• Ep059: Business Applications Transforming Industries with Cohere, Epiq and Forcura
    Oct 16 2024

    Register here for AWS re:Invent 2024, Dec 2-6, Las Vegas, NV

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    Hear the generative AI journeys of Cohere, Epiq, and Forcura, including their market assessments, use case prioritization, responses to ethical and security considerations, while discussing generative AI's impact on healthcare, legal industries, and business applications.

    Topics Include:

    • Panel Introductions by David Cristini
    • Where is Focura at in their AI journey
    • Summary of Epiq’s AI journey to date
    • Cohere’s AI journey to date
    • Where did each company begin and assessing the market opportunities
    • Prioritizing of use cases for Epiq
    • Focura’s quick focus and results with generative AI
    • Simplifying healthcare and improving patient experience with generative AI
    • How do experiments and proof of concepts develop into production?
    • Indicators that Cohere uses to identify customers ready to move fast
    • Usecases that allows Forcura customers to move forward
    • Guidance on engaging the Executive Team – getting Executive alignment
    • How are legal and healthcare customers responding to AI solutions and challenges
    • Changes of priority from customer advisory panels
    • Evolving questions and concerns of functionality and data
    • Some customers reporting AI evaluation is slowing them down
    • Usecases that are easier to start off with to gain trust and traction
    • Dealing with AI concerns of ethics, security and privacy – managing objections
    • Understanding ethics concerns – privacy can often be about where data resides
    • Customers often want “traceability”
    • Accuracy and reducing hallucinations – AI comes with risk, business have to decide on business risk
    • Future facing – what are we excited about?
    • Generative AI is excellent at translation services – ROI is excellent
    • Business applications and social impact of generative AI


    Participants:

    • MaryAnn Wofford – VP of Sales, Cohere
    • Paul O'Hagan - Senior Director Product Management – AI Platform, Epiq
    • Annie Mueller Erstling – COO, Forcura
    • David Cristini - Director, ISV Sales North America, AWS

    See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

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    49 mins
  • Ep058: Boost Employee Productivity with AI agents powered by Amazon Q
    Oct 8 2024

    Register here for AWS re:Invent 2024, Dec 2-6, Las Vegas, NV

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    J.B. Brown, VP of Engineering at Smartsheet, shares how integrating Amazon Q with Smartsheet's flexible work management platform has streamlined productivity and enhanced employee support through AI-driven automation.

    Topics Include:

    • Introduction by J.B. Brown, VP of Engineering at Smartsheet.
    • Story about improving productivity
    • Context about Smartsheet as an enterprise-scale work management platform.
    • Examples of Smartsheet use in healthcare, TV streaming, and small businesses.
    • Focus on not changing how companies work, offering flexibility.
    • Integration with popular enterprise tech stack tools like Okta and Slack.
    • Automations in Smartsheet for notifications and data synchronization.
    • Smartsheet’s customer base includes large enterprises and small businesses.
    • Overview of Smartsheet’s scale: 15 million users and $1 billion revenue.
    • Smartsheet’s employee support system, including 270+ "Ask Us" Slack channels.
    • Mention of AWS and the introduction of Amazon Q Business.
    • Building a Smartsheet Q Business app for streamlined employee support.
    • Setting up an Amazon Q Business app with proprietary data sources.
    • Implementation of Slack integration for Smartsheet employee support.
    • Example of AI summarizing Slack threads for improved efficiency.
    • Demo of Amazon Q Business outperforming human experts in knowledge retrieval.
    • Emphasizing the value of reducing response time and decision-making delays.
    • Future development plans: Smartsheet-Amazon Q connector.
    • Using AI to interrogate and manage Smartsheet project data.
    • Invitation to AI-minded Smartsheet customers to test the new connector.


    Participants:

    • J.B. Brown - VP of Engineering at Smartsheet


    See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

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    24 mins
  • Ep057: Gen AI in Cybersecurity: Innovations, Threats, and Defence Strategies with Darktrace
    Oct 1 2024

    AWS's Shahid Mohammed and Darktrace's Michael Beck discuss how generative AI innovations are transforming cybersecurity by both enhancing defences and introducing new, sophisticated threat management strategies.

