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AI is transforming cybersecurity: detecting threats faster, predicting attacks and even launching sophisticated cyberattacks. Learn how to harness AI’s power while mitigating its risks and build a robust defense against the evolving threat landscape. source

Overview Kasada’s bot mitigation platform aims to help companies defend against bot attacks by monitoring networks and chatter analysis, and then providing the tools necessary to stop them from attacking or disrupting systems. Nick Rieniets, field CTO at Kasada, demonstrates some of the key features of their bot mitigation system. Register Now source

Learn more about IDC’s research for technology leaders OR subscribe today to receive industry-leading research directly to your inbox. International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the technology markets. IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG Inc.), the world’s leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. Recently voted Analyst Firm of the Year for the third consecutive time, IDC’s Technology Leader Solutions provide you with expert guidance backed by our industry-leading research and advisory services, robust leadership and development programs, and best-in-class benchmarking and sourcing intelligence data from the industry’s most experienced advisors. Contact us today to learn more. Bob Multhaup is an adjunct research advisor with IDC’s IT Executive Programs (IEP), focusing on IT business and financial management. He has had extensive experience as a CIO, including serving as the divisional information officer for two Sandoz divisions, as vice president of IT for Henkel N.A., and as vice president of IT for Cognis Corp. In these positions, Bob worked in Europe managing large international IT organizations, developing strategic IT plans, aligning IT to business goals, and consolidating global IT costs and organizations. source

In today’s digital age, the need for reliable data backup and recovery solutions has never been more critical. Cyberthreats, hardware failures, and human errors are constant risks that can disrupt business continuity. Addressing these challenges by integrating advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies into data protection solutions can enhance data backup and recovery, providing real-world applications and highlighting the benefits of these technologies. The role of AI and ML in modern data protection AI and ML transform data backup and recovery by analyzing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and anomalies, enabling proactive threat detection and response. According to the Veeam 2024 Data Protection Trends Report, integrating AI and ML into cybersecurity tools is crucial for modern data protection. This integration facilitates real-time monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated responses to potential threats, significantly enhancing an organization’s security posture. For example, Veeam’s AI-driven solutions monitor data environments in real-time, detecting unusual activities that may indicate a cyberthreat, such as unauthorized access attempts or abnormal data transfers. This proactive approach enables swift responses, mitigating potential damage. Additionally, ML algorithms optimize the backup process by learning from historical data, ensuring critical data is protected and readily available for recovery. Impact on backup and recovery efficiency AI and ML can automate many manual tasks traditionally associated with backup and recovery, reducing the risk of human error. Automated systems handle routine tasks such as data validation, backup scheduling, and anomaly detection without human intervention. This ensures backups are performed consistently and accurately, freeing IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives. Predictive analytics and proactive recovery One significant advantage of AI in backup and recovery is its predictive capabilities. Predictive analytics allows systems to anticipate hardware failures, optimize storage management, and identify potential threats before they cause damage. By learning from historical data, AI systems can predict when a system might fail and automatically initiate preventative measures. This enhances system reliability and ensures data recovery processes are initiated before a failure is fully realized. Improved incident response AI-driven backup and recovery systems significantly improve incident response times. In the event of a system failure or cyberattack, AI can quickly diagnose the issue and execute a predefined recovery plan, minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity. For example, AI systems can monitor for signs of ransomware attacks by analyzing patterns and detecting unusual data access behaviors, triggering automatic responses to isolate and neutralize threats. Integration with IT