Signed

ITBroker.com
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The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers. That's why 80% of tech buyers regret their last major purchase. Deals take longer than they should. Teams get locked into platforms that don't fit, contracts they can't escape, and vendors they wouldn't choose again. The pitches, demos, and analyst reports are built to close deals, not help buyers make the right one. Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, talks with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can explain what actually determined whether the deal worked. Plus weekly Playbooks breaking down the moments that matter most: renewals, M&A, compliance mandates, office moves, budget cuts, and the specific plays that separate buyers who get it right from those who regret it. If you're responsible for choosing, negotiating, or living with the consequences of enterprise technology, this show is for you. New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.

  1. 19h ago ·  Video

    Playbook: Cybercsecurity Truths

    You bought the EDR. You checked every box your insurance renewal asked for. In this Playbook, Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, breaks down why 60% of ransomware victims had a leading EDR product deployed when they got hit, and what the other 40% were doing that they weren't. From the four tools insurance actually requires to the ones nobody budgets for until it's too late, Max walks through the gap between owning a security tool and being protected by one, and the one line item most security budgets are missing entirely. THE PLAYBOOK 00:00 The trigger: the EDR stat insurance doesn't want you thinking about00:41 The mistake: treating insurance's four checkboxes as the finish line04:22 The play, step 1: what security buyers skip past SWG, CASB, and ZTNA09:07 The play, step 2: what actually gets security budget approved, and why ROI is the wrong pitch13:19 The play, step 3: test your backups before you need them14:38 What to watch for next: measuring security by detection and containment speed, not tools boughtRESOURCES MENTIONED KnowBe4 — the security awareness training platform Max says most clients end up on anywayOkta — referenced as a strong IDP/SSO layer for building real ZTNA entitlement chainsMicrosoft 365 E5 Security — the bundled EDR/security suite Max warns is only as good as the team configuring itTarget's 2013 HVAC vendor breach — Max's example of the IoT/third-party blind spot most companies don't monitorABOUT THE SHOW Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format — 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Cybercsecurity Truths

  2. Sep 29 ·  Video

    Playbooks: CSPs

    Buying Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or Azure direct feels like the simpler choice, until you need support or get locked out of your own tenant. In this Playbook, Max Clark breaks down what a Cloud Solution Provider (a CSP) actually does between you and the platform: faster support and escalation, help recovering a locked tenant, engineering and migration support, and access to vendor funding you can't reach on your own, usually at little or no added cost. If you're deciding whether to buy direct or through a CSP, or renewing that decision without ever having checked it, this one's for you. The Playbook 00:51 What a CSP actually is01:29 Why Microsoft and Google aren't built for support01:55 Where a CSP sits between you and the platform02:24 The vendor funding most buyers never access03:19 The admin account problem most companies ignore04:17 What happens when you get locked out05:14 How a CSP changes your recovery and escalation path06:11 Engineering, migration, and configuration support06:38 Not all CSPs are the same07:03 Tier zero vs. tier one support, explained08:26 End-user support vs. administrative support in practice09:25 Why a CSP rarely costs you anything extra10:17 The bottom line: direct vs. CSPAbout SignedSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript

    Playbooks: CSPs

  3. Sep 22 ·  Video

    Did You Choose Cloud for the Wrong Reason?

    Which workloads actually belong in public cloud, private cloud, colocation, or bare metal? Jeremy Pease, CEO of Aptum, joins Max Clark to break down how application requirements, infrastructure costs, connectivity, resilience, and scale should determine where your workloads run. They get into cloud migration and repatriation, why connectivity can cost more than the infrastructure itself, workloads that never needed the scale assumed in the original business case, and a colocation estimate that went from roughly $10,000 a month to $80,000 once the real requirements were modeled. If you're evaluating a cloud migration, renewal, repatriation, or infrastructure change, this conversation gives you the questions to run before deciding where the next workload belongs. Before your next migration, renewal, or repatriation decision: https://www.itbroker.com/blog/cloud-workload-assessment Jeremy Pease: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-pease-a53b972/ Aptum: https://aptum.com/ More from Signed: https://www.itbroker.com/podcast Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Did You Choose Cloud for the Wrong Reason?

