The notion that IT is only important when stuff breaks is outdated. IT is now the gatekeeper and enabler of business solutions and productivity. Join Blair Sammons, Lead of Corporate Engineering at Weedmaps, for a deep dive into the core skills you need as the IT industry shifts and how to leverage these skills to uplevel your career.
451 Research Report: BetterCloud Pioneers the Emerging SaaS Operations Manage...BetterCloud
SaaS applications are proliferating within and across enterprises in all industries. BetterCloud addresses a new IT challenge – how to automate and govern the IT administrative blind spots related to the use of multiple SaaS applications.
The Day 2 opening keynote, led by BetterCloud’s Chief Product Officer, Jim Brennan, shares BetterCloud’s vision, demonstrates new product announcements, and presents our strategic roadmap. Jim will present on BetterCloud’s product pillars and the top use cases this functionality will enable.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Lessons in IT LeadershipBetterCloud
Successful IT leaders are continually seeking ways of making their teams more productive, impactful and business-relevant and advancing their own careers in the process. In this closing keynote, seven-time CIO and author Mark Settle will focus on the key organizational and personal competencies required to succeed in the 2020s.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Smart Scaling through Automation: How to Scale Without Adding...BetterCloud
Anthony Ancheta, manager of IT at Lime, and James Kang, manager, IT operations at Udemy, both BetterCloud customers, will show you how to leverage automation in BetterCloud to empower your teams to do more without adding IT headcount.
The 2020 State of SaaSOps finds that as more companies adjust to the realities of managing SaaS at scale, SaaSOps will evolve into a core IT discipline—influencing strategic priorities, technology investments, and even job titles and career paths. Get the report for key findings and insights into the future of IT.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Enabling Productivity with Agile SecurityBetterCloud
It’s a fine line to give users control over settings and their data, but not too much control. In this session, you’ll learn how Chad Ponder, VP Technology Service and Support at United Capital, Mark Bowling, Remote Chief Information Security Officer at United Capital, and Colin McCarthy, VP of Global IT at Essence, are creating workflows that give their users the flexibility they need to do their jobs, without compromising security.
Whitepaper about Cloud Infrastructure, how to start off successfully and when and how to use IaaS for your migration to the cloud. Contact us if you are interested to know more: +31 20 737 05 37.
451 Research Report: BetterCloud Pioneers the Emerging SaaS Operations Manage...BetterCloud
SaaS applications are proliferating within and across enterprises in all industries. BetterCloud addresses a new IT challenge – how to automate and govern the IT administrative blind spots related to the use of multiple SaaS applications.
The Day 2 opening keynote, led by BetterCloud’s Chief Product Officer, Jim Brennan, shares BetterCloud’s vision, demonstrates new product announcements, and presents our strategic roadmap. Jim will present on BetterCloud’s product pillars and the top use cases this functionality will enable.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Lessons in IT LeadershipBetterCloud
Successful IT leaders are continually seeking ways of making their teams more productive, impactful and business-relevant and advancing their own careers in the process. In this closing keynote, seven-time CIO and author Mark Settle will focus on the key organizational and personal competencies required to succeed in the 2020s.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Smart Scaling through Automation: How to Scale Without Adding...BetterCloud
Anthony Ancheta, manager of IT at Lime, and James Kang, manager, IT operations at Udemy, both BetterCloud customers, will show you how to leverage automation in BetterCloud to empower your teams to do more without adding IT headcount.
The 2020 State of SaaSOps finds that as more companies adjust to the realities of managing SaaS at scale, SaaSOps will evolve into a core IT discipline—influencing strategic priorities, technology investments, and even job titles and career paths. Get the report for key findings and insights into the future of IT.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Enabling Productivity with Agile SecurityBetterCloud
It’s a fine line to give users control over settings and their data, but not too much control. In this session, you’ll learn how Chad Ponder, VP Technology Service and Support at United Capital, Mark Bowling, Remote Chief Information Security Officer at United Capital, and Colin McCarthy, VP of Global IT at Essence, are creating workflows that give their users the flexibility they need to do their jobs, without compromising security.
Whitepaper about Cloud Infrastructure, how to start off successfully and when and how to use IaaS for your migration to the cloud. Contact us if you are interested to know more: +31 20 737 05 37.
Intelligentia is a software development company with expertise in custom application development for a wide range of industries - from e-governance, knowledge management, Education, Travel and Agriculture. Our company’s proven professional expertise, cross-industry experience and technical capabilities in software engineering and application development will help determine the optimal technology solution for reducing costs, streamlining business processes and gaining business advantages.
Transitioning to the Next Generation Hybrid Cloud Operating ModelAmazon Web Services
Enterprises often need to support multiple application lifecycles within their portfolio of on-premise and in-the-cloud systems. Learn how enterprise customers are approaching the transition to a modern hybrid cloud operating model to support their portfolio of cloud applications.
Speaker: Harley Young, Principal Professional Service, Amazon Web Services
Best Practices for Managing SaaS ApplicationsCorrelsense
The proliferation of SaaS applications like Salesforce.com is creating a host of new management challenges. For example, how do you measure the performance of applications you don’t host? What real-time data do you have to communicate with business stakeholders? How will you know if SLA commitments are being met?
Join us for a webinar exploring the best practices for managing SaaS applications, including:
*Important ways that the management of SaaS and hosted application management differ
*The unique challenges of supporting enterprise SaaS applications
*Case studies demonstrating new techniques and tools for measuring the performance of hosted applications like Salesforce.com
Today, every company runs many different applications that are essential for success – both internal business applications but also external-facing applications for customers and partners (such as the company website, customer self-service portal, e-commerce sites, or mobile apps).
And then, there's data. Every user interaction with any application works with data, consumes data and generates data. Today, every business collects tremendous amounts of information - and the challenge is how to turn this data into actionable insights and intelligence to provide a superior customer experience.
We will look at how a major industrial organisation is transforming their entire value chain, how they got started, what they've achieved and lessons learnt along the way.