    Topics Include:

    • Shahid Mohammed introduces himself as a lead solution architect at AWS.
    • Mike Beck is Global Chief Information Security Officer at Darktrace.
    • Darktrace specializes in AI-driven cybersecurity solutions for digital environments.
    • Darktrace secures multiple digital data pots: email, network, cloud, SaaS, and endpoint.
    • The conversation focuses on innovation in cybersecurity through AI.
    • Mike emphasizes the benefits of Gen AI despite its security risks.
    • Gen AI enables more complex, targeted attacks against organizations.
    • Attackers use Gen AI to tailor attacks through phishing and deepfakes.
    • Gen AI increases phishing complexity by eliminating common detection cues.
    • Data privacy risks arise when large models process sensitive business data.
    • Businesses must be mindful of AI’s impact on data sovereignty and security.
    • Shahid compares the cybersecurity space to an arms race due to Gen AI.
    • Mike stresses the importance of choosing the right AI for each task.
    • Darktrace uses unsupervised machine learning and Gen AI together for defense.
    • AI is essential for scaling cybersecurity efforts given today's threat complexity.
    • Darktrace relies on AWS cloud for compute power, scaling, and innovation.
    • AWS infrastructure helps accelerate Darktrace's R&D and operations securely.
    • Security leaders should implement Gen AI policies and training.
    • Mike advises technical controls and monitoring for safe Gen AI use.
    • Gen AI is here to stay, but businesses must handle its security implications carefully.


    Participants:

    • Michael Beck – Global CISO - Darktrace
    • Shahid Mohammed – Solution Architect Manager – Amazon Web Services


    See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

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    23 mins
  • Ep056: Enable Salesforce applications with Amazon Bedrock
    Sep 24 2024

    Daryl Martis of Salesforce and Rashna Chadha of AWS share how Amazon Bedrock integrates with Salesforce to enhance AI applications, highlighting the partnership's strategic benefits, AI model customization, and secure deployment options.

    Topics Include:

    • Introduction to Amazon Bedrock and Salesforce partnership.
    • Overview of Amazon Bedrock as an API-based generative AI service.
    • The strategic collaboration between AWS and Salesforce.
    • Salesforce Data Cloud and its integration with Amazon Bedrock.
    • Overview of Salesforce Einstein and its use of Amazon SageMaker.
    • Recent AI launches between Salesforce and AWS, including Slack AI and MuleSoft.
    • Use cases of AI services like Amazon Textract within Salesforce.
    • Bringing Your Own Large Language Model (BYO LLM) with Bedrock.
    • Foundation models offered by Amazon Bedrock (Anthropic, Cohere, Llama).
    • Overview of security, privacy, and compliance in Bedrock AI services.
    • Salesforce Data Cloud’s unified customer data and real-time AI capabilities.
    • Bedrock’s support for custom AI model evaluation and metrics.
    • Consumption models in Bedrock: on-demand vs. provision throughput.
    • Bedrock’s agent capabilities for real-world applications like scheduling.
    • Demo of using Amazon Bedrock models within Salesforce.


    Participants:

    • Daryl Martis – Director of Product Management, Einstein AI - Salesforce
    • Rashna Chadha – AI/ML Specialist – Principal Solution Architect – Amazon Web Services


    See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

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    38 mins
  • Ep055: Drive Product Adoption with Personalized AI-Powered Experiences with Autodesk
    Sep 17 2024

    Ashish Arora, Head of Engineering & Machine Learning, Product Analytics at Autodesk, shares how personalized AI-powered experiences and real-time data can drive product adoption, featuring insights into Autodesk’s transformation journey, leveraging machine learning, and delivering actionable recommendations to millions of users.

