IT Visionaries

There’s a festering problem growing beneath the surface of small businesses everywhere, and it’s an issue that most SMBs are refusing to address. As large-scale companies invest big money in information security teams to protect themselves from data breaches and bad actors, their small business brethren simply refuse to invest in security at all. “People only spend money on things they can detect....

Maggie Louie remembers the moment her career changed forever. Working with the L.A. Times on digital and mobile products, Maggie, now the founder and CEO of Otto , remembers a friend asking her to look into an issue they were having with their website. “[they asked] me to look at their ad tags and figure out why their traffic was going through the roof, but they weren't making any more money. They...

The journey to cloud is not the same for everyone. In fact, for some, it can be a grueling and daunting process. For CIOs and CTOs of century-year-old companies, they are burdened by server after server piling up and as they tackle the obstacle of migrating data to the cloud. Meanwhile, peers at digitally-native companies, born in the cloud, use their agility and ease of scale to soar past their o...

Have you ever picked up a plant at the grocery store and wondered to yourself, can I really keep this alive? Or maybe you’ve planted seeds in the ground only to see them never sprout. Don’t worry, if you’ve struggled to find any success, you’re not alone. But imagine the pressure when the food industry’s supply chain is relying on your green thumb, so you have to find a way to plant trillions of s...

Smartphones are incredible pieces of technology. They allow users the ability to track stars, text people around the world, purchase items at the ease of a click, map their next destination, and so much more. Their individual capabilities are truly remarkable. “It's crazy. And all of that is powered by the battery and all of that and really what limits it, the engineer's imagination, you know, the...

Early learning education programs are not new —they’ve been around for years in multiple forms. Whether that’s Dora the Explorer taking you on her latest adventure, or hopping on your computer to travel along the Oregon Trail, the traditional education system has been supplemented with various platforms and programs for ages. The issue is, though, very few of them actually show or measure tangible...

How many times over the last year have you visited a restaurant and sitting on the table right in front of you was bar code that led you to all the information you needed. From drinks, to desserts and entrees and everything in between, that simple code unlocked a handful of opportunities and experiences all through technologies that already exist within your phone. With more than 2 billion QRC- an...

The internet is a fascinating place and over the years it has provided tremendous resources to billions of people around the world. It’s brought us closer, and it’s divided us and at the same time. People feel more empowered to make their voices heard. The problem is anonymity has seemingly eroded basic standards of kindness and decency. At least that’s what it seems like when you look at the comm...

Problem Solvers, pioneers, but more importantly data nerds. That’s how Sumo Logic describes itself, and well...it’s fitting. Rooted in big data and security, SumoLogic is among the most powerful machine data analytics services in the world, but to reach the pinnacle of any industry, requires a culture that strives to be the best. “There's a lot of discomfort in this type of a culture, because in o...

Companies flaunt the term digital transformation almost as if it’s a badge of honor. It’s a  phrase that can signify an enterprise is on the cutting edge of innovation with a constant eye toward the future. But Joanne Friedman, CEO of Connektedminds, has another word for it. “It's a misnomer,” she said. “Any company that isn't constantly in some state of transformation isn't alive .” Joanne believ...

They say one of the biggest attributes any entrepreneur needs to have is the ability to problem solve. To be able to identify challenges large and small and effectively produce a solution for them. It seems simple, but it’s not. A vast number of start-ups fail, and the reason is although they identified and addressed an issue , it’s not the right issue. So how do you know when the problem your com...

In gambling there’s a common saying, the house always wins...After all, the majority of people who spend their nights and weekends throwing dice across the craps table, or contemplating their next blackjack hand are always relying on luck. Yuchun Lee, CEO and co-founder of Allego , is not one of those people. Yuchun is one of the founding members of the infamous MIT Blackjack card counting team po...

The term “smart city” might bring to mind images from The Jetsons , maybe flying cars and robots serving humans. And while that’s possible, cities are getting smarter right now in very practical and useful ways. Building a smart city is about its citizens and how their lives can continuously be improved through data and incremental change. “The ultimate goal is very simple: Can we use the combinat...

There’s a saying that every company is becoming a software company. But what might be just as true is in that every company is becoming a publisher as well. Photos, blogs, designs, video, and sound is created and published at unthinkable rates… and it’s being used, EVERYWHERE.  Web, Mobile, Signage, Kiosks, In-Store… it doesn’t matter. Businesses are creating content to match consumer appetite. So...

The No. 1 feature of technology is storage. Ok, so that’s not true. But, it’s one of the most critical pieces of hardware that enables software to function. How fast, how easy, and how much data can be accessed and leveraged inside of applications plays a critical part in technologies effectiveness and user experience. File systems have largely evolved unnoticed. “Existing file systems written 20...

Every year millions of products and services hit the market with sky-high aspirations, and every year millions of those same products and services fail. The reason? Consumer expectations are rising, which means their tolerance for a bad experience, has all but disappeared. “We tend to remember the good experiences that we have, and that creates expectations across all other similar or comparable e...

The customer experience has never been more important than it is today. Why is that? d Because consumers and enterprises are no longer just evaluating their needs based solely on a product’s pros and cons. Instead every purchase decision is being thought through on multiple levels, including whether or not a product is the right fit for personal and professional needs, and looking into the deeper...

The digital world continues to evolve a rapid pace. Customers’ expectations have risen, and the user experience now must match the rising tide of their needs. So while cloud has made it faster and easier to deliver services, the same can’t be said for troubleshooting and solving issues caused by cloud connectivity. That is, until now... “Cloud A.I. changes both the experience between the business...

There is no way to sugar coat it: consumers are nervous about their privacy. And rightfully so. There is a trail of data bread crumbs you leave behind wherever you go, and people are watching and following along — some with good intentions, but not all.  The internet as we know it is controlled by centralized networks, but one company is helping change the playing field by taking away the power of...

The best products and solutions are often born out of personal experiences. For Sam De Brouwer, CEO and Co-Founder of doc.ai, her breakthrough moment occurred after her son was hospitalized and induced into a coma as a result of a severe accident. Frustrated, anxious, and wanting to help, Sam found herself doing what any mother would; looking for ways she could make a difference. “What I was seein...

The speed of search has altered our expectations when it comes to conducting research. We can search peer reviews for just about anything, but not enterprise software, not distributed working models, and definitely can’t easily research and search peer reviews on custom implementations, how to best work with a CEO, impacts of work from home initiatives, and other CIO and CTO interests. Meet Pulse...

You’ll rarely hear anyone say that you’re over-communicating. But what you will hear is that with the influx of communication platforms, especially when it comes to messaging and email services, there are more ways to communicate than ever before, and that causes some trickle-down effects. With so much data and messages coming and going through a system, and emails clogging out your in an outbox,...

With much of the workforce in 2020 operating from the friendly confines of their own homes, nothing became more clear than this: tech skills are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Leveling-up those skills, though, is a team effort, and it’s incumbent on employers to make sure they are providing their employees with the proper opportunities to expand their knowledge, and, in effect, their career...

The image of a hooded individual illuminated by the glare of a computer screen hacking into a company’s network is the classic picture of what a cyber attack looks like. The reality, though, is these attackers are almost never a one-man band, but rather a sophisticated team armed with the same technology companies often deploy against them. But what makes these threats from these attackers so devi...

Mark Thiele has spent his entire life in and around IT infrastructure, even building his own fair share of data centers. But if there is one thing about the entire process that he finds vexing, it’s the wasted time between when companies start negotiating contracts for data centers to when it actually launches.. So after a 27-year career working with other companies, he set out on his own and star...