Speaker: Julian Fischer, CEO, Anynines
ServiceNow ecosystem - True Blue Partners - Review of key investment and mer...Sunil Grover
A comprehensive review of the investments and M&A in the ServiceNow ecosystem. Review of M&A transaction by ServiceNow and the potential impact of these on the App Developer and IT consulting ecosystem. Review of Key transactions it the ITSM market and ServiceNow app and IT services ecosystem.
Understand the What, Why & How of Digital Transformation Featuring 451 ResearchVMware Tanzu
Why did we hear so much about “Digital Transformation” in 2016, and frankly what does it mean? While it's easy to dismiss the phrase with an eye-roll, there's no better phrase to represent improving how IT is used to help drive business innovation...and the huge changes organizations must go through to be successful. This webinar with Nick Patience, Research Vice President for 451 Research's software team, and Michael Coté of Pivotal will discuss a pragmatic definition and approach to Digital Transformation as seen through the experiences of organizations who've lived through it.
Digital Transformation is about fundamentally rebuilding business and IT processes, not just about building apps. 451 Research defines Digital Transformation as “a result of IT innovation that is aligned with and driven by a well-planned business strategy, with the goal of transforming how organizations serve customers, employees and partners.” Some main features of a successful transformation include the ability to quickly react to market demands, and use information to make better decisions and serve constituents more effectively.
In this webinar Nick Patience of 451 Research and Pivotal’s Michael Cote will discuss:
- Why now is the time for Digital Transformation
- How the balance of power between customer and provider contributes to this new revolution
- Shifting priorities that require new practices and processes and the technical tools and platforms that support them
- Real-world examples of organizations that have been there (we’ll share all the gorey details, including what worked and didn't work for them)
View the webinar here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/14891/242781
This is the slide deck which was used for my webinar on Digital Transformation and Microsoft 365. In this session I've given a detailed overview of Digital Transformation and how it has been disrupting the organizations across the globe. I've also explained how Microsoft 365 can help in planning your organization's Digital Transformation.
The world is changing fast, cloud technology have created an important means of storing, securing and access data from anywhere in the world. Amazon Web Services India offers multiple ways to enhance businesses quickly and allows user to easily migrate data to the cloud.
EMA research shows that more than 40% of today’s production application workloads are running in the cloud. The age of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud is here to stay. Yet, many IT organizations continue to struggle with their cloud migrations.
These slides, based on the webinar hosted by EMA Research and Scalable Software, examines the core requirements for assessing your current IT landscape, setting priorities, and determining which workloads impact which services as you migrate to cloud.
The Future of Enterprise IT - ENT207 - Chicago AWS SummitAmazon Web Services
Enterprises that are embracing cloud computing are interested in driving fundamental changes in their business so they can compete in the future. IT transformation, enabled by cloud adoption, is a key component of this future success, from tighter alignment with business unit stakeholders to increased agility and pace of innovation. In this session, we explore the potential for transformation that comes with cloud adoption, and we discuss how some of the world's leading enterprises were able to transform. We also explore organizational and technology best practices that you can implement to support transformation in your organization.
Corporate Engineer: The New IT Admin
The notion that IT is only important when stuff breaks is outdated. IT is now the gatekeeper and enabler of business solutions and productivity. Join Blair Sammons, Lead of Corporate Engineering at Weedmaps, for a deep dive into the core skills you need as the IT industry shifts and how to leverage these skills to uplevel your career.
This document brings together a set
of latest data points and publicly
available information relevant for
Consulting & IT Services Industry.
We are very excited to share this
content and believe that readers will
benefit from this periodic publication
immensely.
Intelligentia is a software development company with expertise in custom application development for a wide range of industries - from e-governance, knowledge management, Education, Travel and Agriculture. Our company’s proven professional expertise, cross-industry experience and technical capabilities in software engineering and application development will help determine the optimal technology solution for reducing costs, streamlining business processes and gaining business advantages.
Transitioning to the Next Generation Hybrid Cloud Operating ModelAmazon Web Services
Enterprises often need to support multiple application lifecycles within their portfolio of on-premise and in-the-cloud systems. Learn how enterprise customers are approaching the transition to a modern hybrid cloud operating model to support their portfolio of cloud applications.
Speaker: Harley Young, Principal Professional Service, Amazon Web Services
Best Practices for Managing SaaS ApplicationsCorrelsense
The proliferation of SaaS applications like Salesforce.com is creating a host of new management challenges. For example, how do you measure the performance of applications you don’t host? What real-time data do you have to communicate with business stakeholders? How will you know if SLA commitments are being met?
Join us for a webinar exploring the best practices for managing SaaS applications, including:
*Important ways that the management of SaaS and hosted application management differ
*The unique challenges of supporting enterprise SaaS applications
*Case studies demonstrating new techniques and tools for measuring the performance of hosted applications like Salesforce.com
Today, every company runs many different applications that are essential for success – both internal business applications but also external-facing applications for customers and partners (such as the company website, customer self-service portal, e-commerce sites, or mobile apps).
And then, there's data. Every user interaction with any application works with data, consumes data and generates data. Today, every business collects tremendous amounts of information - and the challenge is how to turn this data into actionable insights and intelligence to provide a superior customer experience.
We will look at how a major industrial organisation is transforming their entire value chain, how they got started, what they've achieved and lessons learnt along the way.
Speaker: Julian Fischer, CEO, Anynines
ServiceNow ecosystem - True Blue Partners - Review of key investment and mer...Sunil Grover
A comprehensive review of the investments and M&A in the ServiceNow ecosystem. Review of M&A transaction by ServiceNow and the potential impact of these on the App Developer and IT consulting ecosystem. Review of Key transactions it the ITSM market and ServiceNow app and IT services ecosystem.
Understand the What, Why & How of Digital Transformation Featuring 451 ResearchVMware Tanzu
Why did we hear so much about “Digital Transformation” in 2016, and frankly what does it mean? While it's easy to dismiss the phrase with an eye-roll, there's no better phrase to represent improving how IT is used to help drive business innovation...and the huge changes organizations must go through to be successful. This webinar with Nick Patience, Research Vice President for 451 Research's software team, and Michael Coté of Pivotal will discuss a pragmatic definition and approach to Digital Transformation as seen through the experiences of organizations who've lived through it.