operations Modern AI-powered backup solutions integrate seamlessly with broader IT operations. This integration facilitates better visibility and management of the entire IT environment, making it easier for organizations to maintain compliance and ensure data integrity. Tools like Veeam’s AI-driven solutions dynamically adjust backup processes based on current system performance and workload demands, optimizing resource utilization and ensuring that service level agreements (SLAs) are consistently met. Continuous improvement and learning AI and ML systems continuously learn and improve from the data they process. This means backup and recovery systems become more efficient over time, adapting to new threats and operational changes without requiring manual updates. This self-optimization ensures backup processes are always aligned with the latest best practices and technological advancements. Veeam’s approach to addressing integration challenges Veeam provides comprehensive training programs that equip IT professionals with the necessary skills to manage and optimize AI-driven data protection systems. These programs cover various aspects of AI and ML, from basic concepts to advanced implementation techniques. By offering these educational resources, Veeam helps bridge the skills gap, empowering organizations to build the required expertise in-house. Future trends in AI-driven data protection As AI and ML technologies continue to advance, their impact on data protection strategies will only grow. Emerging trends include AI-driven data privacy and compliance, self-healing systems, AI in threat intelligence, decentralized data protection, adaptive backup strategies, and sustainable data protection. Conclusion Integrating AI and ML into data backup and recovery processes enhances how organizations protect their vital information. These technologies streamline data protection, improve recovery times, and fortify defenses against new threats. Veeam’s AI-powered solutions provide a reliable framework, ensuring businesses maintain continuity and resilience. As AI and ML advance, adopting these technologies will equip organizations to handle evolving data challenges and enhance their security measures. With Veeam’s innovative solutions you can leverage the tools necessary to stay ahead in a dynamic digital environment. Learn more about how Veeam is bringing backup into the future with AI. About the author Veeam Dave Russell is Vice President, Enterprise Strategy at Veeam Software. Dave has 33 years of experience in the backup/recovery and storage management industry as a developer (IBM), industry analyst (Gartner) and strategist (IBM and Veeam). At Veeam, Dave is responsible for driving strategic product and go-to-market programs, spearheading industry engagement, and evangelizing Veeam’s vision for Modern Data Protection and Veeam in the Enterprise at key events across the globe. Follow Dave on Twitter @BackupDave, or LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/backupdave/. source

Technology innovations attract significant interest among CIOs, CTOs, and technology leaders, who are always looking for ways to improve business results with the use of innovative and transformational technologies. Causal, predictive, and generative artificial intelligence (AI) have become commonplace in enterprise IT, as the hype around what AI solutions can deliver is turning into reality and practical use cases. Innovative organizations, however, are pushing AI even further, introducing more opportunities for enterprise to transform IT work through advanced AI solutions. Transformational power of agentic AI By autonomously working alongside humans and other AI tools, agentic AI aims to completely transform enterprise IT work. Autonomous AI agents are software entities capable of performing tasks on their own, rather than only responding to queries from humans. Agentic AI agents analyze current environments, including historical IT and lines of business-specific issues and resolutions to drive automated issue resolutions or present IT and enterprise users with recommendations on the best actions to take. These agents can surface key insights in real time and with full context, which is essential for teams working on resolving critical IT incidents. BMC recently introduced a series of AI agents within the BMC Helix platform. They are powered by BMC HelixGPT to perform a variety of different roles for internal teams acting as digital assistants, including data analysis and reporting, curation of knowledge content, self-service management, and more. Democratizing data insights: The BMC Insight Finder is an autonomous AI agent that simplifies data analysis and reporting by enabling users to interact with complex data through natural language. This agent autonomously surfaces timely insights to help employees make better data-driven decisions in a fraction of the