The Bridgecast with Scott Kinka
The world underwent a massive evolution because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It halted the entire market, and fundamentally how and where we do business. While we found new ways to work and leverage technology that have become essential to how we work, the transformation is ongoing. That’s where The Bridge with Scott Kinka comes in. Each episode you’ll hear the stories of the tech leaders driving this change so you’re ready for what’s still to come and get the insights you need to lead that evolution in the boardroom and beyond. Presented by Bridgepointe Technologies, this podcast...
S3 E74 · Tue, April 15, 2025
Building a Smarter AI Enterprise Strategy: Live from NJ SIM
In this special live episode of The Bridgecast recorded at the NJ SIM (Society for Information Management) event, Scott Kinka moderates a panel of thought leaders to unpack enterprise-level AI adoption and challenges. The panel highlights real-world use cases in healthcare, insurance, and contact centers where AI is driving measurable efficiency, cost savings, and improved customer experience. The panel featured: · Gary Sorrentino, Global CIO of Zoom · Yalim Eristiren, Managing Director at SESTEK North America · Jim Marron, AI Sales Director at Talkdesk Topics discussed in this episode: · The hype vs. reality of AI trends, including generative AI, agentic AI, and predictive AI. · Significant concerns around use case readiness, data quality and AI governance. · The confusion around deploying AI before understanding the problem it should solve. · How many businesses are missing the foundation for meaningful ROI? The growing need for trusted advisors, internal alignment with line-of-business leaders, AI literacy, and microlearning to upskill teams. About Gary Sorrentino Gary Sorrentino serves as Zoom’s Global CIO, after spending over two years as our Global Deputy CIO. A former Managing Director for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, Gary was the Global Head of Client Cyber Awareness and Education. For over 12 years, Gary was the Chief Technology Officer for J.P. Morgan AWM’s global technology infrastructure initiatives, where he managed its Data Privacy program and was responsible for Infrastructure, Application and End User Technology Production Support. In 2014, he assumed a new role as the lead for their Cybersecurity efforts and developed a firm wide “Protect the Client” Cyber program designed to raise cybersecurity awareness among employees and clients. With almost 40 years of experience in Information Technology, Gary has served in various other IT leadership positions in firms across the financial services industry. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 2005, Gary was Head of Global Infrastructure and Head of Technology Efficiencies at Citi Private Bank, where he was responsible for Global Infrastructure Support and strategic technology initiatives. Other roles he has held include Global Technology CFO at Credit Suisse and North America IT Controller at UBS. Contact Gary LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/garysorrentino/ LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoom/ Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/zoom/ Insta. <a hr
S3 E73 · Wed, April 02, 2025
Enterprise Network Infrastructure: What Every IT Leader Should Know
What if networking were as simple and seamless as electricity? Scott Kinka sits down with Meter CEO and co-founder Anil Varanasi to talk about how Meter is revolutionizing connectivity—offering end-to-end networking with custom-built hardware, software, and simple pricing by square footage. They dive into Anil’s startup journey, their bold partnership with Microsoft, and how AI, leadership, and customer obsession are shaping the future of infrastructure. Meter provides internet infrastructure for businesses. Headquartered in San Francisco, it was founded in 2015 to build enterprise-grade networks that are faster, more accessible, and more secure. Its full-stack approach combines hardware, software, and operations so that any company can seamlessly run on a reliable and modern network. Meter believes the internet is a fundamental utility that businesses should be able to turn on as easily as water and electricity. Topics discussed in this episode ● Anil’s entrepreneurial journey, including early startup challenges and self-funding before raising capital. ● The problems with networking and what Meter does differently. ● Meter’s unique pricing and utility-based model. ● The partnership with Microsoft. ● Short and long-term perspectives on AI and the future. About Anil Varanasi Anil Varanasi is the CEO of Meter, a company that provides internet infrastructure for businesses. He co-founded the company with his brother, Sunil, in 2015. Meter’s full-stack approach combines hardware, software, and operations to provide enterprise-grade networks that are faster, more accessible, and more secure to customers across industries including Brex, Higher Ground Education, Stord, and Tishman Speyer. Anil is also a member of the board of The Roots of Progress, a nonprofit dedicated to establishing a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century. He graduated from George Mason University with degrees in both economics and computer networking. Contact Anil Web. http://www.meter.com LinkedIn (Business). https://www.linkedin.com/company/meter-com/ LinkedIn (Personal). https://www.linkedin.com/in/anilcv/ Twitter. https://x.com/meter
Tue, March 18, 2025
Giving Back Through Tech: The Mission of Tech4Change
In this episode of the Bridgecast, host Scott Kinka sits down with Jasmina Mueller and Brad Dupree to discuss the charitable organization Tech4Change. This organization brings together technology leaders to raise funds for various grassroots charities. During their discussion, they explore the mission behind Tech4Change and the fundraising strategies used, sharing impactful stories from their events. The conversation emphasizes the importance of community engagement and the potential for technology professionals to make a difference through charitable work. Tech4Change is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization composed of technology suppliers and channel partners who dedicate time and resources to aid grassroots charities across the U.S. Since its inception in 2014, Tech4Change has raised more than $1.25 million for local grassroots charities that are often overlooked and underfunded. Through event-based fundraising, Tech4Change provides game-changing donations that go directly to the cause rather than administrative costs. Topics discussed in this episode: · <span lang="EN-GB" style= "font-size: 11.0pt; line-h
Tue, March 04, 2025
The Future of Communication with Dialpad’s Mike Kane
Can AI make business communication smarter and sales more human? Scott Kinka and Mike Kane from Dialpad break down the future of AI-driven conversations, tech partnerships, and the power of emotional intelligence in sales. They cover Dialpad’s AI-driven growth, the role of emotional intelligence in sales, and how AI is reshaping customer interactions, security, and global tech partnerships. Tune in for insights on leveraging AI for smarter, more effective communication. D ialpad is the leading AI-Powered Customer Intelligence Platform that completely transforms how the world works with one beautiful workspace that seamlessly combines the most advanced AI Contact Center, AI Sales, AI Voice, and Ai Meetings with AI Messaging. Over 30,000 innovative brands and millions of people use Dialpad to unlock productivity, collaboration, and customer satisfaction with real-time Ai insights. <span lang="EN-GB" style= "font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 116%; font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; mso-bidi-font-family: Montserrat; color: black; mso-the
Tue, February 18, 2025
2024 Year End Recap - Part Two
Sometimes, we think that new tech can solve old problems. For instance, can AI help employees be better at processes that don't exist? This is just one of the questions we tackle on this episode of The Bridgecast. In this conclusion to The Bridgecast’s 2024 Year-End series, Scott and Gene discuss key industry trends, reflections on the past year, and predictions for the future. The conversation highlights AI adoption challenges, the importance of human oversight in AI-driven processes, and the evolving nature of IT strategy. Topics discussed in this episode: • How IT budgets are increasing, but organizations must focus on efficiency in non-investment areas to balance spending. Human oversight is critical in AI processes to guide decision-making and ensure ethical and accurate outcomes. Why imagination and creativity remain uniquely human qualities. How demonstrating ROI in small, measurable AI projects can build executive confidence. Why leadership involves humility and recognizing the contributions of all team members to success. About Scott Kinka This is a SPECIAL EDITION of the Bridgecast with Scott Kinka. Over the last 12 months and 25 episodes, Scott has gotten the opportunity to ask some of the best minds in technology a plethora of questions, including “what is your favorite app” and “what book is on your nightstand?”. In addition, he’s gotten some shameless predictions from all of these interviews. Well, on this episode, we get to ask the same questions of Scott. Producer Gene Volpe asks Scott all of the tough questions and has him look back on his favorite moments from our episodes so far. This one was an ode to 2024 while looking forward to 2025. We hope that you enjoy this interesting look into the Chief Strategy Officer of Bridgepointe Technologies and tech evangelist, Scott Kinka. Contact Scott Web. https://www.thebridgecast.net/ LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottkinka/
Mon, February 10, 2025
2024 Year End Recap - Part One
According to Sun Tzu, energy without strategy is chaos. This sentiment has never been more appropriate today, particularly concerning IT strategy and discussions around AI. In this year-end episode of The Bridgecast, Scott reflects on a monumental year for Bridgepointe Technologies and the broader IT industry. The conversation explores key themes that dominated the year, including AI governance and its impact on business strategy, the evolving role of IT leaders, and lessons from C-suite executives featured on the podcast. Topics discussed in this episode: · Why AI governance and regulation are essential to prevent PR disasters. · How IT leaders must anticipate o
Mon, January 20, 2025
ESPN’s CX Transformation: Using AI to Enhance Fan Support with Doug Kramon
Sports are a profoundly human experience—emotional, visceral, and passionately followed. While AI won’t replace athletes anytime soon, it’s increasingly shaping how fans engage with their favorite teams. In this episode of The Bridgecast, Scott Kinka sits down with Doug Kramon, Head of Customer Care and Fan Support at ESPN, to explore the evolving role of AI in sports customer experience. They discuss how generative AI plays a role in CX transformation and fan support, the power of emotional connections in customer care, and the challenges of balancing automation with human-centric service. Doug also shares insights on leadership, the impact of big data on AI-driven insights, and the importance of curiosity and storytelling in professional growth. Tune in for a fascinating look at the intersection of sports, technology, and fan engagement. ESPN is the leading multiplatform sports entertainment brand that features seven U.S. television networks, the leading sports app, direct-to-consumer ESPN+, leading social and digital platforms, ESPN.com, ESPN Audio, endeavors on every continent worldwide, and more. Topics covered in this episode: • Why understanding different fan needs is crucial for effective support. • How generative AI can support CX transformation but not replace human interaction. • Why the evolution of customer experience is driven by technology. • How AI can handle routine tasks, freeing humans from complex interactions. • Why building relationships with partners is key to success
Tue, January 07, 2025
Refining Your 2025 AI Strategy with RapidScale’s Duane Barnes
A new year often means resolutions and plans for your business. And for 2025, one of those plans is likely focused on literally and figuratively getting your arms around your AI strategy. Making effective use of AI in 2025 means rewinding one whole hype cycle to the early 2020s to big data. That's the last big story we were all talking about. Organization, accuracy, availability, and, of course, security of your data are the essential building blocks for you to build a language model that is serviceable and accurate for your business. It's the core of your AI strategy. In this episode of The Bridge, Scott interviews Duane Barnes, president of RapidScale. RapidScale is owned by Cox (yes, that Cox), and we understand why Duane believes that nine out of every ten of you are not prepared for AI — but you can be! It won't take a massive budget, nor will it be a multi-year project, but it will take understanding where you are. During the conversation, they explore RapidScale’s mission to simplify IT for businesses, the current state of AI in the hype cycle, and the challenges companies face in leveraging AI effectively. Duane shares insights on customer engagement, real-world AI applications, and the importance of having a clear strategy when implementing AI tools like Co-Pilot. They also delve into the critical aspects of AI governance, the importance of data management and having quality data, strategic approaches to AI adoption, and with the risks associated with AI usage in businesses, emphasizing the need for proper governance policies and the potential consequences of data leaks. <p class="MsoNormal" style="mar
Wed, December 11, 2024
The Bridgecast Live: Reimagining the Customer and Employee Relationship - Part Two
How is AI transforming IT leadership? AI solves no problems by itself. But with the proper workflows and systems around it, it drives real-world ROI. Rather than replacing humans, it can enable the next level of cross-functional collaboration. The panel explored AI's role in transforming business processes and IT leadership in part two of the 2024 Bridgepoint Tech Summit episode of The Bridgecast. The discussion focuses on AI’s potential to enhance human performance, streamline workflows, and enable cross-functional collaboration within organizations. The panel emphasizes that effective AI adoption requires alignment across stakeholders and robust governance policies to mitigate risks like bias and inaccuracy. Our discussion panel included: · Nick Slater, Chief Revenue Officer, <span style= "font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 116%; font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-
Tue, December 03, 2024
The Bridgecast Live: Reimagining the Customer and Employee Relationship (Part One)
