should ask before expanding their data footprint
• How to rethink data strategy to support real business results

Guest: Ed Bailey, Field CISO at Cribl

Cribl Website: https://cribl.io

Ed LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baileyedward/

Cribl LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cribl/

Cribl X: https://x.com/cribl_io
Website: https://cribl.io

What happens when your contact center hits peak demand… and the queue explodes?

In this episode, Max sits down with Michael Cibelli (PolyAI) to break down how one major brand went from 400+ callers waiting in queue to zero hold time—without wrecking customer experience.

You’ll learn why traditional IVR trees (“Press 1 for…”) fail, what replaces them, and how modern Voice AI can contain calls end-to-end (not just “deflect” them). They also unpack the real-world risks—like AI hallucinations, compliance in regulated industries, and why context transfer matters more than most CX teams realize.

What you’ll learn:

• Why IVR systems create customer rage (and broken experiences)
• The difference between call deflection vs call containment
• How Voice AI scales CX without scaling headcount
• How to prevent “repeat yourself” transfers that destroy trust
• The hidden cost of agent churn + seasonal hiring
• Why BPOs are paying attention to Voice AI right now
• How analytics from customer calls can unlock real business ROI

If you’re leading CX, operations, IT, or customer support—this is the playbook for building a contact center that stays fast, consistent, and on-brand when demand spikes.

🎧 Subscribe for more conversations on IT, CX, AI, and operational leverage.

The demo was perfect. Then deployment happened.
 If your contact center AI “worked” in a pilot but fell apart in production - this episode explains why.

Max Clark sits down with Jim K. Tennant (VP, Channel Sales at Observe.AI) to unpack the real reasons contact center AI projects fail after approval: weak data foundations, missing guardrails, messy knowledge sources, agent adoption breakdowns, and bots that can’t recover when customers go off-script. They also dig into what actually works—call analytics → automated QA → agent assist → targeted automation, and how to reduce churn and handle time without wrecking CSAT.

Watch this before your AI pilot turns into an expensive failure.

What if the real problem isn’t Azure… it’s putting the wrong workloads there?

In this episode, Max Clark sits down with William Sellers, Solutions Architect at DartPoints, to dissect a real-world migration from the energy sector: an internal research app that went into Azure “to move fast,” scaled to nearly $30K/month, and finally forced leadership to draw a line.

You’ll hear how technical debt, predictable workloads, and opaque vCPU economics quietly turned a good idea into an unsustainable cloud bill—and what it actually took to unwind it.

They break down:

• Why predictable, IaaS-style workloads get financially punished in hyperscale cloud
• How finance, infrastructure, and application owners finally aligned around leaving Azure
• The real definition of “minimal downtime” when you’re moving a 100+ TB VM and a Zerto bug derails your plan
• How DartPoints used private cloud to stabilize costs, simplify billing, and reduce complexity
• What VMware/Broadcom uncertainty really means for platform decisions—and why many teams now say, “we don’t care about the hypervisor; just make the VMs run.”

If you’re responsible for infrastructure spend and you haven’t evaluated whether your workloads belong in Azure, you’re already behind.
This episode gives you the decision framework, the warning signs, and the migration realities—so you don’t end up defending a runaway cloud bill with no exit plan.