Digital Transformation is about fundamentally rebuilding business and IT processes, not just about building apps. 451 Research defines Digital Transformation as “a result of IT innovation that is aligned with and driven by a well-planned business strategy, with the goal of transforming how organizations serve customers, employees and partners.” Some main features of a successful transformation include the ability to quickly react to market demands, and use information to make better decisions and serve constituents more effectively.
In this webinar Nick Patience of 451 Research and Pivotal’s Michael Cote will discuss:
- Why now is the time for Digital Transformation
- How the balance of power between customer and provider contributes to this new revolution
- Shifting priorities that require new practices and processes and the technical tools and platforms that support them
- Real-world examples of organizations that have been there (we’ll share all the gorey details, including what worked and didn't work for them)
View the webinar here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/14891/242781
This is the slide deck which was used for my webinar on Digital Transformation and Microsoft 365. In this session I've given a detailed overview of Digital Transformation and how it has been disrupting the organizations across the globe. I've also explained how Microsoft 365 can help in planning your organization's Digital Transformation.
The world is changing fast, cloud technology have created an important means of storing, securing and access data from anywhere in the world. Amazon Web Services India offers multiple ways to enhance businesses quickly and allows user to easily migrate data to the cloud.
EMA research shows that more than 40% of today’s production application workloads are running in the cloud. The age of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud is here to stay. Yet, many IT organizations continue to struggle with their cloud migrations.
These slides, based on the webinar hosted by EMA Research and Scalable Software, examines the core requirements for assessing your current IT landscape, setting priorities, and determining which workloads impact which services as you migrate to cloud.
The Future of Enterprise IT - ENT207 - Chicago AWS SummitAmazon Web Services
Enterprises that are embracing cloud computing are interested in driving fundamental changes in their business so they can compete in the future. IT transformation, enabled by cloud adoption, is a key component of this future success, from tighter alignment with business unit stakeholders to increased agility and pace of innovation. In this session, we explore the potential for transformation that comes with cloud adoption, and we discuss how some of the world's leading enterprises were able to transform. We also explore organizational and technology best practices that you can implement to support transformation in your organization.
Corporate Engineer: The New IT Admin
The notion that IT is only important when stuff breaks is outdated. IT is now the gatekeeper and enabler of business solutions and productivity. Join Blair Sammons, Lead of Corporate Engineering at Weedmaps, for a deep dive into the core skills you need as the IT industry shifts and how to leverage these skills to uplevel your career.
This document brings together a set
of latest data points and publicly
available information relevant for
Consulting & IT Services Industry.
We are very excited to share this
content and believe that readers will
benefit from this periodic publication
immensely.
Intergen's newsletter, Smarts, now available for online reading.
Intergen provides information technology solutions across Australia, New Zealand and the world based exclusively on Microsoft’s tools and technologies.
This document brings together a set
of latest data points and publicly
available information relevant for
Consulting & IT Services Industry.
We are very excited to share this
content and believe that readers will
benefit from this periodic publication
immensely.
HashRoot is a technology company providing IT services to its global client base since 2009. We focus on Server Management, Application Development, Website Development, Mobile App Development, Infrastructure Management, Cloud Management, Digital Marketing and Security Services. HashRoot has provided services to 750+ clients in 80+ countries with 24/7 support. We help save time, reduce costs on technology development while our clients concentrate on their core business. HashRoot is an ISO certified company and winner of 5 international awards. We have offices in Kochi, US and UK.
At Gunaatita, we are a trusted Microsoft BizSpark startup end-to-end Software solutions & Web development Company that provides excellent services in Enterprise mobility solutions, Software product engineering, Content Management System, CRM and Mobile applications using Java & .Net Technologies. We are committed to provide great value to our customers as a trusted offshore partner with our experience and expertise in cutting edge technology and highly process oriented execution.
Our main services include:
. Website Design and Development
. Enterprise Portal Development
. Mobile App Development (Android)
. E-commerce Solutions
. Service API development
Clicks Bazaar Apps development service, In just a few short years, the Application Development industry has seen dramatic changes — both from customers looking for software solutions and from the resource pool of development talent.For More Visit - http://development.clicksbazaar.com/apps-development/
Discover. Learn. Evolve
Technology is a discovery assisting you to evolve through the lifetime of learning. Global Infocloud believes in implementing our knowledge, hard work and talent to guide you on your success path.
We are an upcoming results driven specialist IT Organisation with extensive sector knowledge and experience in Staffing, Recruitment and Project Solutions. We have a team of professionals with vast years of experience in Recruitment / Staffing and Project Solutions across various verticals.
We understand the real need of our clients and provide/ execute solutions that provide value proposition to our clients in Terms of Commitment / Cost / Quality / Time / Risk. We provide Innovative but Real Time Solutions to the Clients mixed up with our Technological Expertise & Industry Knowledge which ensures a Win-Win Situation for our Clients.
With a highly qualified /skilled management and leadership team, we provide innovative and effective Solutioning to meet our client’s needs. We cherish building our business through Human Values, Ethics, and Commitment and on time deliverables. The Core of our Business Practise is based on our Moto “We Value Relationships” & as such our Work Ethics & Practises are based on Relationships & not on a Give & Take Policy.
We Value our Relationships with all & work with everyone based on the same principles. We value the Relationships of our Clients / Vendors / Employees / Job Seekers & hence our main area of focus is Our Commitment of On Time Delivery. We ensure On Time & Effective Delivery so as to provide the Best Solutions & Services in the Industry.
Driven by our Passion for Solutions
We are an IT services company with passion and single-minded focus on providing efficient and robust IT solutions for our clients and yes we got a world-class team of solution architects and engineers to do exactly just that.
Website, software, cloud and mobile application design & development comp...Fraction Tech PVT LTD
Fraction Tech is an India based fast growing offshore website, software, mobile, cloud-based application design, and development company in India.
