TECHtonic: Trends in Technology and Services

The traditional services model is facing a reckoning. As AI agents take on more of the work, technology services firms can no longer rely on headcount, billable hours, and cost-plus pricing to drive revenue. So what does the future of services delivery and monetization look like? In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah sits down with Arun Varadarajan, Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Ascen...

What does it take to build a successful forward deployed engineering (FDE) function as AI reshapes how technology companies deliver value? Thomas Lah kicks off the conversation with TSIA’s newly published FDE Maturity Model, revealing why this emerging function is still evolving across the industry. Joining him is Usman Nasir, VP of AI Forward Deployed Engineering at Salesforce, who shares an insi...

What does it take to turn AI from an exciting innovation into a business model that actually delivers value? On this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah walks through TSIA’s AI pricing ladder with Alon Talmor, founder and CEO of Mosaic AI, to unpack how companies can move beyond traditional seat-based pricing and start monetizing the work AI gets done. After selling his first startup to Salesforce an...

Technology providers have mastered the art of selling value, but too often struggle to prove it after the deal is signed. In this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah sits down with Steve Zimba, founder of Nulia, and Sue Nabeth Moore, founder of Success Chain, to explore how their teams have come together to build Tivium, a platform designed to bridge the gap between technology adoption and mea...

AI is creating a new question for managed services: what happens when the work itself becomes software-driven? On this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah talks with Scott McIsaac, CEO of Helios Core, about the shift from labor-driven IT support to AI-driven operations. Scott brings two decades of managed services experience to the conversation, including leadership roles at Secure-24 and NTT,...

AI is forcing technology companies to rethink what customers are actually paying for, and how they prove the value they deliver. On this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah sits down with Michael Speranza, CEO of Kantata, to explore how AI is reshaping the economics of SaaS, professional services, and enterprise technology. As software becomes easier to build and AI accelerates automation, the...

What happens when an AI agent fails, and how can enterprises prove they saw it coming? On this episode of TSIA’s TECHtonic, Thomas Lah takes on one of the most important questions facing organizations moving AI from experimentation into the enterprise: How do you prove that AI is actually delivering the outcomes you promised? Drawing on TSIA’s Five Proofs of Outcome-Based Revenue, Thomas and guest...

Thomas Lah opens the episode by describing TSIA's model-driven revenue engine framework: using AI to monitor every customer touchpoint in real time instead of running revenue off CRM fields and pipeline reviews. His guest, Stephen Messer, has spent three decades living that shift firsthand. Messer co-founded LinkShare in the 1990s, and later co-founded Collective[i], the AI sales intelligence netw...

Thomas Lah welcomes social psychologist Sarah DiMuccio to talk about the human side of AI transformation. They dig into why AI adoption triggers anxiety across every role, seniority level, and demographic: it isn't resistance to a task, it's a threat to how people see themselves professionally. Sarah explains that companies are investing heavily in AI technology while investing almost nothing in e...

In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah welcomes Deb Ashton, Founder of Certinia, for a conversation about the transformation of professional services in the age of AI. They explore why traditional utilization-based business models are giving way to outcome-driven engagements, how AI is changing pricing, delivery, and workforce strategies, and why customer value must become the foundation of ever...

AI is changing everything—but there's one part of the conversation many organizations still aren't having: the economics. As enterprises race to deploy copilots, agents, and generative AI across every department, leaders are discovering that AI costs don't arrive as a single invoice. They show up across GPUs, token consumption, cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and idle compute resources, maki...

In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah, EVP and Executive Director of TSIA, sits down with Agam Vasani, former SVP of Customer Experience at LeanData, to explore what it actually takes to build an AI-driven post-sale organization. Agam shares how his team was drowning in over 40 fragmented customer health signals, leaving CSMs spending more time assembling data than acting on it. He then re...

Your CRM knows what happened. It doesn’t know why—or what’s about to happen next. That gap is costing revenue teams millions in preventable churn, missed expansion, and deals that slip away long before anyone saw it coming. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah sits down with Alok Shukla, CEO and co-founder of Funnel Story, to explore a new category of technology: the AI...