  4. Sep 15 ·  Video

    Playbook: Buy on Purpose

    You didn't choose your cloud provider. You inherited it, from whoever picked the safe option first and called it a decision. In this Playbook, Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, names what that habit actually costs: three decades of consensus defaults, from the dot com era stack to LAMP to AWS's US East 1, and what the buyers who never questioned any of them paid for it, including the 15 hour outage this past October that took down Snapchat, Venmo, and a foreign government's tax site along with them. One question either ends the habit or exposes that you've never really made this decision at all: compared to what? The Playbook 00:27 Why "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" still runs every enterprise tech decision, and the gap between safe for your career and right for your company01:28 The mistake: the consensus default isn't neutral, it's the product the market is built to sell you03:05 Proof from history: the safe choice and the weird choice have traded places twice before this one04:37 Today's default: AWS, US East 1, and what the October 2025 outage actually cost the buyers who never questioned it06:32 The play, step 1: the average cost structure you guarantee yourself by matching every competitor's stack08:00 The play, step 2: the cloud flexibility trap, committed spend agreements, and what cockroach mode actually protects08:57 The play, step 3: a16z, 37signals, and Netflix chose three different answers, on purpose13:51 What to watch for next: this isn't anti-cloud, it's anti-default, and why cloud transformation mandates quietly die around month 1215:00 The buyer's job: ask "compared to what?" on every consequential decisionResources Mentioned Andreessen Horowitz, "The Cost of the Cloud: A Trillion Dollar Paradox" (Sarah Wang & Martin Casado, 2021)37signals / DHH's public cloud exit writeup (Basecamp, HEY)Netflix Open ConnectDropbox's pre-IPO infrastructure buildoutAWS US East 1 outage, October 2025Further reading: Most of Your Infrastructure Can Be Standard. Some of It Shouldn't Be. — the six-part decision filter for identifying which infrastructure choices actually deserve a comparison against the default, built directly from this episodeAbout the ShowSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today’s Playbook is one you’re facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Buy on Purpose

  5. Sep 8 ·  Video

    How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend

    Approving a technology invoice is not the same as validating it. Tommi Ellis, Channel Director at Intratem, joins Max Clark to explain how companies can tell whether anyone is actually checking telecom and technology bills against contracts, inventory, services, and real usage. They get into roughly $4,000 a month found sitting unnoticed on a 270-line wireless account, larger audits recovering as much as $1.2 million annually, canceled services that continue getting billed, and why the first invoice after a new contract or service change deserves immediate scrutiny. They also break down why technology expense management often falls between IT and finance, what happens when years of vendor knowledge leave with one employee, and how a strong contract can quietly stop being a good deal when nobody checks what happens after signature. Run the six-point technology invoice audit:https://www.itbroker.com/blog/technology-invoice-audit Tommi Ellis:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommi-ellis-3a92b0112 Intratem:https://intratem.com/ More from Signed:https://www.itbroker.com/podcast Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    How to Tell If Anyone Is Actually Managing Your Technology Spend