Is your business experiencing AI fatigue? Right now, AI is all anyone is talking about…but too many conversations are about tech and innovation when they should be about getting measurable outcomes. In this live episode of The Bridgecast, recorded at the Bridgepointe Tech Summit 2024, we sat down with thought leaders from Dialpad, Observe AI, Talkdesk, and Vonage so they could share some timely insights on how companies are cutting through the AI hype and making it work. We talk about how AI is transforming customer and employee experiences with some real-life success stories, practical applications and ROI-driven use cases. Plus, this conversation dives into the AI hype cycle and the challenges of AI fatigue. Topics discussed in this episode: • Why AI adoption must be tied to clear ROI metrics to overcome fatigue and skepticism. • Customer experience (CX) is often the entry point for businesses starting their AI journey. • Why companies should prioritize readiness assessments to identify meaningful use cases for AI. • How employee experience enhancements, such as automating routine tasks, provide significant ROI. • Why effective AI implementation requires aligning tools across platforms like Salesforce. • Why is generative AI’s role in transcription, data insights, and automation pivotal for efficiency? • How storytelling around ROI is essential to gaining buy-in from stakeholders. 2023 Live at Tech Summit's Episode Links: 2023 Tech Summit Live Episode Part I https://bridgepointetechnologies.com/artificial-intelligence-debate/ 2023 Tech Summit Live Episode Part 2 https://bridgepointetechnologies.com/questions-about-artificial-intelligence/ <p class="MsoNormal
Tue, October 29, 2024
Building Your Personal Brand in the Era of Virtual Meetings with Zoom’s Patrick Kelley
There are five generations in the workforce today, and every one speaks, communicates, and collaborates differently. You have to meet them all where they are—generally in their homes behind screens. While your personal brand used to be based on how you interacted with people in the real world, now, what happens on screen is your brand, and you need to invest in it. In this episode of The Bridgecast, Scott interviews Patrick Kelley, Distinguished Architect at Zoom, who shares insights on optimizing online meetings and video conferencing. Patrick — also known as The Tattooed Nerd — discusses his background in technology, his role at Zoom, and the importance of audio and video quality in virtual communication. He’s an expert on the tools you likely use daily to communicate with peers, customers, and prospects. He provides practical tips for improving meeting etiquette, lighting, and background setup, emphasizing the need for both employees and employers to invest in quality equipment. Zoom helps people stay connected so they can get more done together. They set out on a mission to make video communications frictionless and secure by building the world’s best video product for the enterprise, but they didn’t stop there. With products like AI Companion, Team Chat, Contact Center, Phone, Events, Rooms, Webinar, Contact Center, and more, they bring innovation to a wide variety of customers, from the conference room to the classroom, from doctor’s offices to financial institutions to government agencies, from global brands to small businesses. Topics discussed in this episode: <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style= "
Wed, October 09, 2024
Mentorship Matters: Lessons from a CTO with Performive’s Ryan DiRocco
Have you ever noticed that being an entrepreneur and an IT leader require nearly the same skills? On this episode of the Bridgecast, Scott sits down with Ryan DiRocco, CTO of Performive . We explore that intersection and how experience and mentorship play critical roles in both realms. We discuss why mentorship is essential—not just when you lack specific skills but even when you think you’ve covered them. It's a lot like using an MSP to deliver a product. Sure, you could go it alone, but sometimes it's worth paying more to avoid costly mistakes. Like an MSP, mentorship can save you time, money, and headaches. Ryan discusses his extensive background in technology, the evolution of Performive, and the importance of customer service in tech solutions. He also shares insights on navigating the mid-market landscape, the role of VMware, and the significance of leveraging hyper scalers and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) for business efficiency. The conversation also touches on lessons learned from past experiences and predictions for the future of IT infrastructure. Performive <span style= "font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 116%; font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; ms
Wed, September 25, 2024
From HQ to Cloud: The New Network Core with 11:11 Systems’ Anthony Lobretto
IT leaders, remember when your headquarters was the heart of your business network? You connected everything to it—offices, remote workers through VPNs, and kept security at the HQ. Then, the cloud arrived, and COVID changed everything. Suddenly, we stopped focusing on connectivity and locations. Now, the data center and cloud are the new network core, and while speeds and performance still matter, they're not the main topic anymore. In this episode of The Bridgecast, Scott interviews Anthony Lobretto, Senior Vice President of Connectivity Services, at 11:11 Systems . We discuss Anthony’s background, his journey to 11:11, and the company’s focus on bridging cloud connectivity and security. Also, we discussed how 11:11 provides a single pane of glass for managing connectivity, security, and cloud services, making it easier for customers to navigate and optimize their infrastructure. 11:11 Systems is a managed infrastructure solutions provider that holistically addresses the challenges of next-generation managed cloud, connectivity and security requirements. 11:11 combines the teams and technology behind market-leading, analyst-vetted compan
Mon, September 09, 2024
Cost Optimization for Cloud Hyperscalers with ProsperOps’ Chris Cochran
When optimizing your cloud hyperscaler expenses, there’s a massive difference between workload optimization and rate optimization. We put tons of effort into the performance of our workloads to control usage, but far less attention is paid to how much we pay for that usage. And we’re not talking about the size we buy — we’re talking about the minor incremental changes that can be accomplished algorithmically throughout the day to ensure that you are paying less for the usage that your workload generates. In this episode of The Bridgecast, Scott interviews Chris Cochran, co-founder and CEO of ProsperOps. the tech scene in Austin, the importance of automation in cloud optimization, and the value of rate optimization in reducing cloud costs. Chris shares his experience starting the company and offers advice for entrepreneurs. We also talk about AI's potential and future in cloud optimization. ProsperOps ’ is a hands-free AWS cost optimization platform offering customers a solution to automatically reduce their AWS cloud costs with zero ongoing effort. Their mission is to remove complexity and deliver savings outcomes so every business can prosper in the cloud. Topics covered in this episode on information security and risk management: How automation and algorithms can solve cloud optimization problems that humans can’t, leading to cost savings and improved performance. Why rate optimization, focusing on reducing cloud costs, is an important aspect of cloud optimization. Why starting a company requires finding the right partners and having a clear vision. How the potential of AI in solving specific problems is still being explored. Why In a hypothetical world-ending scenario, X would be the app of choice for entertainment and information. ABOUT CHRIS COCHRAN Chris co-founded ProsperOps with two former colleagues from Rackspace and serves as CEO. Our FinOps automation platform delivers a simple, fully autonomous cost optimization service for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud. Previously, Chris served as CEO of Chargify, a recurring billing and subscription management SaaS. In eighteen months, the company doubled revenue, headcount, and changed every element of strategy, culture, product, and business model to reposition into the top tier of providers. Prior to Chargify, Chris was a Senior Vice President & General Manager at Rackspace during its growth from $500 million to $2 billion in revenue. During his tenure, Chris co-founded and/or led multiple business units (Fanatical Support for AWS, Enterprise, Managed Colocation, DataStores, Private Cloud) and corporate strategy during the shift to managed cloud. Prior to Rackspace, Chris held strategy and operations roles with Electronic Data Systems and was a management consultant with Ernst & Youn
Mon, August 12, 2024
Fortifying the Digital Frontier: Information Security and Risk Management with Melanie Thomas
Information security and risk management are kind of like the chicken or the egg — what comes first? In this episode of The Bridgecast, Scott interviews Melanie Thomas, the Vice President of Cybersecurity at Bridgepointe. They discuss Melanie’s background, her transition to Bridgepointe, and her belief that change doesn’t need to be scary, but in light of recent events, it IS necessary. We also discussed the recent CrowdStrike outage how it may affect how we think about our internal IT operations. Melanie shares her insights on the importance of policy and governance in cybersecurity, the need for more centralized control of devices, and the potential consolidation of vendors in the industry. They also touch on the concept of Hope Punk and its relevance in approaching cybersecurity challenges with optimism and resilience. Topics discussed in this episode on information security and risk management: <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style= "mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: -
Tue, August 06, 2024
Reaction to Inaction with Jack Jackson
Every business book in the past 20 years has in some way talked about being customer-obsessed. And of course, to do that, you need to empower your employees to innovate. Mistakes be damned! However, some recent challenges with software updates to 80 % of the operating systems in the world might say that we may need to pause unbridled innovation. In this episode of The Bridgecast, I interview Jack Jackson, a seasoned tech executive and author of the upcoming book Reaction to Inaction . During our conversation, Jack shares his background in the tech industry and his passion for leadership, emphasizing the importance of inspiring and empowering people to be successful. Our primary focus for the chat was on Jack’s book, which explores how organizations, employees, and customers suffer when people fail to take action and provide insights and strategies for overcoming inaction and driving positive change. The book Reaction to Inaction addresses the issue of organizations and employees. Jack was inspired to write it after witnessing an employee’s frustration in trying to help a customer but being unable to take action due to red tape and bureaucracy. The book proposes a framework for building dynamic and innovative organizations where employees feel empowered and trusted. It emphasizes the importance of putting the customer first and removing barriers to action. <p class="M
Mon, July 22, 2024
Contact Center Integration with Talkdesk’s Rei Kesai
You’ve heard the old adage that everyone in business is in customer service or customer experience. Yet, legacy contact center software has been designed for one primary workflow — the customer service agent. This results in our approach to CX and customer expectations being out of alignment, meaning we need to focus more on contact center integration. On this episode of The Bridgecast, I talk to Rei Kesai, Senior Vice President of Product at Talkdesk. We discuss Rei’s background, his journey in the CX space, and how Talkdesk has evolved into a full-blown CCaaS platform. We also explore the convergence of communications, customer data management, analytics, and automation and how Talkdesk focuses on creating industry-specific workflows and applications. We chat about the challenges of integration, the importance of simplifying the customer experience and the changing expectations of customers. Talkdesk ® is a global cloud contact center leader for enterprises of all sizes. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds help enterprises deliver modern customer service their way. Their trusted, flexible, and innovative contact center platform leverages AI and automation to drive exceptional customer outcomes and improve the bottom line. Topics covered in this episode: ●<span style= "font: 7.0pt 'Times
Tue, July 09, 2024
Enterprise Technology Integration & Essential Advice for IT Leaders with Evolve IP’s Peter Eisengrein
As one of the early innovators in the hosted PBX space nearly twenty years ago, Peter offers countless insights on pre-integrated, self-contained user environments for remote work, collaboration, and innovation. Evolve IP partners with IT professionals to integrate their essential productivity and communication tools into a single, secure cloud-based solution, fine-tuned for the hybrid workforce and delivered as a service. By integrating these disconnected systems and filling in the gaps, they improve both productivity and security, increasing uptime to improve the future of work for everyone. Topics covered in this episode: ● The challenges of enterprise technology integration and why you don’t want to be in the integration business. ● How Desktop as a Service (DaaS) simplifies IT operations and enables remote work and why wider adoption is hindered by various factors. <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat;
Tue, June 25, 2024
Are Data Center Resources Having a Renaissance? With Flexential’s Ryan Mallory
AI is igniting innovation in colocation and data center resources at a pace not seen in decades. But what do you need to know right now? In this episode of The Bridge, host Scott Kinka is joined by guest Ryan Mallory, COO at Flexential, to dive into the seismic shifts AI is causing in data centers. Ryan shares insights on Flexential's rapid expansion, their game-changing FlexAnywhere® platform, and why emotional intelligence is crucial for industry leaders. Tune in to hear about the future of data centers and the exciting developments shaping this critical infrastructure. Topics discussed in this episode include: ● Ryan's background and journey in the tech and data center industry. ● The current renaissance with data center resources, moving beyond traditional power, pipe, and ping models. ● The reinvention of the industry around new workloads. ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-famil
Mon, May 13, 2024
The Transformative Impact of Acquisition with BCM One’s Mike Nowak
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Mike Nowak, BCM One ’s Chief Revenue Officer. We discuss how the Pure IP acquisition has been transformative for BCM One and much more. BCM One is a leading global provider of NextGen Communications and Managed Services to IT leaders and channel resellers. BCM One streamlines the complexity of enterprise voice solutions and managed network services. BCM One prides itself on its long-standing client relationships backed by their mission statement, “To Provide a World-Class Experience with Every Human Interaction.” BCM One’s family of brands include: BCM One, SIP.US, SIPTRUNK, SkySwitch, Flowroute and Pure IP. During our conversation, we discussed why future-proofing communication infrastructure is crucial. We also discussed the market's adoption of Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx, the challenges and opportunities of integrating different communication platforms, and other related topics. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-f
