Tech means Business

Just a few short years ago, technologists were predicting that smart algorithms could determine our tastes and perhaps suggest other goods or services we might buy! Now, with that type of technology a reality, what's the next logical step, and where does that leave our rights to privacy?

Who owns our data? Is privacy a human right? How do companies work with each other, with governments and with non-profits to develop modern data frameworks that allow tech's evolution yet stop us being changed by the few holders of big data?

The guest in this Tech Means Business podcast is Cisco's Naveen Menon, the president of the company's ASEAN operations. Naveen is also part of the World Economic Forum, where he advises, consults and guides companies and governments at the highest level.

Over the course of this podcast, we move from data privacy and anonymity issues to the ways that companies are now becoming both more aware of, and proactive in the fields of data management, protection of data rights and how data is shaping the near and far futures.

Naveen began his career as a management consultant, has worked all over the world, and now spearheads Cisco Systems' in the APAC, pushing positive and constructive models of digitization for businesses across the region.

In today's socially-democratic arenas, where anyone with a LinkedIn account can term themselves a "thought leader", it's refreshing to hear from a technologist who has something vitally important to say and a positive message to promote.

Definitely worth watching a YouTube segment or two, as recommended by Naveen. Start here, then follow those recommendations as made by the creepy AI algorithm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG6WnMb9Fho

Naveen Menon on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveenmenon/

And Joe's LinkedIn is here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

Imagine a 3D model of your industrial facility with objects (or people, controversially) tracked in real time. Perfect for manufacturers, engineering companies, warehouses and anywhere where it's good to know where stuff is.

Our guest is Logan Maxwell of WISER Systems, who's at the sharp end of putting this type of cutting edge tech into places that would make a desktop PC or average laptop quake in its virtual boots.

Logan talks about his specific company's products, but also about perceptions of IoT in general, different ways people try to use the technology, and some use cases that are not quite always benign!

Off the back of a career-ette in start-up manufacturing himself, he's been with WISER from the beginning, watching it grow from his old professor's pet project into a thriving business that's convincing many hardened industry types.

We also touch on how to get positive messages over about technology, and how best to assure people that they're not going to be replaced by robots if they dare to go to the bathroom too often at work.

Logan's company, WISER's website is here:

https://www.wisersystems.com/ 

And Joe's LinkedIn is here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

Many enterprises run IT systems that are necessarily complex. So complex, sometimes, that the number and variety of services, applications and connections comes as a shock, even to the IT Department.

Finding the cause of an outage or slow-down, therefore, can be frustrating and time-consuming. Additionally, it can lead to all sorts of internal "politicking" (to put it nicely).

But even once there's a coherent "map", correlating what the business wants with what the IT stack can provide is another headache, and one that's not easily achieved. Unless, of course, you happen to use AppDynamics.

In this talk with Jim Cavanaugh from the company, we look at how organizations are joining up business aims and objectives with the technical nitty-gritty of networks, clouds, connections and all the whirring boxes in data centers.

 This podcast is produced in conjunction with AppDynamics, a Cisco company.

We just can't get enough Red Hat! After talking to Stefanie Chiras in S02 E01, we turn again to what's now the core of IBM, the open-source juggernaut of RHEL and chums - here represented by Ben Henshall, General Manager for the Southeast Asia market.

The financial institutions of the area just about define conservatism, but Red Hat and open-source are changing the face of the industry: open, interoperable, fast, safe & secure, the solutions Red Hat is offering just wouldn't be available in the proprietary world.

We also talk about Asia's Generation Z, the expectation that stuff "just works", and how China may not be the massive influence we in the West sometimes think it might be.

An Australian by birth, Ben's lived in Singapore for 94 years - those are dog/cat/IT years, by the way - and spent most of that time at Red Hat. Listen out for the insights!

The recent months of lockdown and the reliance on the internet for some of life's basics has shone the spotlight firmly onto online payments. The methods of digital interchange of money began back with the humble COBOL routines of early banking mainframes, have moved through plastic cards, and now onto the mobile phone. With Ben Gilbey of Mastercard, we talk about trends in money, and the geographic differences between attitudes to digital, contactless and cash-on-delivery.

With nearly twenty years experience with the likes of Mastercard and PayPal, Ben answers some questions about where payments systems are going, why the Germans and Japanese still prefer cash, and how some areas in Asia skipped the whole credit card "thing" and moved straight to smartphone app payments, contactless and WeChat.

We also discuss why cryptocurrency payments didn't really take off last year, and Ben tells us about how Mastercard is behind tech like Apple Pay and paying with NFC chips embedded in your sunglasses. Now even mom-n-pop stores are taking contactless, we talk about how small businesses can use the surge in interest in virtual payments to get down and digital.

Every time you connect to the internet (you're probably connected in several ways simultaneously right now), are you aware of the intricacies of what's actually happening in terms of data moving across the worldwide networks? Most people aren't, and that's where Thousand Eyes comes in. It's a company whose technology can tell you exactly what's happening, where, and creates (literally) a picture of internet health.