We believe to deliver best services at the affordable price as per global information technology market standards up-to clients’ satisfaction.
Fraction Tech provides affordable and unique UI/UX web, software, cloud and mobile solutions provider in India. Making wonderful pixels for web, software, cloud and mobile services across the globe.
Fraction Tech is an India based fast growing offshore website, software, mobile, cloud-based application design, and development company in India.
We believe to deliver best services at the affordable price as per global information technology market standards up-to clients’ satisfaction.
Fraction Tech provides affordable and unique UI/UX web, software, cloud and mobile solutions provider in India. Making wonderful pixels for web, software, cloud and mobile services across the globe.
As a software consulting and technology consulting company, we offer a broad range of services at highest quality. Our promise is to deliver what you want, how you want and when you want! Our developers are constantly working on innovative technologies to best capture your ideas into your products.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Automate Your Team Out of (Boring) Jobs with SaaS OperationsBetterCloud
Drafting a detailed business case is an effective way to get the approval and support of senior management to implement new initiatives and purchase new software. Join this session with Karel vanBeekom, IT manager at Justworks, for a first-hand account about the benefits of SaaS Operations tools and how to write a business proposal that will justify a purchase to higher-ups from an experienced IT leader.
SaaSOps isn’t just a set of technologies—it’s a movement! In his opening keynote, BetterCloud CEO David Politis will discuss how SaaSOps is changing IT’s role, the new challenges it solves, and how it unlocks the promise of SaaS. A panel of modern-day CIOs - Paul Chapman (Box), Uy Ut (Accel), and Eric Tan (Coupa) - moderated by Harry Moseley, CIO of Zoom, will discuss their SaaSOps journeys and share their best advice for you—the CIOs of tomorrow.
IT is faced with more and more security vulnerabilities that they do not even know about, thanks to the influx of SaaS apps in the workplace. Learn how to combat these vulnerabilities to create a secured SaaS environment.
BetterCloud Whitepaper: Offboarding Inefficiencies and Security ThreatsBetterCloud
With the increase of SaaS apps in the workplace, it can take hours to just offboard one employee. Its time to tackle this issue, and offboard fast, and securely.
The 10 Commandments of the SaaS-Powered WorkplaceBetterCloud
There are no rules engraved in stone for how to run modern day IT. But what if there were? What would they say? In this presentation, BetterCloud explores 10 foundational principles (plus a bonus one for good measure) that every IT professional should follow to find success in the age of the SaaS-Powered Workplace.
Due to technological advancements, the role of IT is in constant flux. The 10 commandments outlined in this webinar will serve as core tenets for you and your organization, regardless of the technology you use, your role, experience, industry, or any other variable. This presentation will not only define these fundamental rules, but we’ll also provide actionable takeaways for you to implement immediately.
The presentation covers:
- The mindset of the modern day IT professional
- 10 fundamental rules every IT professional must follow
- How to future-proof your IT environment
Watch the video for this presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT1XI9eCViA&t=721s
The 2016 State of Cloud IT Report by BetterCloud
The Cloud Changes Everything
Work as we know it is transforming. Today, all businesses are technology enabled, regardless of size, industry, or location. But merely using technology no longer guarantees you remain competitive. As digital natives flood the global workforce, businesses are met with a decision: resist new norms or provide the latest technology to their employees.
We are in the midst of a technological shift not seen since the launch of Microsoft Office and the invention of the Internet. The world of IT is at a tipping point, and at the center are IT professionals experiencing once-in-a-career shifts in their roles and responsibilities. For years, IT has been mischaracterized as solely an internal support team; if something breaks, IT is there with the fix. In 2016, IT professionals are beginning to offload their routine work to cloud software and service providers, giving them more time to focus on strategic work.
The skills required to be a successful IT professional in the modern, cloud-first workplace are far different than they once were. Cloud IT is coming of age, and it’s going to affect every organization and IT professional in the world, much faster than you think.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
13. ● Over 500 users
● Mixed OS Environment
● High Risk Industry
● Global Presence
○ Irvine, CA
○ Los Angeles
○ Barcelona
○ Berlin
○ Boston
○ Denver
○ New York
○ Phoenix
○ Toronto
Weedmaps
18. Justin McWilliams
software engineer in Google's
corporate engineering department
“The company currently has over 32,000 employees, almost
twice as many as it did in 2008. Because of this rapid growth,
the company's IT staff, which is not growing at the same pace,
has to keep scalability in mind when setting up operations.”
"We have to find other ways to scale. We try to scale
by building [in] automation and self-service, as
opposed to just throwing more people at the problem,"
22. "We have to find other ways to scale. We try to
scale by building [in] automation and self-
service, as opposed to just throwing more people
at the problem,"
24. "Let’s move to the cloud so we don’t have any on-
prem stuff to waste money/people on"
- Some CEO, probably
25. "cloud services can initially be more expensive than
running on-premises data centers. [However, it also
proves that] cloud services can become cost-effective
over time if organizations learn to use and operate
them more efficiently."
26. “While the savings on infrastructure costs over time
may look appealing, organizations should bear in
mind that the overall ROI may be still negative in
the short term due to the hefty investments in
transformation and the long tail of on-premises data
center costs.”
37. 20191994
● W3C was founded
● PHP was first introduced
● CSS was first being concepted
● Hotwired sold the first online ad
● Yahoo and Amazon were founded
38. 20191994
● W3C was founded
● PHP was first introduced
● CSS was first being concepted
● Hotwired sold the first online ad
● Yahoo and Amazon were founded
1984
47. We are skilled, creative, and inclusive technology leaders
on a new team at [Insert Your Company Name Here].
The Corporate Engineering team serves a variety of
enterprise-wide technology functions that make our users
more productive, streamline business operations, support
corporate technology infrastructure, and align our many
distributed technology investments.
48. ● Systems and Services. We provide and support robust and scalable
systems, platforms, and SaaS offerings for our global user base.
● Custom Solutions. We create new tools for our users, so they are
productive and efficient.
● Business Engagement. We liaise effectively across the business and
distributed technology teams to understand and align on technology
needs and directions.
