Rockin' IT - Where technology leaders talk‪.‬ Alejandro Lavie & Mark Delisi

To put a cap on a great first season, we bring the CEO of Flexera, Jim Ryan to explore the relationships between software vendors and consumers, together with the evolution of the software industry in general, the role of Software Asset Management in tough times, and a career view on CEOs coming from sales backgrounds.

We finish the interview with a first for this podcast: a rapid fire personal profile on Jim.

With the recent cyber attack on a Florida water treatment plant, the conversation about critical infrastructure resilience heated up. Sara Freeman, an expert in these topics just released a book that helps organizations be better prepared to defend and react, and has been in the speaking circuit of many events, including RSA ’21.

We loved her position on how the language that we use about cyber attacks matters, and her arguments about how society and IT professionals might be numb to cyber security, aided by how vendors flex marketing language.

Sarah works at a pioneer in critical infrastructure and nuclear energy, the Idaho National Laboratory.

We've never had a guest that plays their own intro song. Scott is a different guy. He spent 30 years at Navistar, a Fortune 500 manufacturer of trucks and Diesel engines, in management roles of Security and Asset Management for IT.

He shares with us his song, Fortan Blues, to open the episode, and we dig deeper into how security and SAM are in need of working together. He also shares his point of view on Microsoft, Oracle and other vendors when it comes to software licensing audits. "Some work as partners, and some are just plain aggressive" he says.

Episode Sponsored by Flexera, which offers the best solutions for Technology Value Optimization in the market. Go to Flexera.com for more information.

You could say that Jason is a SAM pioneer. From his days at IBM and to his most recent stint at Nike managing a global team of Software Asset Managers, he has started, funded and managed global projects.

In this episode, we explore his career, his view of IT Service Management and SAM, and an opinion on centralizing or federating these teams as well as some ideas on the "periphery of ITAM".

Now, as a recent addition to Flexera's Business Value Advisory team, Jason looks to share his experience with practitioners around the world.

This episode explores "obsolescence as a terrible disease in IT" and how important it is to both "run the business and change it at the same time" in an industry that usually evolves at a fast pace, while balancing their customer's needs to stay solidly reliable, as Angeles Blanco puts it. She is the Global Product Owner of Enterprise Service Management at Santander Global Tech, which serves the global IT projects of Grupo Santander, one of the largest financial institutions in the world.

Not only she is quite a consummate professional, she is also a Barça fan, which makes her my favorite guest so far :).

Tina Turner - "The Best" was her choice of song and it's quite adequate for the conversation.

This episode is sponsored by Flexera.

When it comes to leading large global projects, Bryant knows a thing or two about getting buy-in from leadership to implement transformational projects for managing IT assets around the world. We talk to him about the possibilities that SAM offers for efficiency and security, not just for audit protection. We also explore the differences between ITAM and SAM, and how he believes this industry is continuing to evolve on SaaS and Cloud.  

Bryant is a senior leader of Global Software Asset Management at P&G, but also held similar roles at Great American Insurance, Cintas and Toyota. You can find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryantcaldwell/

Flexera is a sponsor of this episode because they help leaders like Bryant find savings through SAM in Datacenter, Desktops, SaaS and Cloud so organizations can fuel other initiatives. Check them out at www.flexera.com