The Bridgecast with Scott Kinka

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 from it, stop buying tech, and start supporting use cases, understand the users. We wrapped up with his love of Spotify and his desire to play Steven the Irishman in the movie Braveheart. You'll love that.

This chat was a lot of fun and I definitely stole some nuggets that will become a part of my speak going forward. Here is D.R. “Disaster Recovery” Carlson, the Director of Segment Marketing from Equinix.

ABOUT D.R.

D.R. is the Director of Segment Marketing for the Americas for Equinix focusing on joint messaging and go-to- market strategy with Equinix’s largest partners. D.R. has also worked as VP, Sales and Strategic Partnerships for Neovera (Equinix New Partner of the Year 2017), and Oratium a company that built sales messaging for companies, trained Ted speakers, and prepared Executives for Keynote speeches.

CONTACT D.R.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/d-r-carlson-b6431a1b/

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 shared a blog from the CEO of Basecamp on my LinkedIn last week and, and got a little, I riled up some salespeople online, but it is a real conversation about which workloads belong.

As we're beginning to optimize our workloads to our new reality. And, you know, the move to hyperscale while elasticity and capacity are immediate, not every workload fits very well in the sort of coin operated model of usage and hyperscale. So just a real conversation, one we're having very, very often at Bridgepointe with our customers.

He also talked about capacity being the new currency of the digital age. If you think about it, the big hyperscalers are also consumers of COLO, right? So as they expand, they're competing with customers who are looking for their own data center space, planning your digital footprint is essential if you are buying services really at a real estate level to support your business. Supply chain challenges are not going away. Availability of data center space in your desired geography is not assured and it's one of the things that sort of planning ahead working with organizations like Bridgepointe are really important. In our fun know, shameless predictions section, we talked about personal media, algorithms, what we get served, who owns curation you know, maybe more transparency coming from those providers in the future about how they're delivering content to you. It was an interesting and kind of fun departure from the rest of the conversation, but it was really thought provoking. At a high level this was a different conversation. We've talked to cloud company service providers, collab, VDI.

We've talked to network and security execs, you know, but here in this conversation, I got the opportunity to take a deep dive down into a real estate business in a lot of ways that found that it too is climbing up the digital transformation ladder to build and grow based on their customer's application use.

So, you know, here we are, a gre...

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 diversity, inclusion, and equity, particularly from the perspective of male allies.

● Lumen's evolving identity and purpose and transitioning from traditional telecom-focused assets to higher-order application-centric solutions.

● The challenges and opportunities faced by mid-market and larger companies in terms of technology adoption, integration with security, consumption mechanics, and achieving faster ROI.

● The impact of the pandemic on IT leadership and the need for rapid change

● Lumen's vision for network transformation and simplifying service consumption through a digital front-end

● The integration of network and security services and organizational challenges in adopting this approach.

● The evolving role of IT leaders in response to the pandemic.

● How proof of value, demonstrated through demos and proof of concepts (POCs), has become crucial in moving opportunities from discovery to closure.

● The organizational challenge of bridging the gap between network and security teams.

● Predictions about AI advancements in the next 12 to 18 months.

Links for this episode:

Breaking Boundaries Podcast: https://breakingboundariesbyumesh.buzzsprout.com/

The Bridge Podcast with Scott Kinka – Terry Barbounis Lumen: https://bridgepointetechnologies.com/edge-computing/

ABOUT UMESH LAKSHMAN

Umesh Lakshman, as the National Vice President of Solutions Architecture for Mid-Markets and Channels, shapes technical strategy and business outcomes through innovative technology and talented teams. He transitioned to this role after leading sales engineering for Lumen Technologies' West Area and media / entertainment verticals.

Previously at Cisco, he spent over two decades in a plethora of roles bookending his time there in senior sales engineering, supporting the world's leading cloud providers. Umesh couples his professional acumen with a commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion, inspired by his upbringing and the lack of diversity he observed in the tech world.

With a Master's degree in hand, his personal goal is to harmonize the tech industry's diversity with societal representation.

At Cisco, he was integral to 'Men for Inclusion', striving for a future where such initiatives are obsolete. A prolific voice on diversity, Umesh also created "Breaking Boundaries", a platform celebrating DEI champions. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, spotlighting those who challenge norms and forge an inclusive future.