Corporate Engineering leads
three primary functions:
49. To succeed on this team, you’ll need to be experienced,
love technology, understand how business needs can be
addressed through IT, and enjoy proactively building
relationships with colleagues across the business.
You’ll be passionate about being a part of a diverse and
inclusive team and helping them do great things.
50. We are skilled, creative, and inclusive technology leaders on a new team at [Insert Your Company Name Here].
The Corporate Engineering team serves a variety of enterprise-wide technology functions that make our users more
productive, streamline business operations, support corporate technology infrastructure, and align our many
distributed technology investments.
Corporate Engineering leads three primary functions:
● Systems and Services. We provide and support robust and scalable systems, platforms, and SaaS offerings
for our global user base.
● Custom Solutions. We create new tools for our users, so they are productive and efficient.
● Business Engagement. We liaise effectively across the business and distributed technology teams to
understand and align on technology needs and directions.
To succeed on this team, you’ll need to be experienced, love technology, understand how business needs can be
addressed through IT, and enjoy proactively building relationships with colleagues across the business. You’ll be
passionate about being a part of a diverse and inclusive team and helping them do great things.
Corporate Engineering Manifesto
51. We are skilled, creative, and inclusive technology leaders on a new team at [Insert Your Company Name Here].
The Corporate Engineering team serves a variety of enterprise-wide technology functions that make our users more productive,
streamline business operations, support corporate technology infrastructure, and align our many distributed technology
investments.
Corporate Engineering leads three primary functions:
● Systems and Services. We provide and support robust and scalable systems, platforms, and SaaS offerings for our global
user base.
● Custom Solutions. We create new tools for our users, so they are productive and efficient.
● Business Engagement. We liaise effectively across the business and distributed technology teams to understand and align
on technology needs and directions.
To succeed on this team, you’ll need to be experienced, love technology, understand how business needs can be addressed
through IT, and enjoy proactively building relationships with colleagues across the business. You’ll be passionate about being a
part of a diverse and inclusive team and helping them do great things.
CORPORATE ENGINEERING MANIFESTO
55. Problem
● Cyber Security
IT
● Security Policies
● Remove Admin Accounts
● Push MFA
● Corporate AV Policy
● BYOD Restrictions
● Blanket email sent to:
allhands@companyname
Corporate Engineering
● Partner with users to identify risk
● As little disruption as possible
● Ensure users are protected
● Communicate on channels the
team actually relies on
IT vs CORP ENGINEERING
57. Companies that are customer-focused have a culture
dedicated to meeting all of their customers' needs.
They ensure all facets of the business prioritize
customer satisfaction as the primary concern.
Customer-focused companies develop close
relationships with their customer base and are deeply
invested in customer success.
68. 1 - Solve for a specific customer need.
2 - Always look for product improvements.
3 - Make the customer part of the brand.
4 - Be proactive when communicating changes.
5 - Go above and beyond with customer service.
CUSTOMER FOCUS
6 - Build up trust with your customers.
7 - Respond to the changes in your industry.
8 - Crave your customers' feedback.
9 - Invest in your employees' growth.
10 - The customer's experience is key.
69. We are skilled, creative, and inclusive technology leaders on a new team at [Insert Your Company Name Here].
The Corporate Engineering team serves a variety of enterprise-wide technology functions that make our users more
productive, streamline business operations, support corporate technology infrastructure, and align our many distributed
technology investments.
Corporate Engineering leads three primary functions:
● Systems and Services. We provide and support robust and scalable systems, platforms, and SaaS offerings for our
global user base.
● Custom Solutions. We create new tools for our users, so they are productive and efficient.
● Business Engagement. We liaise effectively across the business and distributed technology teams to understand
and align on technology needs and directions.
To succeed on this team, you’ll need to be experienced, love technology, understand how business needs can be addressed
through IT, and enjoy proactively building relationships with colleagues across the business. You’ll be passionate about
being a part of a diverse and inclusive team and helping them do great things.
CORPORATE ENGINEERING MANIFESTO
Hi
Blair Sammons, my entire world revolves around my ladies: I’ve got two beautiful daughters at home aged 4 and 8 weeks, and the world's most perfect wife who is celebrating putting up with me for 10 years this October.
Currently, I am the Lead of Corporate Engineering at Weedmaps, helping some really really great people do some really great things to enable some other great people to do other great things… I have been doing tech stuff for the last 15 years, in fact starting as many IT pros here have I’m sure: at Apple Retail, where I was a Genius! Ha! Amongst several other preppy titles. Since then I’ve had my fingers in account management, engineering, consulting, Managed Services, Break Fix, one-man-show-in-house-IT-guy, selling my own company, and being part of a “larger than just you” team. I hope to share some of my findings and offer some new perspectives to issues I think we all face in this ever-changing and shifting industry.
Weedmaps is the leading technology and software infrastructure provider to the cannabis industry. Our suite of cloud-based software and data solutions include: point of sale, logistics and ordering solutions which all enable customers to scale their businesses while complying with complex regulations applicable really only to the cannabis industry.
As if that wasn’t enough, our platform provides consumers with information regarding cannabis products across both web and mobile platforms, including listing local retailers and brands, facilitating product discovery and allowing consumers to educate themselves on cannabis and its history, uses and legal status.
As if that wasn’t enough, our platform provides consumers with information regarding cannabis products across both web and mobile platforms, including listing local retailers and brands, facilitating product discovery and allowing consumers to educate themselves on cannabis and its history, uses and legal status.
As if that wasn’t enough, our platform provides consumers with information regarding cannabis products across both web and mobile platforms, including listing local retailers and brands, facilitating product discovery and allowing consumers to educate themselves on cannabis and its history, uses and legal status.
As if that wasn’t enough, our platform provides consumers with information regarding cannabis products across both web and mobile platforms, including listing local retailers and brands, facilitating product discovery and allowing consumers to educate themselves on cannabis and its history, uses and legal status.
We try to use our position as the “big kids” in this industry to help drive the conversation around cannabis forward.