time a worker would need to analyze huge data sets. Enhancing knowledge base usability: The Knowledge Curator AI bot acts like a digital librarian, continuously optimizing knowledge resources by ensuring content is current, unduplicated, and easily accessible. The AI agent reduces the load on service desks and even guides authors with intelligent suggestions to improve research findings and the readability of final outputs. Improving enterprise-wide productivity: The Employee Navigator agentic AI bot helps employees quickly resolve IT issues, submit HR requests, or retrieve critical information for improving work performance. By intelligently pulling data from multiple sources to provide a single, concise answer, the AI agent drastically improves resolution time and enhances overall productivity. Recent enhancements to BMC Helix AIOps integrate service management, observability, and vulnerability data with automated workflows, helping IT manage complexity and alert noise. BMC Helix AIOps helps teams accelerate incident response, manage change risks, and resolve vulnerabilities before they impact the business. Reducing change failures in complex systems: Managing change risks is crucial to preventing incidents. The BMC Helix AIOps Change Risk Advisor uses agentic AI to predict the risk of changes, providing a change risk score that helps IT teams focus on high-risk changes, while fast-tracking low-risk updates. As a result, they improve CI/CD velocity and cross-team collaboration, particularly between DevOps and service management teams. Eliminating exposure to vulnerabilities: Managing vulnerabilities is constant, and the new BMC Helix Vulnerability Resolver helps IT Ops, security operations, and DevOps teams improve compliance and risk management with automated patching or workarounds, using AI-powered Vulnerability Best Action Recommendations (VBAR). The Google collaboration Google and BMC began a partnership based on the shared vision of transforming enterprise IT with the power of AI. As Chris Thompson, Head of GTM, Strategic AI, and ISV Growth at Google says: “We’ve been working together for some time, and I’d love to give BMC credit. They were, what I would consider, a very early adopter.” BMC HelixGPT supports Gemini, Google Cloud’s set of generative AI (genAI) models, to power the AI journey of mutual customers. With BMC Helix now integrated with Gemini models, the collaboration is empowering IT teams with enhanced flexibility, faster resolutions, and deeper insights, all while delivering cost savings. As Thompson further notes about BMC: “They decided to be very bold and very forward thinking and adopt not just generative AI but then to move into the agentic workflows.” Open platform improves IT efficiency while keeping costs under control BMC Helix, powered by BMC HelixGPT, features an open-architecture deployment that allows customers to retain their enterprise data in place. This open approach enables IT organizations to take advantage of hyperscaler credits available to them. In addition, BMC HelixGPT offers a bring-your-own-AI approach, empowering enterprises to maintain control over data governance, optimize costs, and bring their AI project to life faster. To see how BMC Helix can help you transform enterprise IT work with agentic AI, visit here for more information or contact BMC. About the author:Stela Udovicic is the senior director, solutions marketing management at BMC Software. source

00:00 100:00:03,880 –> 00:00:05,600Welcome to CIO Leadership Live.200:00:05,600 –> 00:00:09,520I’m Lee Rennick, executive directorof CIO communities for cio.com.300:00:09,920 –> 00:00:12,160And I’m very excitedand honored to welcome400:00:12,160 –> 00:00:15,920Annette Cooper, director of dataanalytics at Graham, to the show today.500:00:15,960 –> 00:00:17,640Annette, could you pleaseintroduce yourself600:00:17,640 –> 00:00:20,600and maybe tell us a little bitabout your current role?700:00:20,600 –> 00:00:20,840Yeah.800:00:20,840 –> 00:00:24,800So as you see in Annette Cooper I’mthe director of data and analytics here900:00:24,800 –> 00:00:25,760at Graham Construction.1000:00:25,760 –> 00:00:29,400So Graham is one of the largestconstruction companies in Canada.1100:00:29,840 –> 00:00:33,200And we also have a pretty big presencedown in the United States.1200:00:33,320 –> 00:00:36,600my role is leading the data and analyticspractice here.1300:00:36,720 –> 00:00:40,800And I’ve been at Graham about three yearsand I was the first one of me.1400:00:41,080 –> 00:00:43,800So data and analytics is new to Graham.1500:00:43,800 –> 00:00:46,120and we’re all going onthe journey together.1600:00:46,120 –> 00:00:47,320That is wonderful.1700:00:47,320 –> 00:00:48,440That must be incredible.1800:00:48,440 –> 00:00:51,720Well, I really appreciate you joiningus here today and thank you so much.1900:00:52,040 –> 00:00:53,400So we’ve develop this series,2000:00:53,400 –> 00:00:56,400to support the technology leaderin their tech and leadership journey.2100:00:56,760 –> 00:00:59,480So first question and I ask everyonethis question.2200:00:59,480 –> 00:01:00,840Could you please tell us a little bit2300:01:00,840 –> 00:01:03,840about your own careerpath and leadership journey today?2400:01:04,160 –> 00:01:06,560Any lessons learned along the waythat you could share?2500:01:06,560 –> 00:01:09,280Just sharinggenerally about your journey so far?2600:01:09,280 –> 00:01:12,400I think the lesson at the end of itall, I’ll do that.2700:01:12,400 –> 00:01:16,680First is there’s no one way to havea career path, particularly not in it.2800:01:17,200 –> 00:01:20,080And when I started outworking 20 years ago,2900:01:20,080 –> 00:01:23,080there wasn’t reallyeven this role that I’m sitting in now.3000:01:23,120 –> 00:01:27,160So I think the biggest lesson is,you know, do it your way.3100:01:27,160 –> 00:01:30,600There’s no there’s no pathway,there’s no prescription.3200:01:30,960 –> 00:01:35,560So I started offas, a researcher working in academics,3300:01:36,040 –> 00:01:40,320very much on the analysisside of the data world, and then ended up3400:01:40,400 –> 00:01:43,560working in central governmentin New Zealand for a long time3500:01:44,040 –> 00:01:45,840as a policy researcher.3600:01:45,840 –> 00:01:49,320And then I got offered the opportunityto move into a leadership role.3700:01:49,320 –> 00:01:52,600And I think that’s where I foundmy first real fit,3800:01:53,080 –> 00:01:55,680or feeling likethat was something that I did really well3900:01:55,680 –> 00:01:58,680and something that I really enjoyedand could bring skill to.4000:01:58,760 –> 00:02:01,560And then I’ve sort of grown from thereso much.4100:02:01,560 –> 00:02:05,640Like I said, it’s been a very non-linearmillennial style,4200:02:05,640 –> 00:02:10,040kind of twisty turny career,and I’ve followed my interests.4300:02:10,840 –> 00:02:12,960and I’ve also followed4400:02:12,960 –> 00:02:16,520other leaders that I thought were peoplethat I could learn from.4500:02:16,520 –> 00:02:19,080And as opportunities have come along,I’ve taken them.4600:02:19,080 –> 00:02:23,800So I moved away from governmentand into core technology4700:02:23,800 –> 00:02:25,800like I am now, because it was something4800:02:25,800 –> 00:02:28,120that I hadn’t done before,and it was something that interests me.4900:02:28,120 –> 00:02:31,240So just leveraging the wide rangeof skills that I had,5000:02:31,680 –> 00:02:36,360sort of in and around other leadersthat I was interested in learning from.5100:02:36,520 –> 00:02:37,560I love that, and,5200:02:37,560 –> 00:02:41,200you know, you have a lot of experiencein different areas, especially government.5300:02:41,560 –> 00:02:45,000But I’m sure there’s a lot of processand ways of processing things5400:02:45,000 –> 00:02:49,960and developing things that werevery different to, how you do things now.5500:02:50,000 –> 00:02:52,960But it probably helps and impacts on your,your role.5600:02:52,960 –> 00:02:56,880you know, there at Graham,every different place that I’ve worked5700:02:56,880 –> 00:03:00,240has given me a slightly different wayof looking at the world and also5800:03:00,240 –> 00:03:04,560a slightly different set of skillsfor analyzing how to get things done.5900:03:05,120 –> 00:03:08,560You know, is this a place where wewe really focused on process?6000:03:08,600 –> 00:03:11,280Is this a place wherewe’re really focused on relationship?6100:03:11,280 –> 00:03:15,520You know, what matters to the peoplesitting at the top table?6200:03:16,080 –> 00:03:17,840That’s the samewhether you’re working for,6300:03:17,840 –> 00:03:21,640elected official or,you know, the people that I work for here.6400:03:21,640 –> 00:03:22,400So, yeah,6500:03:22,400 –> 00:03:26,880it’s all just about that skill of howdo you get done what you need to get done.6600:03:27,120 –> 00:03:30,960And the diversity of my experiencehas given me lots of opportunities6700:03:30,960 –> 00:03:32,480to flex that muscle.6800:03:32,480 –> 00:03:34,200Well that’s wonderful.Thank you for sharing that.6900:03:34,200 –> 00:03:35,720I really appreciate that.7000:03:35,720 –> 00:03:39,240And congratulationsto Graham on the CIO Canada Award winning7100:03:39,240 –> 00:03:41,120project on enterprise data.7200:03:41,120 –> 00:03:43,600So I would love to learn a little bitmore about the project7300:03:43,600 –> 00:03:45,440and maybe how it transformed the business.7400:03:46,640 –> 00:03:46,920Yeah.7500:03:46,920 –> 00:03:50,720So Enterprise Data Platform was a greatbig audacious7600:03:50,720 –> 00:03:54,080goal, that I setwhen it came in about three years ago.7700:03:54,080 –> 00:03:57,120we as a business7800:03:57,120 –> 00:04:00,720were a little bit behind onsome of our use of data.7900:04:00,720 –> 00:04:04,640And I think that’s probablyjust the reality of a lot of businesses.8000:04:04,960 –> 00:04:06,560We all like to talk about that.8100:04:06,560 –> 00:04:07,800We’re really data enabled.8200:04:07,800 –> 00:04:09,560But reality is right.8300:04:09,560 –> 00:04:11,920It costs money and it takes time.8400:04:11,920 –> 00:04:16,200So because Graham has grown significantlythrough the journey acquisition,8500:04:16,480 –> 00:04:20,840one of the key things was we neededa platform that was going to be agnostic8600:04:20,840 –> 00:04:25,200to our main ERP or the ERP,you know, all the other things.8700:04:25,560 –> 00:04:28,320We wanted to have somethingthat was data specific.8800:04:28,320 –> 00:04:31,920So we went about building the platformitself,8900:04:32,120 –> 00:04:36,600where we could bring informationfrom across all of our major organizations9000:04:36,800 –> 00:04:40,560and across Graham’s disparate systemstogether9100:04:40,880 –> 00:04:44,880in a place that we could use itparticularly focused on operations.9200:04:44,880 –> 00:04:48,040So project operations, building9300:04:48,040 –> 00:04:51,600bridges, building giant highrises, the stuff we do at grain.9400:04:52,640 –> 00:04:52,960The other9500:04:52,960 –> 00:04:57,080thing that that in and of itself wasa big task, but the other thing was about9600:04:57,080 –> 00:05:01,440how do you get that out to people in a waythat is useful and usable9700:05:01,880 –> 00:05:05,760and recognizing the challengesof the folks in our field,9800:05:06,040 –> 00:05:09,040so they’re not sitting at desksall day long.9900:05:10,200 –> 00:05:13,440so we also built what we refer to as our,insights hub.10000:05:13,920 –> 00:05:17,120So that’s the thing that sitson top of the enterprise data platform.10100:05:17,120 –> 00:05:19,960That’s where all of our reports arethat we’ve built,10200:05:19,960 –>

Agentic AI promises to transform enterprise IT work. For CIOs and IT leaders, this means improved operational efficiency, data-driven decision making and accelerated innovation. Agentic AI’s ability to assess changing conditions in service operations (ServiceOps) and proactively recommend steps to reduce change failures sets the technology apart from traditional AI and automation tools. But before we explore the potential impact of agentic AI on ServiceOps, let’s look at the change approval process in most large enterprises. Traditionally, the manager from the change advisory board (CAB) coordinates the teams and stakeholders, makes final decisions to approve or reject proposed changes, and directs the implementation of changes. However, the DevOps teams that release new features constantly within the same organization don’t go through the traditional change approval process. DevOps may push thousands of changes daily, and the CAB process is simply too slow. DevOps teams follow their own practices of using continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools to automatically merge code changes and automate testing steps to deploy changes more frequently and reliably. The lack of a single approach to delivering changes increases the risk of introducing bugs or performance issues in production. When change occurs, organizations often lack the visibility and understanding of the change’s impact on the organization’s IT ecosystem. With the complexity of modern business operations and the accelerated pace of change driven by DevOps, organizations face a growing demand for a simpler way for IT service and operations teams to balance speed and risk. Agentic AI and the new AI agent Some of the most exciting capabilities of agentic AI are its ability to interact with a wide variety of tools and data, generating insights, and executing tasks in a proactive manner. Imagine an AI agent specifically designed to guide change management and DevOps teams to deploy system and software changes more rapidly and reliably. The AI agent proactively identifies risky changes by analyzing operations and service management data together, providing a change risk score, summarizing the insights, and recommending best actions — all in one place. With this information, teams can ask the AI agent additional questions such as “Should I approve the change?” or “Can I look at similar changes?” Using an AI agent, the CAB and DevOps teams get the answers needed to confidently determine the next best actions. For example, when a database upgrade is requested, the Change Risk Advisor AI agent within BMC Helix AIOps gathers historical operations and service data relevant to the database service, helping IT teams understand the risk of deploying the change. The Change Risk Advisor AI agent combs through past situations or problems and assesses the current service health status to recommend the best actions. If further due diligence is recommended, change management or DevOps teams can interact with the AI agent to ask further questions like “Who is the change owner?” or “Can I look at change collision?” Visibility