  6. Sep 1 ·  Video

    How to Tell If Your MDR Provider Will Actually Stop an Attack

    You're paying an MDR provider to protect you. Most of them will alert you and wait for someone else to act. This conversation names the one question that tells you which one you actually bought. Know the answer before it's 2am and someone's waiting on you to decide. You signed a contract for managed detection and response. You assumed that meant somebody would step in and stop an attack while it was happening. For a lot of MDR providers, what you actually bought is guided remediation. They find the incident, tell your team what to do, and hand it back to you to execute. That distinction is the entire reason you're paying for this instead of running it yourself, and most buyers don't find out which one they signed for until they're the one on the call at 2am being asked what to do next. Miles Lowry, Senior Territory Manager at eSentire, has sold cybersecurity from every seat in the market, VAR, Nutanix, Rubrik, and eSentire, and he walks through the one question that exposes the gap before you sign. This conversation also covers where the same blind spot shows up everywhere else in a typical MDR evaluation. Buyers send RFPs to eighteen vendors and get eighteen generic capability dumps back instead of a real fit assessment. Rules of engagement quietly change depending on whether the compromised machine belongs to your CEO or your help desk. It also gets into DLP requests that get approved without anyone defining what they're actually trying to stop, and security licensing already sitting in your Microsoft contract that almost nobody has turned on. The buyers with the best MDR outcomes never send a broad RFP at all. Miles names the one question he says he'd ask first if he were sitting on the buyer's side of the table. Know the answer before it's 2am and someone's waiting on you to decide. Want the exact test to run against your own contract? Read the full breakdown: How to Tell If Your Managed Cybersecurity Provider Will Actually Respond During an Attack. Find Your SituationTen real moments from this conversation. Find the one that's actually happening to you right now, and jump straight there. Your CISO or security lead has been in the seat under two years, and you're not sure if that's a coincidence. → 21:44You sent an RFP to eighteen vendors, and now you're buried in decks that all say the same thing. → 26:35You can't get the budget to build the security program you're actually expected to deliver, and you know it. → 31:14You've never checked whether a breach on your watch creates personal liability for you, not just the company. → 40:53A vendor asked how much data you generate before you'd even deployed anything to measure it. → 42:36You've never actually asked your MDR provider whether they act on their own or call you first. → 55:31Nobody on your team could name, right now, who gets called first if your CEO's laptop gets hit tonight. → 57:25Someone asked for a DLP tool and you're not sure anyone can say what it's actually supposed to stop. → 1:10:43You've never tested whether your MDR provider can actually act without you, or whether you'd only find out during the incident. → 1:18:16You're paying for Microsoft E5 and you have no idea if the security features in it are actually turned on. → 1:25:53What We Get Into 26:35 Who is actually answering the RFP you think you wrote31:14 Why CISOs use a vendor to share the blame when something goes wrong40:53 Why most CISOs at one conference had personal liability insurance42:36 Why "how much data do you have" is a trick question55:31 The real MDR test: alert versus response57:25 Your CEO's laptop, and who's actually authorized to isolate it1:00:46 Who belongs in the room on the buyer's side and almost never is1:10:43 The DLP request nobody asked for and nobody can explain1:18:16 The one question to ask before you sign1:25:53 Paying for Microsoft E5 security licensing you never turned onWhat We Mentioned eSentireCrowdStrike (Falcon Complete)Sentinel OneFortinetPalo Alto CortexMicrosoft Defender, Sentinel, and EntraNutanixRubrikVeeamGartnerNIST CSFLog4jTenableAbout Miles LowryMiles Lowry is Senior Territory Manager at eSentire, where he works directly with security leaders on managed detection and response. He's spent 14 years in enterprise technology sales, moving through VAR, Nutanix, Rubrik, and now eSentire, giving him a rare, direct view into where buyers get MDR wrong before they ever sign.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloud-ai-expert/Company: https://esentire.com About SignedSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly.Listen: itbroker.com/podcast About Signed The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers. Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can tell you what actually determined whether the deal worked, not what the deck promised. New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast. Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    How to Tell If Your MDR Provider Will Actually Stop an Attack