Our government relations team works hand in hand with local community leaders to help regulate and legislate,
our outreach teams do amazing work to help spread the word around the globe.
In fact, we just recently launched The Weedmaps Museum of Weed, a 30,000 square foot beautifully designed space that, in a nutshell, is here to tell the whole story of cannabis. If you are in LA before the end of the week, please check it out.
We’re headquartered in Irvine, California, Weedmaps employs more than 500 professionals around the world, with offices in Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, Denver, New York, Phoenix, and Toronto.
And I can confirm, the App and Website both work very very well in San Francisco, I “HIGHLY” recommend giving it a try.
So. What is Corporate Engineering? Real quick, can we get a show of hands if your department or organization is actually named Corporate Engineering? Wow, ok. How about Information Technology
The idea of Corporate Engineering is super new! To understand the shift, let’s take a brief look at some of our brothers and sisters in another department:
I’m sure everyone here remembers, when DevOps wasn’t a thing,
Linux Admins, SysAdmins, System Architect, or maybe Site Reliability Engineer if you were really progressive.
But that’s not really what they do anymore, right?
The term “Devops” 2008/2009 John Allspaw the SVP of technical operations, and Paul Hammond, director of engineering at Flickr/Yahoo did a presentation titled: “10+ Deploys per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr.”
Well, we in IT are having our own renaissance if you will, spurred on I think by the DevOps revolution; Information Technology is morphing into a new entity. The day to day responsibilities of the modern IT Department are vastly different than what they were 10, 15, 20 years ago. How we get our jobs done, the systems we manage and oversee, and the complexity of some things which used to be “simple” are now entire multi billion dollar industries unto themselves. The transition to the cloud, User Access Controls, vertically integrated application stacks, mixed OS environments, remote yet constantly connected workforces, the list goes on...
Like so many other firsts in our industry, one of the very first companies to have a “named” Corporate Engineering Department was Google.
Take this snippet from a 2012 article written by Joan Jackson about Google’s Corporate Engineering department:
In fact, at Weedmaps we just recently made the shift ourselves. I am the first Lead of Corporate Engineering at the company. Previous to our current iteration, we were known as ITOps, Tech Support, or just IT. So what drove this change?
Sound cool? Match other companies? Fancy titles come cash money right?
I mean, at our core, Information Technology and Corporate Engineering are kinda the same thing, right? We make sure the electrons are flowing through the silicone in all the right ways. We close tickets and make sure the stuff enabling the widget creation is working. When the lights stop working, we are the first ones people call. Provision new accounts? Suspend former ones? Ensure the network is up. Don’t forget about backups!
But, very similar to DevOps it’s not just the “what” we do that’s changing, but more so the how. How we interact with users (hell, how we THINK about users), how technology can address organizational problems, and how we as the tech support arm of the company can remove barriers for our users, is what it’s all about.
Speaking of organizational problems
Real quick raise of hands, who here is either in need of replication, need an assistant, or oversee people who feel like they need more help to get their jobs done?
Hah, IT people feel overworked? You don’t say! Let's look at some numbers to validate some of these feelings.
In 2003, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, and ITAA ran a study 27:1
Robert Half Technology 1,400 CIOs. "What is the ratio of internal end-users to technical support employees at your company?" 136:1
"What would be the ideal ratio of internal end-users to technical support employees at your company?" 82:1
Those greater than 1,000 employees were 118:1 versus an ideal of 82:1.
(250-499 employees), 131:1 when in a perfect world it would be 64:1.
Now in 2019, according to a study by Samanage, they found that “the median [User to IT Ratio] was 200:1, with some outliers as high as 800:1”
Robert Half has the last word on ideal ratios here: “An overall employee-to-help desk ratio of about 70:1 for organizations with a single operating system and network is considered suitable. That number drops to 45:1 for enterprise networks using a number of operating systems and no consistent hardware standard.” Anyone here running a single os AND network? Didn’t think so.
Show of hands on Ratios
So, we are presented with a problem here… The ideal ratio keeps getting smaller, while reality keeps getting bigger, meaning we don’t have the manpower to tackle these problems… Let’s read that quote from Justin at Google again:
Huh. Automation? Self Service? Integrating directory services? API Calls? Does this sound like building apps and developing tools to better support our users to anyone else? Or maybe the top buzz words from the landing page of pretty much any SaaS. This doesn’t sound like old school break/fix IT work, this sounds like engineering solutions to problems corporate users experience…
If only we had a term for that…
This lack of personnel resources causes an imbalance which only technology can solve, right? But, none of the tools or systems to offset this ratio imbalance is truly free. (Open source is not free! Don’t say that!) So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
(I know you can’t see this but I have written *insert eye roll here*)
In its 2018 study “How to Develop a Business Case for the Adoption of Public Cloud IaaS” Gartner realized
Oh yay! But wait...
Let’s check this out in action. Gartner migrated 2,500 virtual machines from on-prem data centers to AWS.
In their example, the total cost of ownership shows an initial spike in cloud costs and a steady decline as soon as the team learns how to apply Amazon’s best practices. I am also assuming these admins and engineers were given the bandwidth to shore these services up, training, POCing, etc. The chart also shows how on-prem costs may have a very long tail. How many projects spin sideways? Or you leave the on-prem stuff on until the cloud is fully stood up? Last-minute scope changes?
What Gartner also doesn’t take into account is tertiary needs that drive the overall cost up over time, and as the company’s needs grow. Case and point, we are all here because we use this amazing product called BetterCloud to connect all the various SaaS things we have in the cloud and further automate our infrastructure. That comes at a price, as do all the SaaS apps BetterCloud supports. I’ll wager the majority of us didn’t start our SaaS stacks WITH BetterCloud, or an Unified Directory, or Single Sign on, etc etc etc. It’s part of each one of our overall management strategies, and the business “happily” pays these added costs once the ROI is understood (more on that in a minute).
So now I’ve said a lot of stuff about DevOps and the Cloud being complicated and expensive, and all of us being overworked… That’s all the new latest and greatest “what”. The what of our jobs.