Umesh loves the arts, namely being on stage in some format, be it dancing salsa ( retired ) , be in a band, or talking shop about technology and diversity, inclusion and belonging.

CONTACT UMESH

Podcast. https://breakingboundariesbyumesh.buzzsprout.com/

Web. http://www.lumen.com/

LinkedIn. http://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshlakshman

LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumentechnologies/

Insta. https://www.instagram.com/umeshonig/

Insta. https://www.instagram.com/lumentechnologies/

Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/umeshlakshman

Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/lumentechco...

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.

• 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 players towards incorporating various channels.
• Why having a single repository for customer journey data to improve data analytics and customer experience is important.
• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on customer experience.
• The transformation of contact centers to accommodate digital channels and cater to younger generations’ preferences for non-voice communication.
• The changes in the audience for customer experience technology selection.
• The importance of collaboration between IT and business stakeholders in technology decisions.
• Common mistakes made by companies when implementing customer experience technology.
• The importance of measuring the impact of technology changes on key performance indicators (KPIs) to demonstrate the value of the investment.
• The trend of generative AI and its growing popularity in customer experience discussions.
• The importance of well-informed AI implementation.
• The challenges of navigating a cluttered AI landscape with numerous companies vying for attention and making ambitious claims.
• Scott Prater’s predictions for the next 18 months. Links for this episode: Success is a Choice by Rick Pitino

ABOUT SCOTT PRATER

Scott Prater is the Senior Vice President of Technology Solutions at BridgepointeCX, a premier provider of Client-centric, performance-based Customer Experience and Business Optimization Solutions. As a Global Information Technology Executive, Scott brings over 35 years of experience in various roles, including 22 years working with CX technologies. During this time, his focus has been leading successful initiatives in the contact center industry where he has held numerous leadership roles in Service Delivery, Sales and Client Account Management. Scott began his career in the space and defense industry and has brought the same focus and precision required to launch a satellite with him to successive roles in Customer Experience and IT. He has a proven track record leading and supporting transformational change in both technology and business processes and been consistently ahead of the industry curve as an agent of change. His broad vertical background includes managing Avaya’s largest ever client service delivery program for Home Depot and managing customer service technology transformation initiatives for Comcast, Moneygram, and NRG. Scott’s wide-ranging experience also includes leading the industry’s first ever large-scale hosted contact center VoIP implementation of 10,000 seats in 2002. This experience, as well as his international experience in areas such as satellite/RF communications, telecommunications, customer service and analytics, has provided him with unique knowledge and insights to solve our Client’s complex business challenges.

CONTACT SCOTT

Web. https://bridgepointetechnologies.com/team/scottprater/

LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-prater-bptcx/

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 partners with growing mid-sized companies by delivering secure, VMware-based cloud solutions, on-demand engineering resources, and 24/7/365 Devoted Customer Support. They meet their customers’ needs through VMware cloud solutions, data protection, and managed security services. With a consistent global platform to leverage, these medium-sized businesses now have access to solutions that simplify their day-to-day operations. Their customers’ internal IT teams are now entirely focused on driving innovation and business solutions in this demanding, ever-changing, technology-focused era.

Topics discussed in this episode:

· Why experience is invaluable in navigating business challenges and how mentorship can guide entrepreneurs.

· Why understanding customer pain points is crucial for success.

· Why the mid-market has unique challenges that require tailored solutions.

· Why VMware plays a significant role in many mid-market organizations.

· Why cost control is essential in managing IT budgets.

· How DaaS can provide predictable costs and security for organizations.

· How leveraging hyperscalers can optimize workload management.

· Why redundancy in infrastructure is critical to avoid failures.

· Why customer service should be at the core of technology offerings.

About Ryan DiRocco

Ryan DiRocco is an expert in networking and enterprise operations with more than two decades of experience within the IT and managed services sector. He brings deep knowledge in virtualized environment architectures, efficiencies, and operations to lead the Performive technical teams. Having built a solid foundation within the managed services space, Ryan’s experience and dedication is a key component of the Performive team.

The smooth operation of Performives’ global workloads is Ryan’s chief goal. Additionally, he guides engineering and technical product development across the brand.

Contact Ryan

Web. https://performive.com

LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-dirocco-5453447/