into the real-time deployment landscape and additional context around the change enables both the CAB and DevOps teams to collaborate and apply better actions that reduce change failures. GenAI and agentic AI: The future of ServiceOps Generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI play a powerful role in ServiceOps. When used to complement predictive and causal AI, service and operations teams can use AI-based risk assessment for changes. BMC ServiceOps offers a new operating model for accelerating change while predicting and managing risk across the enterprise. By integrating data and workflows between ITSM and AIOps tools, the BMC HelixGPT Change Risk Advisor agentic AI agent enables smarter, data-driven decision making. With agentic AI, CAB and DevOps teams get: Insights and recommendations throughout the entire change process Proactive change risk predictions for all changes Reduced outages caused by high-risk changes Accelerated change deployment without change anxiety Higher success rates by lowering change failures Moving forward We’re in a new era of AI service operations and management. BMC Helix is already paving the path for successful outcomes with BMC HelixGPT, an agentic system integrated into the BMC Helix Platform that powers ServiceOps. Discover how agentic AI can simplify change management and transform ServiceOps into a proactive force that improves business results in your organization. Visit here for more information or contact BMC. source

Ian Tyler-Clarke, an executive counselor at Info-Tech Research Group in the UK, said not every cloud company is thrilled with Microsoft joining CISPE.  “There are concerns that Microsoft’s inclusion may create internal tensions with other major vendors, such as AWS. Despite this, the overall impact is anticipated to be a positive step towards fairness in the European cloud market,” Tyler-Clarke said. “Microsoft’s membership in CISPE represents a significant advancement towards fairer licensing practices, enhanced collaboration and the reduction of operational burdens through the suspension of certain licensing audits. This move is expected to foster a competitive and cooperative environment, benefiting both customers and providers.” AWS’s board representative, Stéphane Ducable, VP for public policy for EMEA at AWS, voted against Microsoft’s acceptance, according to someone familiar with CISPE’s board deliberations. When contacted by CIO, Ducable did not reply, but another Amazon official, Harry Staight, the international policy and media relations lead at AWS, responded, saying “I can confirm we are declining to comment.” source

Having clarity of vision and the ability to execute while staying true to your and your organization’s value systems will help you establish credibility and reliability within your workplace and the industry. Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, changed the way I operate and made room for deep work, focus and clarity of thought as I do what I need to do. My practices in creating a distraction-free space for myself where I can find the clarity of my thoughts and visions have helped me work through some mission-critical projects including the one that got me nominated for the Emerging ICT Leaders Award.  I often work through the parting message I want to leave my audience with on any platform in those deep work sessions. My intent for the message and the keywords that I used to impart that message are often the product of the distraction-free spaces I have created for myself at work and home. Every piece of work product – whether it’s a piece of software or an article – I aim to achieve in a distraction-free space so I can give it the meaningful impact I want it to have on the world.  As a leader, your clarity of thought, purpose and clear understanding of your organization’s strategic priorities will form the foundation of what your team can deliver to make the company’s mission a reality. In the tech industry, there is always new shiny fish to distract you. Today, it’s artificial intelligence (AI). Yesterday it was blockchain. I’m not saying those technologies don’t add value, but they only add value for the right use cases with the right setup.  source