There's more to it, of course, than pretty illustrations of traffic flows. For instance, if the app you've lovingly crafted or website you've spent months designing starts running slowly, or even grinds to a standstill, how do you pinpoint the problem? There's so much outside of our control, many problems exist "out there" and, in many cases, there's nothing we can do about it. In fact, we can't even pinpoint where the issue might lie.

At least, we couldn't until very clever people at Thousand Eyes gave us that ability. Their technical chops were recognized a while back by a certain Cisco Systems, who completed their acquisition of Thousand Eyes at the beginning of August 2020, in a deal rumored to be worth in the region of one beeellion dollars.

With knowledge comes power, and armed with the knowledge of where your organization might be providing a third-rate customer experience, you can do something positive about it: change to a more local CDN, invest in your streaming technologies, or start replicating services to better connected hubs. So, before you fire the CTO, listen to this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast, where Yogi Chandiramani (VP Solutions Engineering, EMEA at Thousand Eyes) will let you know what the practicalities are of today's internet.

The internet connectivity report Yogi mentioned:

https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/internet-performance-report-covid-19-impact

Yogi Chandiramani at LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yogichandiramani/

Joe Green of this parish on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

The headlines are often full of how organizations' priceless data and intellectual property has been hacked by bad actors impersonating individuals. But what about machines being spoofed? How do you know that your e-commerce payment provider's servers are what they claim to be? When your API calls get re-routed behind the scenes, your company's data — and therefore its livelihood — are at stake.

This episode of the Tech Means Business podcast looks at the changing shape of our concepts of identity. In a technology world that's dominated by machine-to-machine interactions, how can we be sure that the people or devices online are who, or what, they claim to be? We're joined by Kevin Bocek, the VP of Security Strategy & Threat Intelligence at Venafi, to talk these issues through.

A skilled cryptographer by trade (but not much of a programmer — by his own admission), Kevin shares his knowledge of certificates, authenticity, machine handshakes and much more besides. Whether you're signing code, needing to test the veracity of a website, or looking to prevent your connected business from cyber incursions, machine identity proof is now a central part of cybersec.

If your organization uses APIs, SSH, CAs or HTTPS (other acronyms are available), this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast is essential listening. Fascinating stuff!

All things machine identity-related:

https://www.venafi.com/

Kevin's potted biography right here:

https://www.venafi.com/node/615

And please connect with your host via LinkedIn (allegedly, but do check your DNS cache):

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

In this episode, Joe is joined by Mette Søs Gottlieb from LMS365, a company that's putting learning materials right into your everyday workflow.

Mette talks about her own passion for education, self-improvement, learning, keeping the grey matter active, and how she's lucky enough to be able to take that attitude to her own workplace. This episode looks at the LMS365 method, which is to integrate cutting edge-tech with the latest in educational methodology.

More broadly, we talk about the education system's effects on us, learning techniques we can adopt so that it's not a case of "in one ear, out the other",  why we need to practise learning to be good at it, and why certain professions value learning (and certification, fr'instance) over others.

Importantly, this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast helps dispel the myth that training staff only equips them to leave a company or organization and find a better job. There are some great suggestions too as to how to make learning materials simply and implement them in training programs.

If your organization uses Office 365, here's how to make learning a part of daily routines:

https://www.elearningforce.com/

Copenhagen's very own Mette Søs Gottlieb is here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mettegottlieb/

And you can connect with your host via this magic link:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/

In this opener to series two of the Tech Means Business podcast, we were delighted to speak to Stefanie Chiras, the Vice President and General Manager, RHEL Business Unit at Red Hat.

With a skew of qualifications that would make a recruitment professional weep (Harvard, Princeton, UCSB), Stefanie was a career IBM-er until two years ago, when she shifted up a gear into Red Hat, post-acquisition of the latter by the former. Now at the helm of the pivotal Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit, she's in the business of making the case for all things FOSS at organizations across the world.

We talk about getting the message right, open-source monetization, and how it's not about the details of the code, but the outcomes for the business that matter. As the world transitions to open, cloud-y, platform-agnostic solutions and services, we hear how RHEL makes its particular case among the Ubuntus, SUSEs, Salesforces and SAPs of this world.

Stefanie & Joe mull over upstreaming code, communities of developers, high-performance & supercomputing, microservices and monolithic applications: all in all, a substantial series two opener, with more food for thought than an open buffet at a rocket science convention!

Success stories a-plenty from household name companies and organizations:

Stefanie's LinkedIn profile:

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn:

Looking back at series one of the Tech Means Business podcast.

Rather than go through and ferret out the most pithy comments, the deepest insights, or even the best jokes, instead, we're recircling around to pull in the main themes dominating business and technology:

Artificial intelligence with Darktrace
Big data and Splunk
IoT with Ubuntu/Canonical
The Linux effect with Positive Internet
Career paths, with DocuSign

Thanks go to the people I spoke with, and who featured on the episodes that aren't featured here. It was literally through lack of time that has meant this "best of" show is necessarily limited in scope.

Series two already shaping up nicely: MasterCard, Red Hat, ARM, SuperMicro, and plenty more. Watch this space!

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/