  7. Aug 25 ·  Video

    Playbook: Cloud Cost Ownership

    A VP spent weeks building a plan to cut an eight figure cloud bill. He walked into one meeting with engineering. Three words killed it: not my KPI. The bill lands on whoever gets handed the mandate to cut it, but the authority to actually change it sits with someone else entirely, usually engineering, whose time is already spoken for by other priorities. A FinOps platform will find you the free money, orphaned resources, idle instances, the stuff nobody has to defend. It won't touch the savings that require someone to decide engineering's time is worth spending on this instead of shipping. Run this before you spend a dollar on another cloud cost initiative Name the owner of the cost. Whoever's name is on the number when it climbs, that's accountability.Name the owner of the fix. Whoever controls the roadmap and the sprint, that's authority.Check if they're the same person. If yes, you have a real cost cutting project. If no, "not my KPI" is already on its way.Check if the cost is tied to margin, not just revenue. A product can bring in real revenue and still be a bad bet once its true cost is on the table. Revenue won't show you that. Margin will.Check if that picture reaches the executive team. Visibility only moves the decision if it lands with the people who can reprioritize across teams.If items one and two name different people, and item five has no answer, you're looking at an org chart gap. No FinOps platform touches that. Map who actually holds the authority before you spend the next dollar. The full checklist, plus the question most teams skip, is here. You can buy the platform. If the wrong person still owns the decision, the bill doesn't move, and now you've paid for the privilege of watching it not move. The Playbook 01:29 The trigger and why it matters02:54 The mistake most buyers make05:19 The play, step 105:48 The play, step 206:17 The play, step 307:13 What to watch for nextResources mentioned FinOps platforms, the cost visibility tools that surface idle and orphaned cloud resourcesCost tagging systems, deployed across cloud and data center infrastructure to compare spend apples to applesAbout the showSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Cloud Cost Ownership

  8. Aug 18 ·  Video

    Playbook: Finding the Truth When Everyone Is Lying

    Every vendor stretches the truth somewhere in your sales process, and most buyers respond to all of it the same way, forgiving everything or torching a good deal over nothing. In this Playbook, Max Clark sorts vendor lies into three categories, a harmless stretch, one rep's invented promise, and a lie the whole company stands behind, and gives a different response for each. Then he turns the mirror on buyers, the shopped quote, the invented deadline, the fake executive sponsorship, because buyers run the same three plays back. Keep guessing which lie you just caught, or put someone neutral in the room who ends the guessing entirely. That's the only fix that actually works. Run this the next time a vendor claim doesn't sit right Creative embellishment. The provider is stretching into a category they do not quite fit, out in the open. Calling a router with a config page "SD WAN" is the pattern. Costs you nothing to see through. Note it, move on.One rep's invention. A specific promise nobody at the company authorized. "I text the CEO directly" is the tell. This is a person problem, not a company problem. Get a different rep, do not walk from the vendor over it.Institutional fiction. The whole sales org repeats the same claim with a straight face, and leadership blessed it. When the dishonesty is the official story, that is the provider you cut.Now run your own last vendor call through the same three buckets, from the vendor's side of the table. Telling three competitors they're each the front runner, that's your version of Bucket 1. Inventing a deadline that doesn't exist to force urgency, that's Bucket 2. Claiming executive sponsorship that doesn't exist because your whole team has quietly agreed to say it, that's Bucket 3. Keep guessing which lie you just caught, or put someone neutral in the room who ends the guessing entirely. That's the only fix that actually works. The Playbook 01:07 The trigger and why it matters02:47 The mistake most buyers make03:16 The play, step 103:46 The play, step 204:14 The play, step 304:31 What to watch for next Resources mentioned SD WAN, the capability category vendors most often mislabelPublic company 10-K filings, used to fact check inflated market share claimsAWS cloud spend, used as the scale comparison that exposes a fake top-customer claim About the showSigned is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Playbooks are the solo format, 10 to 15 minutes, one trigger, one specific play. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast. If the trigger in today's Playbook is one you're facing right now, book an intro call at itbroker.com. We help buyers make the right call the first time. Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom Full Transcript Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Playbook: Finding the Truth When Everyone Is Lying
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

The IT market is built for sellers, not buyers. That's why 80% of tech buyers regret their last major purchase. Deals take longer than they should. Teams get locked into platforms that don't fit, contracts they can't escape, and vendors they wouldn't choose again. The pitches, demos, and analyst reports are built to close deals, not help buyers make the right one. Signed is the podcast for the buyers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, talks with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals — the ones who can explain what actually determined whether the deal worked. Plus weekly Playbooks breaking down the moments that matter most: renewals, M&A, compliance mandates, office moves, budget cuts, and the specific plays that separate buyers who get it right from those who regret it. If you're responsible for choosing, negotiating, or living with the consequences of enterprise technology, this show is for you. New episodes weekly. An ITBroker.com podcast.

Information

  • Creator
    ITBroker.com
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    228
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020–2026 Information Technology Broker LLC
  • Show Website
    Signed

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