Tue, May 07, 2024
Exploring VMware Alternatives with Bridgepointe’s Saad Saleem
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by one of our Bridgepointe team members, Saad Saleem, Senior Cloud Architect . We’re walking through the overarching impact of recent VMware changes on customers and service providers and exploring some VMware alternatives. Bridgepointe is a tech advisory firm that helps bridge the gap between tech investments and business goals. For two decades, we've helped mid-market and enterprise clients make quicker, more informed tech investments. We'll help you save time by shortening the procurement process while saving money and increasing ROI. We work with 150+ suppliers to simplify the process of planning and procuring the tech solutions you need to meet your tech and business needs. During our conversation, we discussed t he importance of assessing how to deliver business functionality, the potential for transformation in the cloud journey and so much more. Topics covered in thi
Thu, May 02, 2024
Optimizing VMware Cloud Foundations With Rackspace’s Hannah Duce and Kevin Carter
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by two of our partners from Rackspace : Hannah Duce, Director of Strategic Alliances and Kevin Carter, Product Director. We’re discussing the current state of affairs with the VMware evolution, optimizing VMWare cloud foundations, and much more. Rackspace is the multicloud solutions expert. They know what you're up against because they've helped global companies across industries through it—and you can bet they're ready to help. Their team delivers results by listening to their customers’ challenges and building custom cloud services and solutions that support their business to perform better now and in the future. During our conversation, we discussed the challenges and opportunities arising from the changing landscape and how Rackspace navigates through it. They also discussed the role of partnerships and alliances and the decision-making process for customers considering alternative platforms as it all relates to the VMware cloud foundation. Topics covered in this episode: ● </sp
Tue, April 16, 2024
Is It Time for a VMware Breakup? With Enzu’s Dustin Young
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Dustin Young, EVP of Global Sales and Marketing at Enzu . We’re discussing whether it’s time for a VMware breakup and much more. Enzu is built on their TruCloud® Private Cloud Platform. Enzu solutions fuel growth and innovation for small, medium, and large enterprises by delivering expert capabilities in Global Bare Metal, Private Cloud, Migrations off VMware, Networking, Cloud, and Security. Combining decades of unmatched customer focus and passion for excellence, they deliver premium and affordable infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. Enzu also offers other services, including Disaster Recovery, Managed Services, and Cloud Optimization services. During our conversation, we get into what to do if you’re still trying to sort out your VMware problem — whether it’s time for organizations to break their reliance on VMware, what comes next, determining if it’s the UI that you’ve come to know and be comfortable with that and keeps you locked in, other burning questions that may lead you to a VMware breakup. Topics covered in this episode: ●<span s
Tue, April 09, 2024
The Role of Strategy in IT Leadership with Comcast Business’ Chris MacFarland
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Chris MacFarland, CEO and Chairman of Comcast Business . We’re talking about the importance of strategy in IT leadership, the upcoming advancements in AI and AGI and more. As a pioneer in software-defined networking, Masergy is a leading secure cloud networking platform for global businesses. Acquired by Comcast Business in 2021, Masergy leverages artificial intelligence to enable superior application performance, offering SD-WAN, Security, UCaaS, and CCaaS solutions. During our conversation, we get into the recent changes and updates within Comcast Business, the shift from being a cost center to a strategic business, and the future of AI and AGI. Topics covered in this episode: ● The integration of Masergy with Comcast Business. ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montser
Tue, March 26, 2024
The Collaboration Technology Evolution with Graeme Geddes of Zoom
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Graeme Geddes, Chief Sales Officer at Zoom . We’re talking about the collaboration technology evolution, the role of Zoom as a communications platform and so much more. Zoom is an all-in-one collaboration platform that makes connecting easier, more immersive, and more dynamic for people and businesses. Their team chat, phone, meetings, omnichannel contact center, whiteboard, workspace, and AI solutions help hybrid teams collaborate and get more done. During our conversation, we explored the integration of productivity apps with Zoom, the company’s focus on innovation and AI, and how the collaboration technology evolution is playing out today in our post-pandemic world. Topics covered in this episode: ● Graeme’s background and career path. <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; mso-bidi-font-family: Montserr
Tue, March 19, 2024
Cybersecurity Fundamentals with Mark Houpt of DataBank
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Mark Houpt, the Chief Information Security Officer at DataBank. We’re talking about cybersecurity fundamentals—current challenges, the global landscape, why relationships and communication are critical to cybersecurity success, and so much more. DataBank is a leading provider of enterprise-class data center, cloud, and interconnection services, offering customers 100% uptime availability of data, applications, and infrastructure. DataBank’s managed data center services are anchored in world-class facilities. Their customized technology solutions are designed to help customers effectively manage risk, improve their technology performance and allow them to focus on their core business objectives. During our conversation, we got into overall cybersecurity fundamentals, like why transparency and customer service are key values for Mark and Data Bank and how the biggest challenge in cybersecurity is not the technical aspects but the apathy and ignorance towards cybersecurity. And that was just the tip of the iceberg! Topics covered in this episode: ● Mark’s Role as CISO and the CISO Corner podcast. <p class="MsoNormal" style= "margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in; mso-pagination: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;
Tue, March 12, 2024
Driving Better Business Outcomes with Lumen’s Umesh Lakshman
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Umesh Lakshman, Vice President of Solutions Architecture, National Mid-Markets and Channels at Lumen . We’re talking about how we’re moving head-first into a future that is decidedly up the stack and how that drives the expectation of better business outcomes. Lumen connects the world. They digitally connect people, data, and applications – quickly, securely, and effortlessly. Everything they do at Lumen takes advantage of their network strength. From metro connectivity to long-haul data transport to their edge cloud, security, and managed service capabilities, they meet their customers’ needs today and as they build for tomorrow. During our conversation, we discussed Umesh’s background and career trajectory, his role in leading a cultural reboot at Lumen to foster a culture of innovation and an opportunity-focused mindset, the evolution of managed services providers in showcasing value during the pandemic, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: ● An overview of Umesh's podcast, "Breaking Boundaries," which focuses on
Tue, March 05, 2024
The Future of VMware with AJ Kuftic of Expedient
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by AJ Kuftic, Product Manager at Expedient . We’re talking about the future of VMware and so much more. Expedient is a data center and cloud services provider offering infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with local operations in Pittsburgh, PA, Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, Cleveland, OH, Columbus, OH, Denver, CO, Indianapolis, IN, Memphis, TN, Milwaukee, WI, and Phoenix, AZ. Ranked as one of the Top 3 managed services providers worldwide on Channel Futures' MSP 501 list, Expedient’s converged solutions enable clients to focus on strategic business innovation, while the Expedient team handles operation of the information technology needed to support it. Expedient data centers are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as well as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Service Organization Control (SOC) reports are published annually for all locations. During our conversation, we discussed what’s happening with the VMware Broadcom situation and broke down the implications, including the background, impacts on service providers and customers, and the anticipated timeline for adjustment and optimization efforts. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-fam
Tue, February 27, 2024
Using AI at Scale with Adam Weiner of Granite
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Adam Weiner, Vice President of Technology at Granite . We’re talking about using AI at scale and so much more. Granite is one of the premier telecommunications solutions providers for businesses across the United States and Canada. With unparalleled North American coverage, Granite is the leading corporate phone service provider to multi-location companies through our scalable solutions, customized to manage their clients’ local, regional, and national locations. Through long-term commercial wholesale contracts, Granite offers dial-tone, infrastructure solutions, advanced data services, broadband, and security services to their customers at significant savings. During our conversation, we get into why we need to solve little issues so they don’t become big ones, what Granite's Edge Boot device is all about, how the company's Granite 360 platform aims to provide transparency and flexibility for customers, and what using AI to scale really looks like. Topics covered in this episode: ● How G
Tue, February 06, 2024
Customer Experience Optimization with Bridgepointe’s Scott Prater
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Scott Prater, Vice President of Customer Experience Technology at Bridgepointe. We’re discussing customer experience optimization and the ongoing race to meet customer expectations. The Bridgepointe Customer Experience team enables organizations to deliver unrivaled results across every aspect of their CX programs, including technology implementation and business process outsourcing. The team’s deep industry experience gives clients a strategic approach to optimizing business outcomes while delivering best-in-class customer experience. During our conversation, we got into how Scott addressed some of the most challenging customer experience problems at some of the world’s most well-known brands, the importance of customer experience (CX) optimization and why it’s in the news today, the impact of CX on a brand, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: How CX has evolved due to changes in communication channels, including social media. Social media’s role in customer experience (CX) and its historical association with marketing departments. The evolution of social media from brand protection to a channel for customer care. The shift in approach by CX and CRM
Mon, January 22, 2024
The Evolution of IT Cost Management with Eric Russo of Bridgepointe
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Eric Russo, Senior Vice President of Lifecycle Services at Bridgepointe . We’re talking about IT cost management and why it’s become a top priority, second only to cybersecurity. The Bridgepointe Lifecycle Services team advocates for their client's success during every step of the technology lifecycle, from sourcing through implementation and ongoing expense/mobility management to negotiating their renewal. Having completed thousands of client projects resulting in millions of dollars in savings for clients, working with Bridgepointe’s Lifecycle Management Services team helps clients drive greater efficiency while proactively managing their technology costs. During our conversation, we got into how the post-pandemic budget run-up is over, but the demands on it to deploy next-gen tech, like AI, have never been higher. We also parse out why cost management is a more important priority than data analytics, cloud, automation, and AI, and the role procurement experts play in optimizing technology spending. Topics covered in this episode: <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; mso-bidi-fon
Tue, January 16, 2024
The Bridge 2023 Recap
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by our podcast producer, Gene Volpe, for a 2023 recap and discussion about the year that was. During our 2023 recap, we share the cliff notes of the more than 30 episodes we delivered in 2023, a year of unprecedented growth on The Bridge and for Bridgepointe Technologies. We also discuss a few hot topics like AI and security, plans for season three of The Bridge, and some predictions for the coming year. Topics covered in this episode: Memorable guests and episodes from the past year. Hybrid work, bandwidth, customer experience (CX), and AI. The rationalization of networks as businesses adapt to remote and hybrid work arrangements. Scott’s prediction that AI will continue to play a significant role in CX. Changing consumer expectations, with customers expecting seamless digital experiences. The challenges of applying AI in customer interactions. The responsibility of employers in managing remote work arrangements and the evolving nature of work arrangements in response to changing circumstances. The connection between network and security, with a focus on unifying network and security conversations. The impact of AI on security and concerns about “dark AI.” The prediction of chaos surrounding large language models and AI. The integration of
Tue, January 09, 2024
Hybrid Cloud Growth with Brian Thomas of Equinix
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Brian Thomas, Senior Manager, Segment Marketing at Equinix . We’re talking about hybrid cloud growth, repatriation and so much more. Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company™, enabling digital leaders to harness a trusted platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that powers their success. Equinix enables today’s businesses to access all the right places, partners and possibilities they need to accelerate advantage. With Equinix, they can scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences, and multiply their value. During our conversation, we chatted about how Equinix enables digital transformation and the establishment of a distributed digital core, if the AI companies will sell their products differently than their cloud ancestors and work with customers to understand use cases before signing them up, and whether doomed we’re to repeat our cloud history when targeting hybrid cloud growth. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Topics covered in this episode: <span
