Tech Talks Daily

Chris Harris from Couchbase joins me in a conversation about the challenges that businesses continue to face with legacy technology. Using the database industry as a case in point, we discuss how business' legacy arrangements hinder their chances of being competitive in the post-COVID, digital-first world.

Chris argues that reliance on legacy database technology such as Oracle is holding them back from achieving their digital goals. We also talk about cloud and IoT to AI, and even 5G calls for a much higher level of data agility than legacy databases can provide.

In Chris' view, one of the key reasons businesses struggle to move away from legacy tech is skills; often and companies lack the resources to adopt more modern alternatives that are better suited to meeting digital transformation requirements.

Finally, Chris offers his thoughts on where he sees the database industry moving next, looking at emerging technologies that businesses increasingly demand, such as edge computing or real-time analytics, and explaining how the database industry is evolving to support them.

At Couchbase, they believe data is at the heart of the enterprise. They empower developers and architects to build, deploy, and run their mission-critical applications. Many of the world's largest enterprises rely on Couchbase to power the core applications their businesses depend on.

Could the API revolution and the digital transformation be exposing everyone to security risks? An API is the connective tissue that binds together cloud-native architecture and enables us to enjoy digital services. While these are fundamental for the way we work and live, they're exposing organizations to a new domain of security risk.

Peter Klimek, Director of Technology, Office of the CTO at Imperva joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast in a conversation about the benefits, and pitfalls, of APIs.

Imperva is a cybersecurity leader with a mission to protect data and all paths to it. They protect the data of over 6,000 global customers from cyberattacks through all stages of their digital transformation. Their products are informed by the Imperva Research Lab, an international threat intelligence community that feeds the latest security and compliance expertise into our solutions.

Terra Virtua is the world's first fully immersive social digital collectables platform. Given your expertise in this area, I invited Jawad Ashraf, CTO, and Co-Founder of the company, onto the Tech Talks Daily Podcast.

Launched in 2016, Terra Virtua is on a mission to turbo-charge fandom - from art to sports, music to movies, games to comics - with the world's first fully immersive platform for buying, sharing, trading, exhibiting, and interacting with digital collectibles.

As the world has started shifting the digital realm – from working to shopping, entertaining, and connecting with friends and family Terra Virtua is at the start of using the internet as a virtual world. NFTs isn't an evolution of traditional collecting; it's a whole new form of entertainment.

I learn how Terra Virtua is revolutionizing the way people experience digital tokens, and it's the only place where fans can buy and own 2D, 3D, or animated collectibles. We also discuss how Terra Virtua ensures that the environment doesn't pay a heavy price for this game-changing technology and has just switched to Polygon – a new, energy-efficient, scaled blockchain solution.

Since launching, Terra Virtua has collaborated with numerous industry leaders, such as Paramount Pictures and Legendary Entertainment, to bring the best NFT content and collaborations to their platforms. The brand has big plans for growth and creating a whole new form of entertainment for its fans.

Firdosh Sheikh is the Co-founder and CEO of DRIFE, a decentralized Ride-hailing platform powered by blockchain to empower both the drivers and the riders without any existence of a central entity. Firdosh shares her powerful origin story that she calls 'the ride that changed my life.'

I learn why ride-hailing is crying out for innovation. Despite being a huge global market, drivers, riders, and ride-hailing platforms are all struggling. Uber still is not making profits. So one of the original big disruptive industries is crying out for disruption itself.

We discuss how DRIFE is breaking the vicious cycle of centralised ride-hailing platforms like Uber and the high commissions leaving drivers trapped with little to no profits.

Khaled Naim is Co-Founder & CEO of Onfleet a provider of last-mile delivery management software. Since its launch in 2015, Onfleet has grown to power millions of deliveries per month for thousands of businesses around the world. Clients include Gap, Total Wine & More, Capsule, Imperfect Foods, and United Supermarkets.

Onfleet's software provides advanced route optimization, dispatching, real-time driver tracking, proof of delivery, analytics and customer communications. Onfleet was ranked #124 on the Inc 5000 list of America's fastest-growing companies in 2019 and #13 in San Francisco Business Times' Fast100 list of the Bay Area's 100 fastest growing companies.

Khaled joins me on Tech Talks Daily and shares his story and how Onfleet's technology helps businesses streamline this onerous undertaking by efficiently connecting businesses, dispatchers, drivers, and deliveries to happy customers.

Scale is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital investment firm with $1.9B under management. They were early investors in SaaS pioneers like Bill.com (NYSE:BILL), DocuSign (NASDAQ:DOCU), HubSpot (NYSE:HUBS), JFrog (NASDAQ: FROG) and Root (NASDAQ: ROOT).

Today they are focused on the next generation of enterprise software companies building Cognitive Applications like: Comet.ml, Observe.ai, Techsee and Viz.ai.

Eric Anderson is a Partner at Scale Venture Partners, where he focuses on cloud infrastructure and security investments. He is a Board member at Scale portfolio companies Datastax and Upsolver and a Board observer at Matillion, BigID, Expel, Honeycomb, Tetrate, and AppOmni.

Before Scale, Eric led early Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services product teams. At Google, he was a Product Manager in the Data Analytics and Machine Learning group. He led the team that launched Cloud Dataprep and critical components of Cloud Dataflow. Previously, Eric built aircraft engines in General Electric's Operation Management Leadership Program.

