Tech Talks Daily

According to a recent Gartner study, DEI is one of the top five business priorities for businesses in 2022. However, hybrid and in-person work environments could jeopardize company access to talent. So while more organizations are doubling down on diversity and inclusion efforts and implementing consequential reporting, meeting those goals still remains a challenge for many corporations.

One way to help increase diversity in an organization is to provide opportunities for growth from the entry-level employee sector. Ahva Sadeghi, Co-Founder & CEO of Symba shares with me how remote internship programs allow employers to access diverse talent and fill their future hiring pipeline. Ahva also shares her inspirational tech startup story and ways remote positions can feed an overall DEI strategy, and how they contribute to tenure, culture, and overall company wellness.

Lugano's Plan ₿ Forum is a Bitcoin conference bringing together world leaders, technologists, and entrepreneurs to discuss nation-state Bitcoin adoption, economics, financial freedom, and freedom of speech. Although I am not attending the event, I did get to spend a little time with Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether and Bitfinex to discuss the Plan B forum.

We discuss how Bitfinex and Tether's actions for financial freedom might influence the rest of the world and fight for innovation through governmental, corporate, individual, and technological tracks. We also talk about how Bitfinex is participating in Adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador in November. Finally, we dare to imagine IT without any infrastructure or reliance on the cloud.

Many are citing open source as the future. The UK Government's National Data Strategy even talks about the importance of opening public sector datasets to form the backbone of innovation, efficiency, and growth. This is a trend that Databricks is betting on in a big way.

Databricks is the lakehouse company. More than 7,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, H&M, and over 40% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Lakehouse Platform to unify their data, analytics and AI. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe. Founded by the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow, Databricks is on a mission to help data teams solve the world's toughest problems.

I have invited Dael Williamson, EMEA CTO, Field Advisory & Engineering at Databricks, to join me on Tech Talks Daily to share the story behind the company and how they are helping data teams solve the world's most challenging problems.

Kenny William is the "Senior Director of Distribution Center Wizardry" at Parts Town, the world's largest distributer of OEM parts for the food service industry. Parts Town has made significant automation improvements at its recently expanded 300,000 sq. ft. distribution center. The company implemented AutoStore, an automatic storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) that has helped improve picking accuracy by more than 50% and handles 72% of parts picks in only 7% of the total distribution center space.

The distribution center also features over 100 robots and an elevated conveyor belt that moves parts throughout the space without taking up additional floor space. Kenny joins me on Tech Talks Daily to talk about their supply chain innovations in this unique market segment and discuss how these investments are transforming Parts Town team members into tech-savvy professionals.

Kenny shares with me how they are using technology to circumvent supply chain challenges for OEMs and the purchasers of these parts (restaurant owners, service companies, etc.).

NETSCOUT recently announced findings from its DDoS Threat Intelligence Report. The findings demonstrate how sophisticated cybercriminals have become at bypassing defences with new DDoS attack vectors and successful methodologies.

"By constantly innovating and adapting, attackers are designing new, more effective DDoS attack vectors or doubling down on existing effective methodologies," said Richard Hummel, threat intelligence lead at NETSCOUT. "In the first half of 2022, attackers conducted more pre-attack reconnaissance, exercised a new attack vector called TP240 PhoneHome, created a tsunami of TCP flooding attacks, and rapidly expanded high-powered botnets to plague network-connected resources. In addition, bad actors have openly embraced online aggression with high-profile DDoS attack campaigns related to geopolitical unrest, which have had global implications."

NETSCOUT's Active Level Threat Analysis System (ATLAS™) compiles DDoS attack statistics from most of the world's ISPs, large data centres, and government and enterprise networks. This data represents intelligence on attacks occurring in over 190 countries, 550 industries, and 50,000 autonomous system numbers (ASNs). NETSCOUT's ATLAS Security Engineering and Response Team (ASERT) analyses and curates this data to provide unique insights in its biannual report.

When I hear phrases such as DNS water-torture attacks and carpet-bombing attacks on the rise combined with a new Netscout Threat Intelligence report, I immediately reached out to my go-to guy for cybersecurity threats. Richard Hummel rejoins me on Tech TAlks Daily to discuss the news in more detail and demystify some of the terminologies around the threat landscape.

Today, every B2B omnichannel retail user experience is expected to be seamless, without boundaries for users, with well-aligned journeys and a fully integrated experience across all channels. But can one truly achieve that in a big company, with a huge history and complex processes, while keeping customers happy and engaged?

Rehan Saleem, Product Manager, and Tobias Schröder, Ph.D., Product Manager, joined me in a conversation on the show floor at Sitecore Symposium 2022 about powering brand experiences. At the event, their presentation, "How to (not) ruin a B2B organization," focused on the challenges of creating and maintaining a seamless user experience and keeping a great relationship with our customers.