Tue, December 19, 2023
Exploring the Cybersecurity Landscape with Melanie Thomas of AT&T
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Melanie Thomas, Principal of AT&T Cybersecurity . We’re talking about the evolving cybersecurity landscape and so much more. AT&T Cybersecurity ’s Edge-to-Edge technologies provide phenomenal threat intelligence, collaborative defense, security without the seams, and solutions that fit your business. Our unique, collaborative approach integrates best-of-breed technologies with unrivaled network visibility and actionable threat intelligence from AT&T Alien Labs researchers, Security Operations Center analysts, and machine learning – helping to enable our customers around the globe to anticipate and act on threats to protect their business. During our conversation, we got into the increasing demand for managed cybersec
Tue, December 12, 2023
Productivity AI with Expedient’s Brad Reynolds
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Brad Reynolds, Senior Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Expedient . We’re talking about productivity AI and so much more. Expedient is a data centers and cloud services provider offering infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with local operations in Pittsburgh, PA, Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, Cleveland, OH, Columbus, OH, Denver, CO, Indianapolis, IN, Memphis, TN, Milwaukee, WI, and Phoenix, AZ. Ranked as one of the Top 3 managed services providers worldwide on Channel Futures' MSP 501 list, Expedient’s converged solutions enable clients to focus on strategic business innovation while the Expedient team handles the operation of the information technology needed to support it. During our conversation, we discussed how business leaders get ahead of their competitors and unlock the promise of productivity AI without exposing the company to risk, the current state of AI adoption and the parallels to the early days of the internet, the role of corporate policies in guiding the responsible use of AI technology within organizations and more. Topics covered in this episode: <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; mso-bidi-font-family: Montserrat;" xml
Tue, November 28, 2023
Finding the Right Data Center Resources With Bridgepointe’s Mel Melara
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Bridgepointe ’s own Mel Melara, VP of Sales. We’re talking about securing data center resources and more. Mel joined Bridgepointe in 2019 and brought over 30 years of experience in network and data center infrastructure consulting to the firm. As a sales leader at Masergy, he was part of the executive team that tripled the company’s revenues in five years. Mel also held an executive role at Switch Data Centers and is a subject matter expert on data center trends. During our conversation, we talked about everything related to data center resources — what happens when hyperscalers buy up three years of inventory they're now digesting, the challenges of sourcing data center space, and considerations when deciding where to go. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="
Tue, November 14, 2023
Artificial Intelligence Optimization in the Data Center World With Brian Eichman
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Brian Eichman, Vice President of Business Development at CoreSite . We’re having an in-depth conversation about the changing make up of the data center in light of AI. CoreSite , an American Tower company, provides hybrid IT solutions that empower enterprises, cloud, network and IT service providers to monetize and future-proof their digital business. Their highly interconnected data center campuses offer a native digital supply chain featuring direct cloud onramps to enable our customers to build customized hybrid IT infrastructure and accelerate digital transformation. During our conversation, we discussed the evolution of data center customers, including the rise of hyperscale providers, SaaS companies, and enterprises. We get into how the challenge of bridging the gap between real estate-centric thinking and customer requirements in the data center industry, artificial intelligence optimization in the world of data centers, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; mso-bidi-font-family: Montserrat;"
Tue, November 07, 2023
Is this How the World Will End or How Smarter Business Begins? A Practical Discussion about AI (Part 2)
For this episode of The Bridge, we’re bringing you part two of our live panel discussion from the 2023 Bridgepointe Tech Summit. We answer some of the most pressing questions about artificial intelligence and the pressure leaders currently face to adopt this technology. For this practical discussion on the hype and realities of artificial intelligence, I was joined by: Dan O'Connell, Chief AI and Strategy Officer, Dialpad Karen Bowman, Vice President, Channel/Alliance, Level AI Tushar N Shah, Chief Product Officer, Uniphore Raghu Ravinutala, CEO, Yellow AI During part two of our discussion, we get into how businesses are using AI technology today, where this technology is going in the future, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: The concept of superintelligence and the singularity, with varying opinions on its proximity. The idea that technology is inherently biased due to human input, and AI might help reduce bias by relying on data and algorithms. The emphasis on practical AI applications and real-world outcomes, such as automation and improved productivity. Speculation about the possibility of AI becoming self-aware and the implications of such a development. Concerns regarding the development of autonomous weapons capable of making decisions without human intervention and the need for regulation in AI. Addressing biases and ensuring transparency in AI systems. The potential misuse of AI by bad actors and the challenge of normalizing innovation and regulation. The importance of transparency in data usage and sharing among companies and consumers. The balance between innovation and regulation, with a focus on transparency and accountability. The role of both software and hardware in AI regulation and the responsibility of various stakeholders in the AI ecosystem. The need
Tue, October 31, 2023
Is this How the World Will End or How Smarter Business Begins? A Practical Discussion about AI (Part 1)
For this episode of The Bridge, we’re bringing you part one of our live panel discussion from the 2023 Bridgepointe Tech Summit. For this practical discussion on the hype and realities of the artificial intelligence debate, I was joined by: ❖ Dan O'Connell, Chief AI and Strategy Officer, Dialpad ❖ Karen Bowman, Vice President, Channel/Alliance, Level AI ❖ Tushar N Shah, Chief Product Officer, Uniphore ❖ Raghu Ravinutala, CEO, Yellow AI </p
Sun, October 22, 2023
The Data Center Economy with Digital Realty’s Tony Bishop
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Tony Bishop, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Platform Solutions at Digital Realty . We’re talking about the data center economy and so much more. Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data "meeting place". Digital Realty enables its customers with the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents. During our conversation, we discussed COVID-19 as both an accelerator and a distraction in digital transformation, the concept of capacity as the new data center currency and the scarcity of capacity in the data center market, the data center economy and more. Topics covered in this episode: ● Tony's background, including his Canadian origins and career in Enterprise IT. <p class="MsoNormal" style= "margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.25in; mso-list
Mon, September 25, 2023
Hybrid Workforce Solutions with MetTel’s Zachary Grant
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Zachary Grant, Vice President of Solution Architecture and Engineering at MetTel . We’re talking about hybrid workforce solutions and so much more. MetTel is a leading provider of customized, integrated, and managed communications solutions for enterprise customers. By converging all communications over a proprietary network, MetTel enables enterprise companies to easily deploy and manage technology-driven voice, data, wireless, and cloud solutions nationwide. With the most comprehensive offering, the highest quality customer care and project management, and the ability to completely manage, maintain, and secure your communications needs, their portfolio of customer-centric solutions boosts enterprise productivity, reduces costs, and simplifies operations. During our conversation, we discussed Zachary’s journey with hybrid workforce solutions during the pandemic, service aggregation and the heavy lifting that goes along with it, the new hybrid economy, decommissioning POTS, and other topics. Topics covered in this episode: ●<span style= "font: 7.0pt 'Time
Mon, September 18, 2023
The Tech Revolution with PanTerra’s Artie Chang
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Artie Chang, President and CEO of PanTerra Networks. We’re talking about running blindly into the tech revolution while still serving the needs of the people who aren't maybe so revolutionary. PanTerra is a business-class Unified Cloud Service Provider, seamlessly delivering unified communications, team collaboration, call center, file sync & share, and business analytics through Streams, its secure, all-in-one business communications cloud solution. By offering a fully customizable, unified UCaaS and CPaaS, HIPAA/HITECH secure, multi-service cloud solution, PanTerra can significantly reduce costs, simplify IT administration, increase security, and improve employee productivity. During our conversation, we discussed coexisting with the “big guys,” remaining committed to your own niche innovation, how hybrid work is emerging as a tool in the workforce ecosystem (not just a reaction to the pandemic), and so much more about the tech revolution that shows no signs of stopping. Topics covered in this episode: ● How the communications landscape changed due to the pandemic; collaboration became a central feature. ●<span sty
Mon, September 11, 2023
Information Security Strategy with Ntirety’s Josh Henderson
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Josh Henderson, Chief Technology Officer at Ntirety . We’re talking about information security strategy and so much more. Managing security and compliance is a strategic, economic imperative directly impacting business outcomes. Ntirety is the only company that embeds compliant security throughout their clients’ IT and company culture. With over 25 years of experience and deep security expertise, their 24x7x365 security operations centers (SOCs) simplify risk management programs with a comprehensive protection, recovery, and assurance suite of services. During our conversation, we discussed information security strategy and its significance for Ntirety, the evolution of security, industry changes, and technology solutions' complexity, how the pandemic accelerated the attention on security due to increased hacker activity, and other topics. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-fami
Tue, September 05, 2023
End User Computing with Evolve IP’s Kevin Sullivan
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by my friend Kevin Sullivan, Director of Solutions Engineering at Evolve IP . We’re questioning how we do end user computing and more. Evolve IP partners with IT professionals to bring together their essential productivity and communication tools into a single, secure cloud-based solution, fine-tuned for the hybrid workforce and delivered as a service. By integrating these disconnected systems and filling in the gaps, they improve both productivity and security, increasing uptime to make the future of work better for everyone. During our conversation, we’re rethinking end user computing, reconsidering the disjointed structure of the security vendors and products IT leaders are leveraging to secure the widest part of their footprint, the importance of recovery and its unsexy but crucial role in the technology landscape, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: <p
Mon, August 28, 2023
Building a Next Gen Network With Aryaka’s Renuka Nadkarni
http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com | On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Renuka Nadkarni, Chief Product Officer at Aryaka . We’re talking about building a next gen network and so much more. Aryaka pioneered the concept of a cloud-first architecture for delivering SD-WAN, and also now SASE, as-a-service. They provide secure connectivity, enabling organizations to work from anywhere in the world without compromising application performance through their patented, integrated technology and services. During our conversation, we discussed convergence in the era when network and security edge are one and the same, the simplification and cost-saving potential through convergence and SASE, how we connect securely in the future, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: ● Renuka’s career move to Aryaka and the timing post-pandemic. <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font
Mon, August 21, 2023
Disrupting the Managed Service Provider Business Model With Sourcepass’ Roli Points
http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com | On this episode of The Bridge, Roli Points, co-founder and VP of Strategic Alliances at Sourcepass , joins me. We’re talking about disrupting the managed service provider business model and more. Sourcepass was created to disrupt the stale IT services and security space. Businesses are often held back by lackluster technology vendors that leave them underserved and overcharged for IT services. An opportunity existed for innovation through leveraging Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) married with premier managed services to provide a revolutionary client experience. As a result, Sourcepass was born. The vision of Sourcepass is to provide businesses of all sizes with a technology experience that elevates their company. During our conversation, we discussed the DNA of the managed service provider business model, why being an MSP is about embracing the manual work that customers don’t want to do, what makes MSPs difficult to scale, what the approach of “intimacy at scale” looks like in practice, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montser
Mon, August 14, 2023
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery With Expedient’s Alvaro Gonzalez