00:00 Hello. Good afternoon, and welcome to CIO Leadership Live. I’m your host, Maryfran Johnson, CEO of Maryfran Johnson Media and the former editor in chief of CIO magazine. Since November 2017 this video show and audio podcast has been produced by the editors of CIO.com and the digital media division of foundry, which is an IDG company. Our sponsor for this episode is Veeam Software, a global market leader in data resilience. Veeam delivers a wide range of solutions for data backup and recovery, data portability and security and data intelligence. Veeam leaders believe that every business should be able to bounce forward after a data disruption with confidence and control wherever and whenever they need it, headquartered outside Seattle, Washington with offices in more than 30 countries. Veeam protects more than 550,000 customers worldwide, including 74% of the global 2000 to learn more, visit veeam.com website. Now onward to today’s guest, I’m joined today by Veeam Software, CIO Nathan Kurtz Nate joined Veeam in June of 2022 he leads the corporate technology team and is responsible for the company’s global business systems and all of its internal technologies. Prior to Veeam, he led the Technology Services team at F5 networks, where he spent more than 10 years leading it through periods of significant growth and helping to transform overall customer and employee experience at this rapidly growing tech provider before F5 networks, Nate spent 11 plus years at Arthur Andersen and KPMG serving as part of the global technology and telecommunication practices, where he led both sales and delivery teams for many of their high tech customers, including Microsoft and Amazon. Nate, welcome. It’s wonderful to have you here today. Thanks,Maryfran, really nice to be here as well. Thanks for for inviting me.Okay, well, I’m going to take full advantage of your expertise with my first question here about data resiliency. Now, what does that term mean to your seat CIO customers today, versus the data backup and data storage needs a kind of data housekeeping that we’ve all heard about for many, many years in the industry. When you talk about data resiliency, what exactly are we talking about?Yeah, so I think, you know, in my my career in tech, I think if you were to go back 1015, years, people tended to talk about, like you said, data backup and recovery. It was pretty basic kind of cut and dry. I think, though, as as this space has evolved and we start talking about data resiliency, it’s become more and more important as time has has gone on, as a CIO, we can recover applications and systems pretty quick. What we can never recover or recreate is our data. And so this is the one area. This is truly the keys to what we are responsible for is is recovering that data in a very complex environment, too. And so it’s the world is becoming more complex. The amount of data that we have as a world is growing. It’s doubling every year. I think the last term I heard was 150 zettabytes. And it’s, continuing to expand. And so not only do we have this rapid growth of data, but we also have growth and complexity in terms of the number of of systems, cloud providers, and where it’s all residing. And so with all this, I would say that macro level environment, in terms of our data, it’s just become more and more critical to be resilient when it comes to it. And for Veeam, we we use this bounce forward slogan because we want, we want our products, but we also want the industry as a whole to be able to very quickly be resilient and recover if there is an incident with their data.Well, you mentioned that in years past, once you could recover applications, but data would be lost. Talk a little bit about the kind of protections that are in place today. I take it that as technologies have evolved, the problem of losing that data forever. I mean, we’re not talking about ransomware here. We’re talking about data that is harmed in a disruption. What is it about technologies and the advances of them that are protecting that data better today? Yeah,yeah. So we tend to, we tend to think of it in a framework, type approach. Sure And so, and I think, I think we’ve kind of talked about this a little bit already, but we tend to think of it in kind of five pillars. When you have just your your basic data backup, are you? Are you on a at the frequency that you want? Are you storing your your data within your systems? But then are you able? The next kind of pillar would be recovery. Are you able to bring it back? Then we get into the areas that I think you’re you’re really asking about, which is on that data portability. Can you recover data from any anywhere to anywhere? Because we’re in a very like I mentioned, a complex environment where we have information being stored both in systems. They could be local, in your own data center. They could be at a Co Location facility where you have a hosted data center. They could be in the cloud, you know, the major cloud providers being AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and so forth. Can you recover between those then we get into data security, and that’s kind of that fourth pillar that we tend to think about, which is, when you have your information stored somewhere, does it have integrity? Is it? Is it free from I guess the common term would be, you know you could, we’ve talked about like viruses or ransomware. Do you know that it has you have assurances and trust in that data, and that’s what these products today are allowing CIOs to have, is we know that these where our data sits, there’s a high degree