Now we get to talk about the “how”. How Corporate Engineering approaches enabling our users, ensuring that technology equips and creates efficiencies. We don’t set policy, we don’t manage or police our users. Our users are our customers, and we have to be as fanatical in our service to them as our company is to our clients if we want to enact change.
None of us here (or very few of us) actually run our companies or entire departments, right? We have to go up the chain at some point. So let’s talk about some of those people.
We have a scale issue. We have a money issue. At least at Weedmaps, we don’t find we have an issue finding good talent (in my experience). If the issue your team has is finding qualified candidates, there are a plethora of resources out there. That’s a different issue than not having the open headcount to hire someone.
I think we have all heard this before:
And after the little spiel, I just gave, that’s a great question. In fact, Google it, and you will find a treasure trove of blog articles and advice columns on how to change the perspective of the C-Suite.
I think this shift needs to come from within our departments. Before we get into that, however, we need to understand the perspective of the guys and gals at the top calling the shots.
82% of CEO’s are over 50 years old, about 30% of ALL CEO’s are over 60.
82% of CEO’s are over 50 years old, about 30% of ALL CEO’s are over 60.
Let’s have some fun, and rewind time in a hypothetical career. I want to take a CEO and put them into “our” shoes. Leads, Managers, Engineers, Admins, middle of their career. At about 30, most of us were just really hitting our stride, and figuring out our place in the workforce.
Let’s take a 55-year-old CEO today, and pretend to go back to when they were 30. That puts us in 1994, you want to know what happened in 94?
NAFTA, the North American Trade Agreement was signed.
Friends aired for the first time.
The Playstation 1 came out…
Here are some fun techy facts. In 1994, World Wide Web Consortium was founded
Take THAT in for a second, most of the stuff we take for granted nowadays, was in its mere infancy when many of our bosses were in our shoes. Amazon? I mean, where would any of us be without AWS? I would wager more than half of us wouldn’t even be here if we just magic wanded that away. PHP and CSS? Some of the literal building blocks of the web!
Let’s take another jump back, let’s take a 65-year-old CEO today. That puts us in 1984 when this hypothetical CEO was about where lots of us are career-wise, right? When this Gem came out:
The Macintosh. Yes, this beautiful state of the art machine, with its floppy drive, a whopping 512x342 display resolution, and a whole 400 kilobytes of storage could have been yours starting at $2495 in 1984. Oh speaking of that drive, the 3.5-inch floppy was released in 84 in part due to the Macintosh.
April 1984, Bill Gates was on the cover of Time rocking the latest and greatest technology… oooo, rough, Looks like Apple innovated a litttttle bit faster again there Bill…
and the first desktop laser printer was first introduced in May 1984. It was called the HP LaserJet. It looked like this. It was the first of its kind and could print a whole 8 pages per minute at 300dpi. It cost $3,500. A modern laserjet does about 10 times the amount of pages, at 4 times the resolution for less than half the price.
Do you know what didn’t exist in 1994 or 1984?
The Cloud. There wasn’t a vape to be seen anywhere. (Point of order, this isn’t a picture of me, but it was too good to not pass up on unsplash…)
I don’t say any of this to imply that your CEO has the same knowledge about computers as your parents, but I’m also not NOT saying that.
Yea, it’s funny, but we as Corporate Engineering need to realize, know, and address things exactly like this! Our bosses, the people they surround themselves with, and others calling the shots didn’t grow up with the foundational tools we take for granted. This shaped their fundamental outlook on almost everything we do. And it’s our job to know this, address this, and plan for it! Because when you take a step back, that CEO is your VIP Customer. You had better know everything about your user base, your core demographic, what they like, how they think, how they best work, the tools they need to succeed, communication styles, all of it!
Because spoiler alert everyone, the more successful the CEO is THE MORE SUCCESSFUL YOU ARE!
That goes across the entire gamut. Karen in Accounting. Kyle in the warehouse. That one person who always microwaves tuna fish at like 10:30 am. The guy who wiggles his leg in EVERY MEETING making the entire room shake a little. All of them.
Netflix, anyone here from Netflix? Man, those guys and gals get it. They are doing some really cool stuff over there. Recently they just posted a new Director role. Any stabs at the department name?
They call it out in the posting as a brand new team! I think they are hitting the nail on the head when it comes to defining Corporate Engineering.
I really wish I could take credit… But in all fairness, I took their job posting and removed the “Director” parts, and instead made it a type of Corporate Engineering manifesto, let's read it
Man, I really really really wish I could take credit for that. Do you hear that shift in tone?
Yes, our tools are radically different than they were for our predecessors. Yes, the leaders making all the important decisions for your company may never fully understand what Terraforming is or understand the difference between SMB1 and SMB3, or why SAML is a requirement for any additional SaaS apps.
But in all seriousness, it’s my hope that this way of thinking infects other IT teams, and we slowly start to see the death of the “Tech Support” stereotypes as we introduce a completely new way of caring for our customers through technology.
This shift is obviously happening in the tech industry, but I can easily see this extending beyond just us in Silicon Valley/Beach/Prairie, and into the “real world”. If we can do that, then IT will no longer be a cost center, because we will be driving the conversation forward in ways no one would have expected otherwise.
So how can we do that? What are some practical steps to accomplish the transition? Well, I have a few.
So we can’t change our industry’s perception of us, till we change our company’s the people around us. We can’t do that until we change how our department interacts and perceives our users. That starts with those of us in this room. We’ve got leaders in here, and we’ve got doers. It’s going to take the buy-in, and adoption of this style of thinking by everyone to get it right.
But, that can only start with you.
If we want to be leading the charge in the business, and making sure that the day to day technical stuff is at the forefront of people's minds, we need to provide both business and relational value.
Let me explain via comparison
On this side we have IT, on the other, we have Corporate Engineering. We are presented with a problem, let’s say “Cyber Security” a bit vague, so define it for your role, but how would typical IT respond? Corporate Engineering?