http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com | On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Alvaro Gonalez, AVP of Alliances and Marketing Strategy at Expedient . We’re talking about business continuity and disaster recovery, and so much more. Expedient is a cloud and data center infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider with local operations in cities across the U.S. Ranked as one of the Top 3 managed services providers worldwide on Channel Futures' MSP 501 list, Expedient’s converged solutions enable clients to focus on strategic business innovation, while the Expedient team handles the operation of the information technology needed to support it. During our conversation, we discussed VDI having its day in hybrid work, running generative AI in content creation, Expedient's long-standing focus on business continuity and disaster recovery, and why planning for the unplanned is necessary. Topics covered in this episode: ● Alvaro’s new role at Expedient as the VP of Alliances and Market Strategy, focusing on bridging technical, marketing, and sales aspects of the business. <!-- [if !supportLi
Wed, August 09, 2023
Swimming in the Whale's Wake with Geoff Bloss of BCM One
http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com | On this week’s episode of The Bridge, I sit down with Geoff Bloss, CEO at BCM One , to discuss investing in voice technology, acquisitions, and more. BCM One is a leading provider of NextGen Communications and Managed Services to IT leaders and channel resellers nationwide. Serving over 18,000 customers and 5,000+ channel resellers, BCM One offers UCaaS, SIP Trunking, Managed SIP, Microsoft Teams, Managed SD-WAN, SASE, Global Managed Connectivity, Microsoft Professional Services, Technology Expense Management, and Network Monitoring and Management. During this conversation, we talk about the COVID era, collaboration, investments, revolutions versus evolutions and why voice technology is considered the most mission-critical application within businesses, especially during the transition to remote or hybrid workforces. Topics covered in this episode: ● The role of voice technology within organiza
Mon, July 31, 2023
Meeting the Challenges of Hybrid Work With Comcast Business Masergy's Chris MacFarland
http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com | On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Chris MacFarland, CEO of Comcast Business-Masergy. We’re talking about SD-WAN deployment and so much more! As a pioneer in software-defined networking, Masergy is a leading secure cloud networking platform for global businesses. Acquired by Comcast Business in 2021, Masergy leverages artificial intelligence to enable superior application performance, offering SD-WAN, Security, UCaaS, and CCaaS solutions. During our conversation, we discussed rollercoaster career rides, the need for mid-market connectivity and security as equal partners in hybrid work, generative AI, and the future of energy abundance. And in a moment of transparency, we also talk about lessons learned during the pandemic and things that he and they could have done differently. Topics covered in this episode: The acquisition of Masergy by Comcast and its integration into Comcast Business. The strategic fit between Masergy and Comcast Business, filling a gap in the upper market and mid-market around solutions. The challenges and excitement of the 19-month journey after the acquisition. The potential for Comcast Business to be recognized as a major player in enterprise services and solutions in the futur
Mon, June 19, 2023
The Intersection of Business Communication and Technology with Talkdesk’s Bill Welch
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Bill Welch, President and COO at Talkdesk . We’re talking about business communications and technology and how Talkdesk aims to transform the customer experience. Talkdesk is a global cloud contact center leader for enterprises of all sizes. Talkdesk CX Cloud and Industry Experience Clouds help enterprises deliver modern customer service their way. Our trusted, flexible, and innovative contact center platform leverages AI and automation to drive exceptional outcomes for their customers and improve the bottom line. During our conversation, we discuss technology, knowing your products and strengths, being culturally innovative, and not trying to be all things to all people. We also discuss living at the intersection of business communications and technology and why Talkdesk seeks strategic partnerships to deliver integrated solutions. Topics covered in this episode: ●<span style= "font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing:
Mon, June 12, 2023
Achieving Better Business Outcomes Jeff DeVerter
On this week’s episode of The Bridge, we sit down with Jeff DeVerter, CTO at Rackspace Technology to talk about achieving better business outcomes whether through leveraging new technology, hybrid work models or AI. Rackspace Technology is the multi-cloud solutions expert. Their technical acumen with the world’s leading technologies and multi-cloud environments — across applications, data, and security — enables customers to grow their business, increase efficiency and deliver the future. They solve more than workload problems; they create business advantages. Their multi-cloud solutions expertise means customers are empowered to work faster, smarter, and ahead of what’s next. During this conversation, we covered a lot of ground, including the history of Rackspace, AI technology, autonomous weapons,, acheving more desirable business outcomes and whether Microsoft is a friend or foe. We also talked about customers and how they consume technology, and how we as technologists get consumed by our tech. Topics covered in this episode: <!-- [if !su
Mon, June 05, 2023
The Rise of AI with Swapnil Jain
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Swapnil Jain, CEO and Co-Founder of Observe.AI . We’re talking about the rise of AI and solutions that are making real-world changes right now. Observe.AI is the fastest way to boost contact center performance with live conversation intelligence. Built on the most accurate AI engine in the industry, Observe.AI uncovers insights from 100% of customer interactions and maximizes frontline team performance through coaching and end-to-end workflow automation. During our conversation, we discuss what lead Swapnil to build a conversation intelligence platform to improve productivity and how Observe.AI combines AI technology with human agents for improved performance and customer outcomes. We also talk about how the rise of AI had lead to more conversations about responsible AI usage and how we can balance innovation with societal impact, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: How the pandemic and hybrid work model escalated the need for AI tools in contact centers. How real-time monitoring helps supervisors identify potential sales that may not happen and intervene to convert the sale during the call. The need for guardrails and protocols to ensure the right use of AI. Recent advancements in AI, particularly in generative AI and large language models Responsible use (and potential misuse) of AI and the importance of considering the societal impact. The role of empathy and human emotions in customer experience. Customer concerns regarding data privacy and security. Self-policing and government involvement in regulating AI. Swapnil’s predictions of large companies emerging based on generative AI and the potential threat to established companies. ABOUT SWAPNIL JAIN Swapnil is the Founder and CEO of Observe.AI. Observe.AI, a leader in Contact Center AI, transforms customer experiences and improves agent performance by helping top brands analyze 100% of calls and streamline quality assurance workflows. With Observe.AI, businesses transcribe every call with high accuracy and coach agents while gaining full visibility into their customer service operations. Observe.AI brings the power of agent assistance, automatic speech recognition, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to modern contact centers and their frontline teams. Observe.AI is trusted by more than 150 customers and partners, including Root Insurance, Alcon Laboratories, Tripadvisor, and Pearson. Backed by Menlo Ventures, Next47, NGP Capital, Scale Ventures, Nexus Ventures, and Y-Combinator, Observe.AI’s headquarters is
Mon, May 22, 2023
Technology Hype Cycles with Jason Carolan
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Jason Carolan, CIO at Flexential . We’re talking about how the label of the day is for people and workloads is ‘hybrid’, and what it really means to be a digital-first company. Flexential empowers the IT journey of the nation’s most complex businesses by offering tailored hybrid IT solutions delivered via the FlexAnywhere™ platform of integrated colocation, cloud, connectivity, data protection, managed and professional services, with three million square feet of data center space in 19 highly connected markets. During our conversation, we discuss the challenges and opportunities related to adopting a digital-first approach, workload portability, and infrastructure management, We also talk about what it means to be a recovering CTO, and the satisfaction and growth in finding the right place — not necessarily the cool one — for workloads and for people. Topics covered in this episode: Flexential’s focus on delivering infrastructure as a service across the United States. Why Flexential’s superpower lies in the expertise and skill sets of its 1000-person team. The concept of a “recovering CTO”. Why the conversation around digital transformation has shifted towards digital-first thinking. Why there isn’t a
Mon, May 15, 2023
The Business Process Outsourcing Model with David McAbee
On this week’s episode of The Bridge, I sit down with David McAbee, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions here at Bridgepointe , to discuss leveraging the business process outsourcing model. Bridgepointe helps mid-market and enterprise clients make quicker, more informed tech investments. We help our clients save time by shortening the IT procurement process while saving money and increasing ROI. During this conversation, we talk about some of the myths we hear about the business process outsourcing model and how companies can get better results for less money. We also talk about what happens when you have the most discerning customers with high service expectations and combine that with a slowing economy, as well as why leveraging the business process outsourcing model to cut costs doesn’t automatically mean sacrificing customer experience. Topics covered in this episode: <span lang="EN" sty
Mon, May 08, 2023
The Future of Collaboration and Productivity With Zoom’s Gary Sorrentino
On this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Gary Sorrentino, CIO at Zoom . We’re talking about how 2020 changed everything and what the future of collaboration and productivity looks like in today’s world. Zoom ’s frictionless communications platform is the only one that started with video as its foundation, and they have set the standard for innovation ever since. That’s why they’re an intuitive, scalable, and secure choice for large enterprises, small businesses, and individuals alike. During this episode, we talk about the hard questions employers must ask themselves before asking employees to return to work in the office and what the impacts on collaboration and productivity might be from these decisions. We also dive into how Zoom went from a noun to a verb, its evolution from a meeting app to a platform providing solutions for employees, customers, and developers, their goal of shaping the future of work, productivity and collaboration, and so much more. Topics covered in this episode: ● <span lang="EN" style= "font-family: Montserrat; mso-fareast-font-family: Montserrat; mso-bidi-font-family: Mont
Mon, April 24, 2023
Cyber Resilience with 11:11 System’s Dante Orsini
In this episode of The Bridge, I’m joined by Dante Orsini, Chief Strategy Officer at 11:11 Systems . We’re talking about building cyber resilience and the aftereffects of the rush to pivot workforces during the pandemic. 11:11 Systems is a managed infrastructure solutions provider that holistically addresses the most pressing cloud, connectivity, and security challenges — like cyber resilience — of today while preparing businesses for tomorrow. During this episode, we talk about how we paused being careful during the pandemic. We rushed in and deployed tech without too much thought to our cyber resilience. As a result, the pandemic was a force multiplier for bad actors. Plus, we discuss how despite being prevention and security-obsessed, we don’t talk about cyber resilience and recovery enough, and it’s treated like a different (and less interesting) topic. Ultimately, humans and non-technology remain the riskiest aspect of cyber resilience in all our businesses. Topics discussed in this episode: 11:11 Systems' strategy to help organizations modernize their applications, secure their data, increase cyber resilience, and ensure application availability, regardless of where the workload exists. The changes in security, cyber resilience, and disaster recovery in the current work environment. The need for companies to have a multi-layered strategy to protect against attacks and improve their cyber resilience. The importance of cyber recovery and resilience, and the move towards bringing disaster recovery into the security framework. The challenge of retaining security talent in a highly competitive job market. The need for a comprehensive approach to security that includes people, processes, and technology. The role of vendors and consultants in helping organizations to build governance and ensure compliance. ABOUT DANTE ORSINI Dante Orsini serves as 11:11 Systems’ Chief Strategy Officer. He brings more than 20 years of experience leading direct and
Mon, April 17, 2023
Avi Lonstein of AireSpring
On this week’s episode of The Bridge, my guest is Avi Longstein, CEO of AireSpring . We’re talking about the idea that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, secure access service edge (SASE) and so much more. AireSpring is a 21-year-old managed service provider (MSP) with a legacy in connectivity and communications. Today they focus on managed services including SASE, SD-WAN and have a commitment to covering international requirements. During this episode, we discuss how managing complex services across multiple vendors can be a significant workload, especially when dealing with local regulations, laws, exchange rates, and import/export controls. We also chat about productivity and the value proposition of AireSpring. Avi shares how they’re able to provide a higher level of service and support to mid-sized businesses with a wide set of managed solutions covering connectivity, security, secure access service edge, SD-WAN, cloud communications, and mobility and wireless services. Topics covered in the episode: How the pandemic has shown that a hybrid work environment can work. Why the pandemic accelerated the trend towards cloud-based security infrastructure, with secure access service edge being a key driver for the flexible environment going forward. How conversations with clients have shifted from measuring the number of locations to how many people are in the organization and how to connect them. Airespring offers international services driven by customer demand, and they have a team and relationships with hundreds of international carriers worldwide. Why AI is an essential trend that will have a big part to play in the security and telecom industry in the coming years. Why there should be some regulation and smart thought around safety to ensure that technology is not used irresponsibly as governments attempt to curtail technology. FOR FULL SHOW NOTES: http://www.bridgepointetechnologies.com/secure-access-service-edge ABOUT AVI LONSTEIN Avi Lonstein, CEO, AireSpring Avi Lonstein has been a telecom entrepreneur for over 30 years. In 1989, Mr. Lonstein co-founded ADDTEL Communications. As President of ADDTEL, he was direct