Eric is a go-to resource on open source (he also moonlights as the host of the Contributor podcast) and has deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and app development and contributed to the deal teams for Matillion and BigID and more recent deals like AppOmni, Comet, and Upsolver.

I learn more about the early-stage VC investor that is focused on intelligent business software, and we discuss the trends he is seeing in the industry.

Blue Wireless was founded in Singapore in 2015 to solve what was missing in the market – a flexible connectivity solution and a provider able to guide enterprise customers and simplify their connectivity journey to focus on their business. Since then, it has grown its presence with offices across APAC, Europe, and the US. They serve 80 countries with LTE/5G connectivity and have doubled their customer base in the last year.

I wanted to hear about the story behind the company, and how they are transforming the way Global Enterprises use LTE/5G services, so I invited Ivan LandenFounder and CEO of Blue Wireless, to find out more.

I learn how founders come from a telco world. Hence, they know the faults and limitations of customer service, flexibility, and even connectivity (wired vs. wireless). Finally, we discuss the 5G boom and how enterprises are looking for alternatives to telcos and their challenges when it comes to connectivity.

In a recent viral video on TikTok, a Starbucks customer was waiting in a field for her Starbucks order to be delivered by drone. The video quickly garnered over 2.2 million views. (Video here https://bit.ly/30GQMCn).

So I tracked down the company and invited their CEO onto the podcast to learn more. Yariv Bash, CEO, and Co-founder of Flytrex, a leading on-demand drone delivery service in the food and retail space, shares his take on the future of drone delivery.

Drawing from his experience operating an on-demand drone delivery system since August 2017 and witnessing advancements in the space since Yariv discusses how technology and regulation have come together in recent years to create a viable framework for safe and secure drone innovation across applications.

Flytrex expects to gain airworthiness certification from the FAA in the not-so-distant future -- once that happens, the sky's the limit. I learn more about Flytrex and its role in bringing about a future where drone delivery is the rule, not the exception.

Until recently, 90% of enterprise data was sent to the cloud. However, this number is dropping to only 25% over the next three years. By 2025, 75% of enterprise data is expected to be created and processed at the edge. With edge adoption increasing in adoption, bringing in the power of 5G should also be considered for improving energy efficiency. 5G has a positive impact on edge operations as it allows for the installation of lower power but faster computational power, making it a more sustainable option. Furthermore, by integrating 5G and edge computing, enterprises can harness meaningful data to drive better business decisions around sustainability and reduce carbon emissions. Chris Penrose, COO at FogHorn, a developer of edge AI software and solutions, discusses how 5G and edge capabilities drive sustainability, ultimately helping enterprises and communities achieve net zero emissions?

Rahul Singh from HCL Technologies discusses how covid has accelerated digital change in the financial services industry. Banks had to adjust in 2020, as the use of cash dropped off a cliff and mobile banking grew by 13%, while branches were forced to close overnight rapidly. As lockdowns were imposed without warning, some of the world's oldest, most cautious organizations were suddenly forced to change – do nothing, and they would surely see a mass customer exodus.

HCL manages IT for Deutsche Bank, ING, and Metro Bank, so I asked Rahul to share his unique insight into the industry challenges faced during the pandemic. He also explores the three significant digital shifts that have occurred within the financial services industry:

1. An explosion in remote working. With existing ways of working, and the obvious privacy and security concerns, banking has been slow to adopt remote working compared to other industries. However, the pandemic made it a necessity – banks had to find a way to enable people to work remotely without damaging customer experience.

Rahul talks about the key areas they had to address: removing entrenched rule-based processes to accommodate remote workers and providing the required collaborative tools for employees to complete the necessary functions. He also discusses how recent announcements from HSBC and JP Morgan indicate this isn't a temporary shift but a permanent change.

2. Pushing mobile payments to the top of the agenda. Paying through your phone was once a nice to have, but that all changed when the pandemic meant we had to avoid unnecessary physical contact – so chip and pin card machine use dropped. This meant banks had to speed up mobile payment roll-out and ensure mobile apps were reliable – they couldn't risk letting customers down at the crucial moment. Imagine queuing for half an hour to enter a supermarket, loading your trolley with essentials, and then finding payment doesn't go through when you arrive at the checkout…

Rahul says this meant banks' contactless and phone payment options had to mature quicker than initially planned. IT projects had to be re-prioritized, with future-facing alternative payment projects now pushed front and center. The sudden introduction of new rules and directives, such as the FCA's decision to increase the single transaction contactless payment limit to £100, also means banks must be prepared to quickly update payment systems based on directives at short notice.

3. Adopting public cloud computing at breakneck speed. Financial services have been one of the slowest industries to adopt the public cloud, with regulations and restrictions keeping FS out of the fast lane. However, banks had to dramatically speed things up when they suddenly had large remote workforces to support, requiring computing beyond the current capabilities of many existing on-premise or private cloud systems.

This led to many flexing their financial muscles to make a move and play catch-up. Rahul can explain how this move unfolded, with critical workloads shifting to the likes of Amazon and Google. He says that every bank around the world will emerge from the pandemic with a public cloud strategy, meaning it will become increasingly prevalent across the industry.