397: Atlassian’s President, Jay Simons, and CIO, Archana Rao, discuss the unique culture of Atlassian. Both note that the company is extremely open, honest, and direct. The work of the executives is transparent to the rest of the company. Archana believes that allowing people to see other’s work, performance, and perspectives provides a recognition that there are challenges everywhere and it builds an immensely strong culture because people tend to work well together in this way. Jay has seen the company go from 100 to 3,000 employees in his 11 years with the company, and he declares that this culture has scaled remarkably, which in his mind is a testament to foundational parts of the culture that the company created.
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396: E. & J. Gallo Winery CIO Sanjay Shringarpure elaborates on the changes the company has made to achieve its transformational vision. One of the major changes has involved transitioning IT toward supporting four verticals supporting each of the business functions of the company. We also discuss the cultural changes necessary to realize this vision, Sanjay’s take on blockchain and the cloud, the Wine OS platform the company has created, and a variety of other topics.
395: Liberty Mutual CIO James McGlennon discusses the company’s agile and cloud transformation, which has included a multi-pronged approach designed to eliminate or refactor legacy technology, send existing employees to coding immersion programs, have 90 percent of teams working in an agile fashion, and move from one percent to 25 percent of technology in the cloud with a goal to reach 100 percent. We also discuss James’ take on artificial intelligence, robotics, and augmented and virtual reality, how Liberty Mutual works with its different customer groups, what the company does at the business unit level versus the enterprise level, among other topics.
394: Schneider Electric CDO Herve Coureil discusses how Schneider has blended talent in the new digital unit. Herve believes the organization needs to balance the internal and external view, Herve does not believe in a digital organization that only includes external digital talent looking in from the outside or an exclusively internal team that is made up of subject matter experts, without an infusion of external talent. To create a mix, Schneider has focused on reskilling, retraining, and learning internally so everybody has the basic skills that go with digital while simultaneously recruiting new talent that can bring subject matter expertise and new digital skills to the team. We also discuss Herve’s take on the cloud, AI, and blockchain, how Herve manages such a large, distributed team, how his experience as a CFO helps him in his current role, among other topics.
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393: Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard discusses how the company has modernized its technology stack. She notes that architecture needed to lead the company’s decisions and be in everything that it did going forward. Through this modernization, Adobe has switched to being cloud-enabled and it has enabled architecture and business capability changes without causing disruption along the way. We also discuss Cynthia’s take on immersive technologies, how Adobe is using AI to complement its workforce, how the company has transitioned from selling box software to becoming more customer-facing, among other topics.
391: Washington Post Chief Product and Information Officer Shailesh Prakash describes the genesis story of Arc Publishing. Arc was initially built by the company to meet its own needs, but after realizing it had built one of the best media tech stacks in the industry, the company began selling it to other publishers. The Post now believes Arc Publishing has the ability to become a $100 million business. Shaliesh also shares his view on building technology in-house versus buying and integrating, his experience on the board of Blue Origin, how Jeff Bezos has helped the company further its technology abilities, and how the company partners with large tech organizations, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, among other topics.
385: Toyota (TMNA) CDO and Toyota Connected CEO Zack Hicks shares his vision for how technology will transform driving. As the CEO of Toyota Connected, Zack and his team use data to provide an enhanced and seamless driving experience. To do so, Zack is focused on removing friction points throughout the entire process by having 3rd party services integrate with Toyota’s technologies. He claims to be agnostic about who owns the experience, and that his only goal is to enable it. While he is focused on augmenting the driving experience, he asserts that full autonomy is still far in the future. We also discuss Zack’s experience as a board-level executive, his view on the future of autonomous vehicles, the benefits of containers and server-less technologies, among other topics.
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382: Workday CIO Diana McKenzie discusses the importance of understanding how the customer experiences the company’s product and the competitors’ products. Diana notes that CIOs have a unique opportunity to collaborate with customers, hear their feedback regarding what they hope to see from their products, and bring those insights back to the company. To better understand the product, the company has rolled out a Workday-on-Workday program, where IT is the first user of Workday’s product. This allows Diana’s function to influence how the product evolves and enables Workday to ensures that their product strategy always reflects what the marketplace is likely to need most. We also discuss Diana’s experience serving on a public board, the employee engagement survey Workday has rolled out, Workday’s acquisition of Adaptive Insights, among other topics.
378: Winnebago CIO Jeff Kuback argues that a strong IT team is an essential element in all industries, even non-technical ones such as RVs and boats. In the past, the industry has been hesitant to invest in IT due to its reputation for high fixed costs, and in fact, Winnebago did not have a CIO when Mike Happe joined as CEO. However, Jeff has worked to make IT more efficient, which includes spending the appropriate amount of money on cybersecurity and moving from an on-premise data center to the cloud. We also discuss how Winnebago has gone from a traditional RV company to focusing on the outdoor lifestyle as a whole, how Winnebago has leveraged Microsoft tools, what Jeff looks for in external partners, among other topics.
377: Last year, Equifax experienced one of the most devastating security breaches ever, which exposed the private information of 143 million individuals. In this interview, Bryson, who joined the firm after the breach, explains the company’s response and its goals to rebuild customer’s trust through security and compliance work, to build a sustainable future, and to constantly invest in new technologies. We also discuss Bryson’s take on blockchain and the cloud, how Equifax invests in artificial intelligence, his approach to obtaining the best talent, among other topics.
Bryson is the Chief Technology Officer of Equifax, one of the largest credit agencies in the world. As CTO, Bryson focuses on unifying all of Equifax’s technology teams around a common philosophy, a technology-driven culture, and a common architecture to accelerate product development. Before joining Equifax, Bryson was the CTO of IBM Watson and IBM Cloud. Bryson joined IBM when it acquired The Weather Company, where he was CTO and CIO.