Mon, April 10, 2023
Terry Barbounis of Lumen
Hi, and welcome to the Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode of the Bridge is Terry Barbounis. He's the Director of innovation and Strategy at Lumen, or A director of innovation and strategy at Lumen. By his explanation, he gets paid to daydream and his focus is on edge. A phrase we hear every day, and assuming frankly we all know what that means. Terry is himself a podcast host of Lumens podcast, “Light, Data Action”. We'll give you some information in the liner notes to make sure you can check that out. He's also, by his definition, a reformed standup. He's got a silky radio voice. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little bit jealous of that. Terry talks in big concepts and I love that, but, but he also does a great job of making them simple, his definition. Or explanation I should say, of Edge as an example during the pod was particularly compelling. You know, why is it important now? Is this new tech or a new need? And the answer in a lot of ways is both, right? We've moved critical apps to the cloud from the office data center. We've moved people out of the office as a result of the pandemic. So, while the regional pops of a traditional tier one telco provider like Lumen, you know, might be less important perhaps as a means to deliver last mile. Offices that may sit in the wan, they're frankly more important now as a means to get in microservices content availability and applications closer to the users. And to the applications themselves out in the field. We get into quite a bit on that. Moving to softer topics, though, we talked a lot about our new normal and the concept of busyness. We're measuring value and productivity based on hours and not output, and how that's culturally started falling apart. Right. Primarily because of the concept of office work has changed and the way we think about it, the way we talk about it, our culture hasn't really caught up. I mean, I won't spill the popcorn. You'll have to listen to the episode to get a little bit more. We got a little AI nerdy in the conversation. Talked about a bit about pending regulatory government oversight, how close we are to the singularity or the moment when AI achieves self-awareness. Something we've been concerned about since, you know, the sci-fi of the thirties and forties. <span style= "font-size: 12.0pt; font-family:
Mon, February 20, 2023
Maile Kaiser of CoreSite
Here are the links to two new CoreSite videos, mentioned in this episode: OCX Demo: https://www.coresite.com/multimedia/open-cloud-exchange-demo Native Cloud On Ramps : https://www.coresite.com/multimedia/what-is-cloud-direct-connection-and-how-can-it-support-your-hybrid-it-strategy Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is Maile Kaiser. She's the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CoreSite. She's been t
Tue, February 14, 2023
Chris Reaburn of Nextiva
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. My guest on this episode is Chris Reaburn, the Chief Marketing Officer of Nextiva. He's a Chiefs fan, and I'm recording this intro a day after the Super Bowl; one for the ages, and one of my Eagles did not win. So, as hard as it is to be gracious right now, I still have to say this is one of my favorite episodes. Chris is a C-level exec and a marketer in a company that Chris considers the anti-tech company. They started out like several businesses that we've talked to on the pod as a UCaaS provider based around the BroadSoft stack, which was a software platform that eventually got purchased by Cisco that powered many of the early way providers. Back then, the conversation with customers was about moving from prem to cloud. It wasn't really about features, until it became about features when several SaaS companies jumped in to become part of the story. You're not good if you're running other people's software. It's all about the features valuations followed. Today, even those companies, those great companies are reckoning with the post covid dominance of Teams and Zoom. And yet Nextiva survived and thrived throughout all of those stages when everyone else was developing their own app to communicate, Nextiva was focused on how complicated it was going to get when all of those applications reached critical mass in adoption. By their numbers, the average worker uses 15 to 20 applications per day to communicate, losing up to two hours or so in contact switching. Nextiva is indeed a hosted voice provider with their own software, but that software is designed as a conversation based work hub where all of your apps can be seen in real time, including their own features. Voice chat meetings, sure, but also Teams, Slack, zoom messaging apps, CRMs one place. Their mission to eliminate silos is what makes up their market approach today. Rather than fight the others, they decided to play nice with all of them and take advantage of our desire for ease of use, and in the meantime, they're gonna get some valuable time back. What's the best app? Well, according to Chris, the right channel for customers is the one they want to use. Okay, I can get behind that. Let's check out my conversation with Chris Reaburn from Nextiva. <span style= "font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: 'Avenir Book';
Tue, February 07, 2023
Mark Palmer of Granite Telecommunications
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is Mark Palmer. Mark is the Vice President of Managed Services at Granite. Mark is a telecom lifer. His dad worked at Bell Atlantic. He was a service splice technician to pay for college. His first job was selling telco and like many of us, he went through the dot bomb in the early 2000. And he eventually ended up at Granite where he's been for 20 years at this point. I have some history with Granite. At my previous employer, we used them for field services. Experts at sourcing, training, hiring and mechanically, and consistently deploying people for other tech companies to do physical install work, onsite troubleshooting, et cetera. This is a business that grew out of, not so much a tech focus as a use case focus, right? In this case, businesses with lots of consistently deployed small to mid-size locations, right? LD became local. Local became internet aggregation, pots replacement field services, eventually security and SASE. Today, their field services alone, are larger themselves than many tech companies. But yet they've never wavered in that market. Specialists in multi-location, 1500 sites, 5,000 sites, 7,500 sites. We took all the time on this pod about how the pandemic changed the way we do our jobs. The way we construct our networks, the way we secure our workers, the changing state of hybrid work, and the fact that we really haven't figured it out yet. But very often we talk about the changing value of location in the IT equation. We've moved to people-centered IT. So what happens when you're a company whose entire identity is around lots of consistent little locations? You double down and you grow as a result. This is a great story about leaning into headwinds and finding your niche. And of course, Mark picked the Eagles to win the Super Bowl this weekend. So I loved it, but we'll see how well that holds up when we release next week's episode. In the meantime, here is an informative post0-COVID look at location focused Managed Services Provider, Granite, and they're VP of Managed Services, Mark Palmer. ABOUT MARK Mark Palmer is Vice President of Managed Services at Granite Telecommunications. Mark currently works to build solutions to help customers have better visibility and control over the health of their networks. Mark previously worked at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) in 1995 - 1996 as a service splice technician upgrading phone services at older facilities. In 1999, Mark moved his career to direct sales, working for Network Plus. By 2001, Mark was helped launch a new Network Plus office in Philadelphia, PA. Mark joined the Granite Telecommunications team shortly after its founding in 2002, selling analog phone lines. In 2011, he was asked to help start the data team at Granite to sell non-POTS service to our customer base. In 2015 Mark was named one of the first directors in the R
Thu, January 19, 2023
2022 End of Year Recap with Scott Kinka
This is a SPECIAL EDITION of the Bridge Podcast with Scott Kinka. Over the last 6 months and 14 episodes, Scott has gotten the opportunity to ask some of the best minds in technology a plethora of questions, including "what is your favorite app" and "tell us where you were and what you were doing when the pandemic started". In addition, he's gotten favorite actors, favorite sports teams and shameless predictions from all of these interviews. Well, on this episode, we get to ask the same questions of Scott. We learn a little about his past, his previous IT roles and maybe even a nugget or two about being in the popular cover band, Split Decision. Producer Gene Volpe gets the opportunity to ask Scott all of the tough questions and have Scott dig back on his favorite moments from our episodes so far. This one was an ode to 2022 while looking forward to 2023. We hope that you enjoy this interesting look into the Chief Strategy Officer of Bridgepointe Technologies and tech evangelist, Scott Kinka.
Mon, January 09, 2023
Dennis Weikle & Scott Casson of PPT Solutions
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. On this episode, we meet PPT Solutions, Dennis Weikle, who's the CEO, and Scott Casson, the Senior Vice President of Delivery. So, why PPT Solutions? Well, in full disclosure, Bridgepointe Technologies, as you know, the sponsor of this podcast, recently acquired PPT, which stands for People, Process and Technology considers themselves a CX as a service provider. That doesn't mean they're a technology service provider or a SaaS provider. In fact, it sort of means the opposite. They are a services firm that operates in and around those software as a service and platform as a service providers. They deliver consulting, implementation, and managed services around CX. Importantly, they're also a BPO or Business Process Outsourcing Broker. We'll get to what that means in a minute. Everyone is talking CX these days, like it was just invented. Acronym of the year. We spent some time talking about what CX is, what it isn't. We debated it. We talked about the differences between CX and CCaaS. Without spilling the beans here: CCaaS, really technology platform. CX, a business strategy. Why now? Why is it all about CX today? Is it the pandemic, the changing expectations of consumers? Is it finally now the year of the consumer? Isn’t every year? Why are we constantly reinventing what we call the technologies and platforms that support our engagement with clients? I've said this several times in the pod in the past year, and I'll continue to say it, contact center and CX implementations don't go bad because of broken tech. They go bad because of poor strategy or implementation or unclear objectives, and that's really the gap that PPT Solutions, now Bridgepointe, is filling for businesses. And they give a few really good examples of that on the pod. We talked a bunch about outsourcing agents, getting back to that. What has come to be known as BPO and, and how in some business lines it was taboo before the pandemic. You know, you don't want to call and get somebody overseas. But once everyone went home, businesses realized that they needed more flexibility in staffing and costs, businesses are questioning not only whether they need full-time staff in their contact center, but they're also looking at how technology, or in this case, the broader CX portfolio, can actually serve customers without agents, right? How do we eliminate calls coming into the contact center? Of course, we ended with our predictions section. We got some great predictions about the Bengals winning the Super Bowl. We talked about Dennis's dream of being a member of an eighties hair band. Don't miss that part. Either way, this was a great conversation and one that I hope you find as thought provoking as I did. So let's get to. Here we are with this episode of The Bridge. About Dennis Weikle Founder and Managing Director Dennis Weikle is a JD Power award winning executive with over 2
Mon, December 19, 2022
Sanjay Srinivasan of Vonage
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest on the pod this week is Sanjay Srinivasan. He's the Senior Vice President of Solutions Engineering for Vonage. In his distant past, he served as the Chief Architect for Simple Signal. They were acquired by Vonage to be their business arm about a decade ago. And because of that, he and I have a long history together at the early stages of UCaaS. Back then we called it hosted PBX. We were sort of early innovators around the broad, soft switch platform that powered a lot of the early providers in the space and that platform would later come to be purchased by Cisco. We broke a lot of the same regulations. We figured out a lot of the same problems. We broke a lot of eggs together. Scaled some session border controllers for service providers together, and we did all that work along with our great engineering teams. But I can tell you, I don't think it's bombastic to say, that this is a conversation with one of the early pioneers of hosted VoIP and a close friend for nearly 15 years. We joked that for 10 of those years at various industry conferences, and every year we were like, this is going to be the year of video. Of course, all it took was a pandemic for that to happen, right? And now we feel like we have to have a formal 30-minute meeting to accomplish what we could have covered in a five minute phone call. Because you know, nobody wants to make phone calls anymore, right? We always want to get on video. Here we are though, both former CTOs, in the VoIP business talking about how humans need face-to-face interaction and how we need to learn to take breaks between our meetings. He shares some insights on the blurring line of who is actually in customer service in the business, a theme that we've heard multiple times in recent weeks. He also said something that I found incredibly interesting though that and I've added it to my lexicon, “happy agents create happy customers”. Seems obvious, but customer experience always starts with the agent experience. And something we really need to think about if you're redesigning your contact center. This led us to conversations about communications, APIs, supporting unique business cases, and needing to stop worrying about tech and start worrying about the problems that we're trying to solve before we get into wiring APIs up. Lastly, we wrapped up with soccer becoming popular in the US, the availability of high quality 5G everywhere, how a book reader could eventually become the most important app on your phone and lastly, and most importantly, how the judge in my cousin Vinny, is possibly one of the most underrated roles in modern cinema. So, time to get to it. This is a podcast I've really been looking forward to. My longtime innovation partner and peer, and all around great guy, Sanjay Srinivasan, Senior Vice president of Solutions Engineering for Vonage. ABOUT SANJAY
