457: Oshkosh CIO Anupam Khare outlines the company’s five strategic pillars, which are being people-first; running digital technology as a business; modernizing and innovating; building advanced capabilities in analytics and process automation, among other areas; and securing the organization in a way that reduces friction and makes experiences better for its employees, customers, and partners. We also discuss how the company has been able to recruit new employees, how the team has mixed retraining with bringing in new people externally, how the Information Technology function has rebranded to “Digital Technology” to change its perception internally and externally, among other topics.
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456: Equinix CEO Charles Meyers discusses the trend for organizations to get out of the data center business, which puts Equinix in a solid position to support CIOs in their digital transformation journey. Charles cites that companies are noticing that building, operating, maintaining, and ensuring that data centers are equipped to meet their go-forward needs is not in line with their differentiation and their capability nor is it the best use of their capital. Instead, they have looked for highly distributed IT infrastructure to meet a variety of needs, and the cloud is playing a large role. We also discuss the benefits Equinix gains from being an internal first user, how the CIO role has evolved to be more customer-facing and strategic, Charles’ takes on AI, IoT, the Digital Edge, and 5G, among other topics.
455: Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani covers a variety of topics, including the company’s strategic plan, which focuses on simplification, execution, and innovation, how his time as CIO of EMC prepared him for the CEO role, how data has gone from something companies only use when they absolutely need it to being at the forefront of the business, the tech landscape in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, his take on AI/ML, automation, and DevOps, among other topics.
454: Unity Technologies CIO Brian Hoyt discusses how as enterprise becomes more consumerized, employees gain autonomy and the nature of IT work changes. He cites his and his team’s focus on employee productivity. We also discuss the merging of business operations and IT, what it’s like being in a CIO within a tech-centric business, how to manage a fast-growing organization, among other topics.
453: In this episode, Anima discusses the synergy of working in both academia and in the industry, from her previous positions at AWS and University of California, Irvine, to her current research at NVIDIA and Caltech. She shares how AI can accelerate scientific discovery with engineering capabilities, such as powerful GPUs, that continuously push AI forward at a very fast pace. We also discuss what is known as the Trinity of the deep-learning revolution: algorithms, data, and compute infrastructure. Anima shares insights on scaling, self-supervision techniques, embodied intelligence, and her thoughts on the future of AI. Finally, we end with a discussion of Anima’s mission of globally democratizing and diversifying AI.
452: Visteon CIO Raman Mehta discusses how IT has enhanced its role and gained the trust of the business. Historically, IT at Visteon has been great at solving problems it was presented with. However, IT was never given a voice in the company’s strategy or product roadmap. That has changed, and the board and executive committee now has great confidence in the capabilities of IT, which has enabled the organization to take on a more strategic role. We also discuss Raman’s take on 3D printing and autonomous driving, the tech landscape in Detroit, where Visteon is based, how the company is looking to turn its technology debt into a dividend, and a variety of other topics.
451: Dow CIO and CDO Melanie Kalmar recaps the merger with DuPont, subsequent executive shuffle, and ultimately the spinoff that resulted in Dow and two other publicly traded companies, Corteva and Dupont. The new Dow is a material science company that heavily invests in research and development and collaborating with customers to drive innovation. She notes that mergers present an opportunity to invest in future capabilities, and that Dow invested heavily in its digital transformation. We also discuss the expansion of her role to include the CDO title, the three anchors of Dow’s digital and IT strategy, her interest in artificial intelligence and Dow’s artificial intelligence competency center, and a variety of other topics.
450: XPRIZE Foundation CEO Anousheh Ansari discusses XPRIZE’s Pandemic Alliance, a global coalition of corporate, academic, and non-governmental partners focused on accelerating solutions to the coronavirus pandemic. In the short-term, that means expanding visibility into solutions underway in areas such as remote care and access to testing. We also discuss the XPRIZE Data Collaborative which provides access to exclusive data sets and AI capabilities, how XPRIZE facilitates resource and idea sharing between alliance members, and why XPRIZE is well positioned to bring together uncommon partners to tackle this historic challenge.
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To hear our interview with XPRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis, click here
449: In this interview, Julie discusses how the IT team has evolved its approach and positioned itself to mirror the business organization by embedding its people within the business units, Julie’s approach to creating new value streams, and how IT has grown in strategic importance inside the company. We also discuss the OnCommand intelligent vehicle platform and how Navistar uses insights from the platform to change internal processes, trends in telematics and connected vehicles, and a variety of other topics.
448: Johnson Controls Chief Customer and Digital Officer Mike Ellis discusses his experience joining the company after the recent merger with Tyco, the digital agenda that drives innovation across Johnson Controls’ multiple businesses, and his role as Chief Customer and Digital Officer. We also discuss the importance of the different customer personas that he must be aware and attuned to, the importance of internal partnerships, and the capabilities that drive innovation in the business, specifically data-edge capabilities, smart edge, IoT, and AI and machine learning. We end with Mike’s outlook on the growing importance of AI and machine learning.
Among the topics we discuss are