Tobias and Rehan share with me how their teams manage to build human-centered solutions while handling business models and METRO shops in 23 countries. We also discuss personalization technology and experience platforms.

As Chief Technology Officer and Senior PE for Intel Corporation, Steve Orrin orchestrates and executes customer engagements in the Federal space, overseeing the development of federal solution architectures to address challenges in a government enterprise, national security, and other federal areas of focus.

In today's episode of Tech Talks Daily, Steve joins me in a discussion about the key trends in cybersecurity. Steve reveals the latest threats and techniques used against corporations and governments and shares the best practices to help.

We also discuss the security/risk concerns around supply chain security and what organizations can do today and in the future to address or reduce this risk. With trust being top of mind for CISOs, Steve also advises how organizations can adopt Zero Trust Architectures and what new security innovations are waiting on the horizon.

About Steve Orrin

Steve Orrin offers three decades of extraordinary success in a series of high-level roles at top-tier companies that include Intel Corporation, Sarvega, Watchfire Inc., Sanctum Inc., First Genetic Trust Inc., Lockstar Inc., and SynData Technologies Inc. He has developed a reputation as an industry leader, leveraging a history of delivering results in Innovation, Intrapreneurship, and Entrepreneurship. He is a Tech-enabled business professional who has launched and scaled companies and brought innovative industry-leading products to market.

Steve's invaluable expertise and broad business range have powered a history of developing successful products, technologies, and new markets. Such traits have consistently enabled Steve to achieve an impressive command of the skills needed to manage ongoing business planning processes while developing strategies to meet future challenges.

I have been watching many keynotes at Symposium, and two of the speakers from Sitecore's leadership team are joining me on the podcast today.

First of all, we are going to speak to Dave O'Flanagan, CPO at Sitecore, who will walk me through the big announcements at this year's event. We discuss Content Hub One, a new AI-powered standalone search derived from Sitecore's Reflektion acquisition and Sitecore Connect.

We will then meet Nick Malone, COO, who has some great insights to share with me about how enterprises can create superior digital experiences. We discuss the need to operate in a state of always-on innovation and adapt to the ever-evolving expectations of consumers.

About Nick Malone

Nick is a proven executive with 24 years of leadership experience within both client and vendor roles spanning UK, Europe, Middle East, USA, Russia and Central Asia. Extensive experience in sales leadership and business development within both mature & emerging markets and in the management of diverse cultures, complex business environments and an extended ecosystem of national and international alliance partners & national & global corporations

About Dave O'Flanagan

Dave O'Flanagan is the Chief Product Officer in Sitecore. Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform that empowers the world's smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers.

An industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Kimberly-Clark, L'Oréal and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalised experiences for their customers.

Previously the CEO & Co-Founder of Boxever, a personalisation platform that uses data and AI to help the world's biggest brands make every customer interaction smarter and deliver game-changing customer experience.

Jacuzzi is known around the world for its hot tub and spa manufacturing. But people seldom think about their technology or how their digital presence is a primary source for generating leads.

The Jacuzzi Group had a fragmented dealer model, including hundreds of Jacuzzi-owned stores, Jacuzzi-only dealers, and brand-agnostic dealers, all who had their own websites and e-commerce experiences. This made managing the Jacuzzi brand a nightmare, not to mention the inconsistent experience it was portraying to customers.

Kyle BladesJacuzzi's Director of Digital Marketing shares their digital transformation journey with me and how they leveraged technology to unify its customer experiences, delivering both a best-in-class experience and future-proofed, omnichannel connectivity at scale.

Cirque du Soleil started with a group of street performers in Montreal, Canada in 1984 and manages approximately 40 shows worldwide today. In addition to the iconic shows under the blue and yellow big top, the Cirque du Soleil brand includes other live entertainment brands such as the Blue Man Group, VStar Entertainment Group, and The Works Entertainment Group.

After being shut down for an extended period during the pandemic, Cirque Du Soleil is back, stronger than ever across multiple continents. But this time, they are also delighting their customers with an Interactive Program to enhance the fan experience and enable more engagement opportunities.

Pierre-Luc Camirand, Director of Digital Customer Experience, at Cirque du Soleil shares their digital transformation journey with me. With annual global ticket sales ranging from 11-12 million, most of these transactions are completed online and move through the Sitecore digital ecosystem. Through micro-interactions and behavioral personalization, I learn how Cirque du Soleil is increasing engagement, conversion rates, and repeat business.

We discuss how they are replicating the experience of a live show in the digital environment and creating a seamless customer experience across all digital platforms with content in multiple languages.