Tue, December 13, 2022
D.R. Carlson of Equinix
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is D.R. Carlson. He's the Director of Segment Marketing for Equinix. We joked a little bit, I asked him what D.R. meant, he said “disaster recovery”. D.R. has been at Equinix for two different stints. He's about to have his second fifth anniversary with the company and is a father of four, 10 to 18 years old, from Ashburn, Virginia. Kind of right where colo all started. Equinix started as a peering provider. I sort of threw out, hey, I know them as colo and he sort of corrected me. They built colo around their peering network and from there became one of the larger network service providers in the world. They consider themselves, given their interconnection strategy, an on ramp to the digital economy. I'll describe that a little bit more in a few moments. What I really loved about this conversation, is that D.R. is both a technologist and a marketing guy. He had some really polished answers around some of the things that we talk about on this podcast. Here's an example. He compared the pandemic to a health scare. Interesting, right? The things that you should do to get healthy aren't really any different than the things that you should do before you're sick. Right? But now those things are more important. He applied that to the pandemic. He used that to explain sort of the impending event that the pandemic became. If you were doing the right things, you are generally fine. If you weren't, you were sick and you needed to react quickly. We talked about how to think about the digital transformation in 2023, and he made it really simple. The way that Equinix talks the digital economy is that businesses need to focus on three things. First, interconnecting their core. Second interconnecting their digital systems, and then third, interacting at the edge. Now, I'm not going to describe each one of those things in detail here, and I couldn't do it as good as he does, but generally speaking, if your initiative doesn't fit into one of those categories, don't do it. I'll let him break that down a little bit more on the pod, but I do think it's a useful way to break down your technology roadmap. He also describes the cloud hangover and what he means by that is running into clouds and looking at them as destinations, when really they're just a portion of an overall network strategy. Data center, core has moved, but app strive traffic edge is largely now in the home. So consider how people, traffic and patterns flow and that should really be the root of the IT conversation. And this is what in his mind in some cases, is driving customers away from a hundred percent cloud infrastructure into hybrid architectures. We've heard that repeated quite a bit on the pod so far this year. Everyone is trying to do the same thing; connect more people in more locations with more devices to more information in a secure manner. The lesson I took
Mon, December 05, 2022
Ashish Seth of RingCentral
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is Ashish Seth. He's the Vice President of Product Management at RingCentral. Ashish is a recent addition to RingCentral. He's got a legacy and contact center and that's his charter at Ring. Mind you, focusing on the Ring Contact Center product. He was the former Chief Product Officer at LifeSize who if you recall, acquired Contact Center vendor, SerraNova. He was also at one point the Vice President of products at Nice in Contact. So, this is a contact center guy. He's been in Silicon Valley, at the cutting edge for 20 years. Interestingly enough, he changed jobs twice during the pandemic. I asked him, like I've asked some of our other guests, if he considers himself part of the “great resignation”. He had a really interesting response; he said he “was part of the great opportunity”. And one other thing he added there was breakdowns lead to breakthroughs, a quote that got our producer Gene jumping out of his chair a little bit. He echoed a theme that we've heard from several guests that the pandemic was an accelerator for cloud communications and customer experience technologies. Frankly, we've had security networking data center vendors say the exact same. I asked them to explain RingCentral's strategy in light of the pandemic. And you know, it was kind of interesting. I mean, you said what you would expect. You see CC one that connect them, but for them it was about intelligent experiences, right? Phone, video meetings, contact center agents, together in a single application. And to him, he felt like the opportunity was very real because of hybrid work, not sort of in conflict with hybrid work, right? How he sees it, you know, what RingCentral's customers are. You know, when most of us talk about hybrid work, we talk about this happy medium between being in the office, being on the road like I am today and being at home and it's really more of an option based scenario. Ashish's thought was that it's really about work styles, about cognitive enablement, about enabling the styles of work. So in in his mind, some people should always be at home. Some people should always be in the office, and the key is to equip each one of the work styles with the tools that work for them and enable them to have their place in this, sort of, connected workforce. Function-based as opposed to option-based hybrid work, which was just a really interesting way of looking at it. Since we've both been in the business of developing contact center software, we were talking a lot about where the agent sits going forward which he believes will fall into remote work now more than ever. Given the transiency of the labor force and, you know, and the fact that it's just easy to stand up an agent that way, but we talked a lot about what would be lost in that environment. And the real thing is peer to peer engagement. You know, tap tapping someone on the shoulder, getting help
Mon, November 28, 2022
Emil Sayegh of Ntirety
Hello and welcome to The Bridge. I'm Scott Kinka. My guest today is Emil Sayegh. He's the CEO of Ntirety, and a really interesting guy, Lebanese guy, Austin, Texas, UT grad, four kids, two of whom were in college, one at his alma mater, the other enjoying watching a spectacular football season at TCU. Emil is a well established executive in product and cloud role, having spent time at Rackspace, Dell, Codero. His last role was as CEO of Cero and eventually he was tapped by private equity to lead Hostway, who, if you remember, was a leader in shared hosting. Eventually, Hostway merged with hosting.com, a company with a similar history in shared hosting. Which is why I was surprised to hear about the trajectory of the business today. Ntirety is entirely a different company than you might expect. Yeah, I did that, I guess I'm feeling it coming out the holiday weekend here, but as far as Emil, he, he strikes me as a professional change agent. He led cloud at Rackspace. He's taking companies public. He's been tapped for business turnarounds and exits, and currently in pulling together two similar companies and turning them into something wholly different, centering around managed services and cybersecurity. In talking about that, he leveraged the old Wayne Gretzky moniker of “skating to where the puck is going”. Really an essential discussion to think about as a technology leader. We can't know what's next, but we do have to consider it. Marking conditions, end risks will change, and being prepared and even taking some chances on what might be next is an absolute requirement for technology leaders, and what frankly makes discussions like those we have here on The Bridge really important. Emil oversaw the merger of Hostway and hosting.com in 2018 with a vision of focus on managed services, but particularly cybersecurity and backup and recovery. They were rewarded frankly, for that vision when the pandemic struck. We also had an important discussion about security, compliance, and governance, and the expectations on businesses. Making a great discussion short for this intro, no business is expected to be perfect, but you are expected to follow documented best practices. You are expected to have a plan, and most importantly, you are expected to be able to recover, which Emil pointed out is too often not part of the security provider playbook. We talked about the importance of security training, both internally and with a stance towards the supply chain. Supply chain being sort of that uncontrolled partner inside of your four walls. He mentioned that 40 to 60% of mid-market companies that get hacked do not recover inside of a year. There's a clear ROI to cybersecurity investments, but it's often confused, or in some cases ignored, in favor of actual insurance or cyber insurance. A very important discussion for business executives to listen to. I challenged Emil to answer the question, or the objection, I should say, o
Tue, November 22, 2022
Chris Cannon of the Cannon Group
The Bridge Podcast - Cannon Intro Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. This episode was a special one. First, because it was in person. I don't get to do a lot of those. And second, because it was with one of our own from Bridgepointe. My guest today is Chris Cannon, founder of the Cannon Group, recently acquired by Bridgepoint Technologies. Chris is now serving as the managing director of Lifecycle Services for Bridgepointe. That’s why I'm all decked out in my Bridgepointe gear today. Cannon Group is a 20 plus year old MSP. It focuses on technology, expense management, mobile management, transition projects, and strategic sourcing. They're located right here in the Philadelphia market, not too far from where we're filming. Like most of our episodes, we started talking about their business during the pandemic. They have an inbound contact center for mobile support that needed to be transitioned. They were already on Teams and Teams Voice, which is something we don't hear often. So that transition was seamless and that includes their call queues, an early adopter there. What was not seamless was Chris's work. He lives only a few miles from the office. He found it easier to work there. He sort of walked around in a surreal, dystopian future, empty office, kind of wanderer model there. Must have been really, really interesting. What also didn't transition well though was the mobile deployments out of the business. What I mean by that is kidding, as they call kind of mobile staging has to be done in person, right? I mean, he shares a great story about original convenience store chain, that we hear in the east know very well; Wawa. For those of you who don't know, Wawa is a convenience store, sandwich shop, and gas station combo, all over the place. And they're a customer of Cannon Group. They moved from an iPad based, for doing online ordering, to a 4,000 iPad rollout, basically overnight. And, as the mobile desk for Wawa, that meant receiving, unboxing, staging, apply screen protector test, put it back in the box, ship out all, hands on deck, everybody that could be involved from the company working through that. And if you think about it, this again, challenges that definition of essential. That's become a theme through some of our past episodes on data center and things like that. Workers you wouldn't normally consider to be essential. But, you know, think about it, these were people literally provisioning the tech necessary for people to be able to order food during the pandemic. I'm not sure it gets any more essential than that. That discussion branch starts over into supply chain. First for laptops being poor and, you know, as a mobile support organization, Cannon was getting calls for laptops, frankly, because customers were trying anything. They didn't have access to those. But something you don't think about is that mobile devices weren't a problem during the pa
Sun, November 13, 2022
Craig Patterson of Aryaka
Hi, and welcome to the Bridge. I'm Scott Kinka. In this episode, I speak with Craig Patterson. Craig is the Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales for Aryaka. He’s an interesting high energy, great guy, hockey dad, technologist. He runs his own podcast, incidentally, called Dreamers and Doers. He's invited me to be on that podcast. I've started listening, really good. So check that out. And joining him on his pod might be fun, Dreamers and Doers. But the fact that he's a pod show host should give you a little bit of perspective on this guy's personality. We'll get back to that in a minute. But in terms of Aryaka, he joined during the pandemic, and he said he is the "great resignation". I don't want to steal his thunder about why he did it and what he was doing; he talks about that in the pod. I'm sure you'll find it interesting, maybe even a little bit personal. Maybe you've thought about it. Maybe you were part of the great resignation. Maybe you were swept up in some of the fall of 22 tech layoffs. Just interesting feedback from a serious technologist, and somebody who's been very successful in this industry, about the decisions he made during the pandemic. In terms of Aryaka, interesting name, right? It means noble or truthful in Hindi. Aryaka is a global SDWAN. Winner of Gartner's voice at the customer award multiple times, they generate about 90% of their revenue through partners like Bridgepointe. I asked him how his business changed as I’ve asked most of my guests during the pandemic. And his answer was interesting and it was immediate. “Fundamentally” was his answer. As an SDWAN provider, Aryaka was, in his words, in the business of connecting big, shiny buildings. And then everybody went right, so they needed to sort of adjust the product. They quickly added VPN as a service offering, and integrated it into the same network fabric. Ultimately, that became a security and application optimization fabric, and, really became the trappings of what would become a SASE service for them. And, you know, we talked a lot of this sort of conversion, even on the network and data center side. As you've heard from some of our recent guests around having to change their entire strategy to be around applications during the pandemic. A big selling point for them is that they've optimized something like 3,500 applications for delivery, allowing their customers to decide what's important and what's not in terms of delivering access down to their end users. They feel very strongly because of that influence on some of the success that some of the SaaS companies had during the pandemic. His belief, one that I hold as well, is that the pandemic accelerated technology projects that didn't have an impending event, like tearing down traditional WANs in favor of next generation networking or shutting down local data centers and applications in favor of cloud. It's not like there was a lot of question that these ap