You feel that right? When our focus is on, as Netflix so eloquently said: “proactively building relationships with colleagues across the business” the way we approach a problem is completely different. Instead of “how can I fix this thing as quickly and cheaply as possible,'' it's “how can I focus on my customers and ensure they are equipped for success.” Now, the end results in many many situations will be the same! There are only so many ways to protect a system, but the WAY in which we approach it, the HOW is different, and completely changes the game! If we take our focus and ensure our customers are cared for, the rest will fall in place!
Here’s a buzzword anyone here who has worked in sales has heard before: Customer Focus.
According to Hubspot here is what Customer Focus means:
Woah, listen to that! It sounds almost verbatim to what we defined Corporate Engineering’s focus should be in the manifesto.
Hubspot knows a thing or two about Customer Focus. Not only do they lead by example and have one of the best Customer Oriented mindsets out there, but their whole existence is also about enabling other companies to make more money, by guess what: Customer Focus. Literally, their whole platform is built on it. So it would make sense to listen to what they have to say when it comes to building a customer-focused team. Let’s go down the list:
In our world, it’s very easy to see a technology problem as just that. Like in my example, we see the problem as Cyber Security, and the Social Engineering/People aspect of it is just one side of it. Instead, we shift the focus to how the problem affects our customers, we will naturally shift how we deploy tools, what systems we choose, etc.
How easy is it to choose a system or product you know and love, or is easier to manage, or was cheaper because fill in the blank reason, only to hear that “the entire accounting team hates that Gmail looks different than Outlook.” We should be the ones forcing the tools to do what our customers need. Do we need to create something? Modify an existing thing? Go find a tool to accomplish some customer goals? Whatever it is, that is on us to ensure we are deploying the perfect (or as close to perfect) solutions as we can!
Anyone here done some sort of company-wide initiative or project? I’m thinking stricter password policies, email retention, switching from HipChat to Slack, or something along those lines? How much easier was it for those that had it, or would it have been if you had people throughout the company “on your side”. By truly partnering across the business, we’ll be able to rely on our teammates to buy into, and actually, help facilitate transitions.
This seems like a no brainer, but this is CONSTANTLY a pain point in almost every single tech department I’ve ever been a part of. People, we SUCK at talking. The IT stereotype is a very real thing, we all have seen Fallon’s Move bit. Almost every Indian person I know is their friend groups default IT or Health-related texter. You never know, it’s either Software or Brains…
Again, we need to adapt to fit our customers. Is email the way they communicate? Slack? In-person workshops? Remote training? Webinars? Talk to their leaders and have them discuss? We should be constantly striving to reach out in whatever way best works for THEM, and we should be doing that constantly.
Hubspot has got it right again. We should constantly be striving for that “aha” moment, when we hit the go button and the system works and everyone feels their lives improve. THOSE are the moments we are going for.
We can’t expect buy-in, and partnerships across the company if we don’t build trust. This looks a bit different for each company, but something as small as going to lunch with other departments builds relational trust, having Corporate Engineering throw events. You build professional trust by executing projects well, resolving problems quickly, and (shockingly) focusing on the customer!
If we don’t do this as Corporate Engineering, our businesses have larger problems… I don’t need to tell anyone in here how important it is to constantly patch your servers, or keep up to date on the latest spear-phishing attempts. We get that part of it, but we HAVE to couple staying abreast of the goings-on, with our customers! Responding is one thing, partnering across the business to ensure everyone understands is something completely different!
There’s no way anyone can tell me “oh but our company loves IT because so and so said so, or this project went off without a hitch”. That’s subjective and anecdotal data. Any Data Science peeps in here are dying on the inside. You have to go out, garner feedback from multiple sources, and then look at it and action off of it!
We can’t best serve our users if we don’t know anything about them! NPS surveys are a GREAT way to get actionable and objective feedback. I like to send these out once a quarter to my team, and a few times a year to the company at large. I also try to send out some sort of feedback request after a project wraps up. I can’t get better if I don’t know what people think.
Again, a lot of the doers, and former doers in here get this. So this one is targeted at us, leaders. Tech moves fast, certs update constantly and need renewals every other week. We get it. This should absolutely be a focus of EVERY Corporate Engineering department. Going to relevant conferences, certifications, and training should be a standard operating expense if we expect this level of excellence from our people!
But, I am sure most of us have bosses or finance departments that would lose their minds if we did everything we wanted to right out of the gate. “I see here Phil a PO request for sending the entire team to Altitude 2020? I am a bit confused… The reason you have listed is just ‘The Beard’...”
Getting more resources is precluded by “standard IT operating procedures”, but as we shift into a more Corporate Engineering mindset, create efficiencies, and make lives easier, it will be easy to prove ROI, and open up funding for these sorts of things. Sadly a bit chicken and egg in most cases.
I’ve been saying it from the beginning. We HAVE to HYPER FOCUS on our customer’s experience, not the technology we work with. What enables our users to do more? How can we help drive the cost down? Is there anything we can do to speed this system up? I noticed that this thing is a pain point, let’s solve it with this tool. These people are complaining about that other thing, can we do this to solve for that.
If our teams ensured the customer experience was amazing first, the rest of these pieces will come naturally, the team would become more respected and trusted, fear would go down, efficiency goes up, and in a perfect world, we get more money to do more of what we are doing.
I tried to write a great wrap up for this with some sort of inspirational quote or something, but I just can’t get this manifesto thing out of my head, so let us just look at it one more time:
Man, I can’t really think of a better way to end than that…
I don’t know about the rest of you, but this fires me up! Think of the change we can enact within our organizations, by simply shifting the way we think! We’ll get more buy in on projects and solutions because our teams will know we are inherently looking out for them, they’ll know this because we communicated it well, and have built in a history of behaving in a way with their best interests in mind. Taking a Customer Success approach will also provide new ways for us to grow, enact change, and try new solutions to new problems. We as IT wins, the other teams win, and the org wins.
Besides, Corporate Engineering. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
I really appreciate everyone listening to me ramble, please feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn, not sure if you can tell, but I am pretty passionate about this stuff, and would love to talk shop with everyone. And now I am going to open it up to any questions anyone may have.