Recorded live at the May 2026 TSIA Board Summit, this executive panel brings together technology and services leaders to explore how AI is transforming the future of customer engagement, professional services, support, sales, and education services. Moderated by Thomas Lah and George Humphrey, the discussion dives into emerging business model trends shaping the technology industry, including forwa...

In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah of TSIA sits down with Michael Harnum, CEO of ESG Success, to unpack a bold idea reshaping the tech industry: Customer Success as a Service. As companies face mounting pressure to cut costs while still driving retention and growth, traditional customer success models are being pushed to their limits. Michael shares how his experience scaling renewal operati...

In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah sits down with Angelica Riemann, SVP and President of the CrossLab Group at Agilent Technologies, to unpack how a legacy hardware company is transforming into a modern, recurring-revenue powerhouse. From its origins as a spinout of HP to becoming a global leader in lab innovation, Agilent is redefining what it means to deliver value—not just through in...

In this episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah sits down with Cormac Whelan, CEO of Nitro Software, to unpack what it really takes to compete, and win, when you’re up against industry heavy weights. As AI reshapes the software landscape, Cormac shares how smaller, more agile companies are using it as a force multiplier, enabling lean teams to innovate faster, deliver smarter products, and “punch above t...

What happens when AI can do almost everything marketing teams used to own? In this thought-provoking episode of TECHtonic, Thomas Lah chats with marketing leader Kathy Macchi to unpack a bold AI manifesto that’s challenging how CMOs think about their role, and their future. As AI rapidly takes over content creation, campaign execution, and analytics, marketing teams face a critical crossroads: evo...

AI is everywhere. So where is the real business value? In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA’s Thomas Lah speaks with Sofi Elfving Hallberg, CEO and co-founder of Substorm and a machine learning pioneer who has worked in the field since the early 2000s. Sofi shares how the AI landscape has evolved from the early days of limited data and computing power to today’s generative AI boom, and why many comp...

Net revenue retention is under pressure. SaaS growth has slowed. Sales and marketing budgets are shrinking. And AI is forcing companies to rethink everything, from seat-based pricing models to how they engage, retain, and grow customers. In this episode of TECHtonic, host Thomas Lah welcomes back Brent Grimes, CEO of Reef.ai, for a direct and timely conversation about what’s actually happening in...

AI is no longer a distant promise, it’s actively reshaping how work gets done. But the biggest differentiator between companies that thrive and those that fall behind isn’t the technology itself. It’s how leaders guide people through the change. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA’s Thomas Lah sits down with 2x best selling author and strategist Alison McCauley to explore what it really takes to mo...

In the AI era, enterprise technology companies face a hard truth: generic platforms no longer win. Profitable growth now depends on delivering specific business outcomes, and that requires going deeper than ever before. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah speaks with Mari Cross, Chief Customer Officer at Infor, to explore how micro-vertical strategies, AI-driven servic...

AI is no longer a technology conversation, it’s an economic reckoning. In this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA’s Thomas Lah is joined by J.B. Wood and George Humphrey to unpack the real-world implications of AI Economics through the headlines shaping enterprise tech right now. From Salesforce’s AI-driven job cuts to Adobe’s competitive pressure, Palantir’s services-led growth, and the collapse of tradi...

B2B enterprises are overwhelmed by complexity, and AI is finally promising the breakthrough they’ve been chasing for years. On this episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah sits down with AptEdge CEO Kusal De Silva and co-founder Aakrit Prasad for a direct, no-nonsense look at how AI is transforming the most ignored and most mission-critical function in technology: enterprise suppo...

In this power-packed episode of TECHtonic, TSIA Executive Director Thomas Lah speaks to Rajat Shah, Vice President of Services at Tetra Pak, for a rare inside look at one of the world’s most sophisticated industrial service organizations. From delivering 5+ million service hours annually to supporting more than 100,000 pieces of equipment across nearly 200 countries, Tetra Pak is transforming its...