Mon, November 07, 2022
Chris Sharp of Digital Realty
Hi, and welcome to the Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest on this episode is Chris Sharp. He's the CTO of Digital Realty. It's not that often that I get to meet someone for the first time on the podcast, but here we were meeting on camera for the first time. Chris has spent seven and a half years at Digital Realty, Equinix before that. Couple tours of duty with traditional network carriers. We commiserated on that a bit. I had some of my own but if you're not familiar with Digital Realty, they are one of the largest colocation operators in the world, and he had some really interesting perspective on approaching the pandemic from a global level. They got a jump on their US plan, because frankly, they had already experienced some of the hotspots, Singapore in particular, being one of their larger data centers that they had to contend with. So they sort of made their mistakes there, sort of had their plans already in place. For the US a lot of it was about how to ensure you had talent in physical locations that you didn't get stuck overseas. While sending information workers home, a really interesting way of thinking about sort of the people aspects of that. He also talked about how they had to evolve pretty quickly in COLO because let's face it, the, the digital economy was driven by people in these large data centers during the pandemic. So, you know, increased demand increased install timeframes all based on the pandemic. Even thinking about things like the fuel for backup generators, not being guaranteed from a delivery perspective, were all things they had to contend with. We did get into a discussion about what he thinks is not returning to normal and what they think and what's interesting, you know, Chris shared his feelings about how the internet has fundamentally changed in terms of its traffic patterns. In particular, the flow of traffic from sort of centralized office hubs out to the cloud. Now it's sort of a thousand points of light in the home out to various cloud vendors. All of the sudden, customers were seeing traffic change from a handful of giant nodes to a million users at home on various ISPs. And here I am thinking about them having real estate challenge. When in reality Digital Realty spent a lot of their effort in the pandemic just figuring out how to re-architect the network based on this new flow and, and based on the way that their customers were interacting with services and interacting in some ways with each other. It really forced them up the stack as a real estate company to think about application use of their customers. So not just a power pipe and ping business in a lot of ways. I guess that's the digital part of Digital Realty. You know, he shared some trends around what they're seeing with customers. Moving out, maybe not moving out, but moving some workloads from hyperscalers back into COLO and settling into hybrid architectures, taking more COLO as a result. I share
Mon, October 31, 2022
Chris Jones of AT&T
Hi, and welcome to the Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. My guest this week is Chris Jones of AT&T. He's the AVP of channel sales. For AT&T and ACC business. Chris has been with AT&T for 28 years. We laughed a little bit about one or two little breakups they had where he tried something else, but he's, he's been there almost straight for 30 years. He's been in multiple roles there. Channel sales, marketing. Strategy, even spent time in wireless. Just a different story than what you hear about folks in this fast moving tech space where we're jumping all over the place. We talked a bit about the start of the pandemic. He was on vacation in Mexico. His son called him from college to let him know that you know, they were canceling classes. He got back into the US right before things shut down to walk into the news that our biggest show of the year in our industry is called Channel Partners. It was. AT&T was the title sponsor that year. Just a surreal thing. I'm sure they had 20 or 30 people going and he was on vacation and walks into the fact that that was canceled. Jumped straight from vacation to the lockdown. Kind of a surreal story. He said that they were very prepped as a tech company. Most of the workers, you know, were able to work from home. You know, but he did talk about how you know, look, they're in the wire line business. They had people who had to go in were, were running fiber to buildings. They were considered essential workers. Really kind of the heartbeat of the pandemic response. And it's funny, you know, we talked about what the pandemic would've looked like in 1990. If not for those essential workers focusing on connectivity. You know, we didn't have the internet if we didn't have this level of access. You know, our belief, my belief certainly is that the economy would've shut down. He shared some interesting stories about what AT&T calls tabletop exercises. It's, it's sort of a methodology where the execs in the business get together and sorta. You know, throw the chess pieces on the table. They zombie apocalypse plan, if you will, and talk about how they would do it. So they felt more prepared than most because frankly, we, we had that level of you know, pandemic emergency, if you will, and they got to test some of those plans. Something I've haven't heard from many other vendors and, and haven't seen in a lot of other businesses. That was a really interesting. We spent quite a bit of time talking about virtual desktops and how they are used internally at AT&T to support bring your own device. He did say though that the tools were available, but people really didn't understand it, really didn't see the value until the pandemic push adoption forward. And now today most people inside of AT&T will not live without the convenience of flexibility of their BDI. Of their virtual desktop. But it is an interesting parallel that we, we've seen with some of the other pods that w
Fri, October 14, 2022
Tim Allen of EvolveIP
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. This week I interviewed Tim Allen, Executive Vice President and Founding Partner of EvolveIP. Tim and I have been friends for nearly 25 years through a couple of companies, and in the interest of full disclosure, more than a decade together at a EvolveIP. Tim also joined me here in studio, which was a nice change of pace from the online interviews that make up a majority of my podcast, and frankly probably make up a majority of the meetings that you engage in on a day to day basis. Post pandemic, EvolveIP is a pun intended company name. So we talked a lot about the theme of evolution and that being a principle tenet of their go to market and what he called evolutionaries or their ideal customer. These are people who don't want to incur technical debt, can't stand managing endpoints, don't want to be burdened with the basics of it. So what they did during and after the pandemic was instead of going product focused, they went use-case focused. They wrapped all of their products together in a virtual workspace delivering multiple legacy applications. Comms contact Center, a really interesting approach. Maybe give you some thoughts about another way to think about how you're acquiring and buying it. We commiserated a bit about moving out of the office during the pandemic. We were working together at that time, and truth be told, we were actually doing a move. We were moving our office from one place to another when the pandemic hit. So we literally packed up our boxes, put them in our trunks, and never came back to the office. Kind of an interesting story. We talked about the challenges of service providers and technology companies during the digital transformation wave of the pandemic and forced work from home. I thought it was really interesting from a service provider perspective, but I think you'll find that interesting even as an IT buyer or technology leader. He suggested that the real effort in digital transformation is about teaching people how to use what they already have, what they've already bought. Really interesting insight and of course that led us into a conversation about the difference between broken and user error, which will be a fun little chat for IT leaders. Maybe you can commiserate with us a little bit. And then lastly you know, in the going forward category, Tim predicted the death of the operating system in the next 18 to 24 months in our shameless prediction segment. I'm sure he was being a little bit melodramatic for effect, I'm sure, but he makes some really great points that I think are valuable for us all to think about. So you don't want to miss this episode. Let's get to it. Here it is, my interview with Tim Allen of EvolveIP. About Tim: Tim is a 30 year veteran of the communications and “as a Service” space spending 90% of that time growing 2 companies from start up phase to $100M in revenue. He loves helping organizations us
Fri, September 30, 2022
Mike Nowak from BCM One
Welcome to the next episode of the Bridge Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. This week we had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Nowak, who is the Chief Revenue Officer of BCM One. I won't steal his thunder, but if you're not familiar with BCM One, they are an MSP, with what Mike describes as a Nordstrom class approach, to customer fulfillment, if you will. They're in connectivity. SDWAN SIP. They've got about a million UCaas seats out there. Very interesting company. Mike's a great speaker, dad to two girls, a self-professed builder, as he says. He goes out and builds stuff in the yard for stress relief, when his wife lets him, which I loved. We talked quite a bit about the pandemic, kind of their seminal moment for realizing that this was going to be something, you know, corporate and worldwide affecting, was when one of the big shows in our industry, Channel Partners, was canceled. This was the company that was already prepared for remote work as they're in it, but he did talk about how depressing it was, how shocking it was to see empty offices, stopping traveling, stopping seeing partners and customers. He gives some really good feedback, even though the office vibe is sort of lost, at least to some degree, about trusting your people. How that's the way to pull them in, give them leadership opportunities. Really interesting. We talk about that. We did get into a little bit of what BCMs return-to-work policies are going to be going forward. They have made their decisions and that may be useful to you and your business. BCM One is also a partner with, on a handful of the collaboration platforms, WebEx teams. They have their own, which is part of the netsapiens platform. We talked a lot about Teams becoming sort of a default in the pandemic and how business sort of ran into it and are now trying to figure out what their long-term strategy looks like. It's really important to understand what the hybrid work strategy looks like. He cautioned against people just saying: “Hey, this is what we did in the pandemic, so let's just do that going forward”. It's about figuring out requirements. How do we want to work? Who do we want to be going forward? We had a fun conversation about desk phones and whether they matter. We even talked about fax. I can't believe we did, but we talked about fax. Mike also talked about security. You know, businesses rushed into decisions. They made mistakes. And we got a mulligan, if you will. But now's the time to figure out what the businesses should look like on a go-forward basis, both from a security perspective and from a collaboration perspective. And then lastly, we had some really interesting banter about the role of the CIO and how their role changed within the pandemic and how they now have a strategic seat. But the key to holding that seat is to become a student of the P&L as a tech leader to understand business financials as the way to become part of that strat
Thu, September 08, 2022
Artie Chang from PanTerra Networks
A few weeks ago, we sat down with Artie Chang, the CEO and founder of PanTerra Networks. Artie is a true tech entrepreneur. 15 years, self-funded with some local and regional investors, out there competing, surviving every day against the big tech companies in unified communications and collaboration. This is a guy whose tech was founded around working remote and you'd think, embedded into the culture of the business, and yet even PanTerra still struggled from some of the same cultural challenges that your business may be facing today. If you think you had some problems working during the pandemic Artie has 10 children. Ten! Six of whom, with adult jobs in the Bay Area, all decided to come home and work in the house during the pandemic. He had some interesting feedback about their employers' ‘return to work’ plans and how his children all kind of want different things out of work, post pandemic. He called the phase we're in today the 'evaluation phase', not the 'return to work' phase. Businesses are still figuring this out. He also talked about the pandemic kind of hitting in a time of “IT complacency”. He said “this isn't the first time we've gone through something like this, and yet it sort of hit in a period where we were comfortable with the way we were working, not challenging our norms, just sort of supporting the business from an it perspective”. He talked about one of the challenges that we have right now is losing the ability to sort of onboard new folks into the culture, into the business, with that over the shoulder water cooler way of becoming a part of the culture, and he shared that his business has focused on competing by developing some interesting supervisory features, that he believes, and I could probably support, are not actually in some of the other big platforms that you see out there. Artie had an interesting way of thinking about how you compete, how you find those little ridges in, in which to compete in a very changing economy, in a changing way that we work. Listen to the whole episode on your favorite podcasting platform and don’t forget to connect with Artie. ABOUT PANTERRA NETWORKS PanTerra is a business-class Unified Cloud Service Provider, seamlessly delivering unified communications, team messaging, webinar & team conferencing, call center, file sync & share and business analytics through Streams, its secure, unified cloud solution. By offering a fully customizable, all-in-one, HIPAA/HITECH secure, multi-service cloud solution, PanTerra can significantly reduce costs, simplify IT administration, increase security and improve employee productivity in a distributed dynamic workforce environment. Arthur "Artie" Chang brings over 20 years of hi-tech executive experience to PanTerra Networks. Artie, a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, held senior executive positions at several successful companies in Silicon Valley. Prior to PanTerra Networks, Artie was the C
Fri, September 02, 2022
Intro to The Bridge Podcast with Scott Kinka
In this quick 1 minute intro, veteran commercial technologist Scott Kinka outlines what you can expect from the forthcoming episodes of The Bridge.
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