    Topics Include:

    • Real-time data description and examples
    • Leveraging AWS for real time and generative AI services
    • Autodesk’s journey leveraging AWS to transform architecture and deliver personalized insights
    • Overview of Autodesk and product portfolio
    • Utilizing data gathered for customers
    • Personalized data-driven insights for customers on Autocad and other products
    • Descriptive insights: providing usage data for customers
    • Prescriptive insights: Making recommendations to customers based on their workflows
    • Predictive insights: Using ML to recommend products and features
    • Autodesk processes 100+ billion events across all products, delivered 350+ million insights to customers, served to 3.5 million customers
    • Example walkthrough – Rachael
    • Architecture of Autodesk data and insight process
    • Leveraging LLMs – Sagemaker and Bedrock
    • Bringing it altogether
    • Session wrap up


    Participants:

    • Ashish Arora – Head of Engineering & ML, Product Analytics - Autodesk
    • Brian Slater – Principal Solutions Architect – Amazon Web Services
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    29 mins
  • Ep054: Presenting Security to the Board of Directors with Diligent, Sentinel One & Tenable
    Sep 10 2024

    A panel discussion on presenting on security and data to Boards of Directors, focusing on metrics, ROI, generative AI, securing intellectual property, and strategic board engagement.

    Topics Include:

    • What security metrics are most valuable for Board of Directors
    • Articulating ROI of security program
    • Quantifying benefits of security program
    • Sales enablement of the security team
    • Driving efficiencies within the business with generative AI and more
    • Quantifying business and template-based reporting to Boards with Diligent software
    • Leveraging consultants and 3rd parties to leverage messages to Board of Directors
    • Managing and communicating data posture and risk management
    • Working with data leadership, securing intellectual property
    • Challenges of labelling data
    • Educating boards on software architecture principles and generative AI
    • High focus and techniques for securing IP
    • Enrolling Boards with generative AI use cases and innovation
    • Creating communities of excellence
    • Gamifying security and generative AI to increase internal knowledge
    • Q&A 1: Taking action on a summarized document
    • Q&A 2: Mental model for evaluative SaaS partners
    • Q&A 3: Using the board to influence budgetary decisions
    • Session wrap up


    Participants:

    • Satheesh Ravala - Chief Technology Officer, Diligent
    • Josh Blackwelder – Deputy CISO, Sentinel One
    • Robert Huber - Chief Security Officer, Head of Tenable Research, President Tenable Public
    • Karen Henlsey - Principal WW Data & Generative AI Strategist, AWS
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    46 mins
  • Ep053: Building Generative AI Powered Security Assistants with Amazon Bedrock
    Sep 3 2024

    Lacework’s VP and Head of Engineering Arash Nikkar, and Product and Security Software Engineer Teddy Reed, discuss their work with generative AI and Amazon Bedrock, focusing on threat detection, chat interface improvements, and the rapid development of AI-driven solutions.

    Topics Include:

    • Introducing Lacework with Arash Nikkar
    • Working with AWS and Bedrock
    • Focusing on threat detection
    • Lacework ingests over a trillion events each day
    • Composite alerts for detecting anomalies
    • Developing and improving the chat interface
    • Teddy Reed talking chat interface improvements
    • Reviewing the architecture
    • Fast engagement with generative AI / AWS Bedrock
    • The rapid delivery with Bedrock – took 20% of expected time
    • Best practice – build in time to review and verify responses
    • Measuring customer’s engagement and return frequency and feedback
    • Understanding customer sentiment and topic analysis
    • Achieving 60% completed results and feedback
    • Transparency of source, response
    • Enabling assistant to have more access to data from LLM
    • Using AWS’ model evaluator, raising the accuracy scores
    • Moving everything over to Bedrock for multiple reasons
    • Familiarity of AWS tools helpful for all development and security teams
    • Always challenging assumptions – is chat interface the right interface?
    • Q&A 1: Using vector database for analysis, using results as system prompt
    • Q&A 2: Approaching cost-optimization and balancing ROI
    • Q&A 3: Using as automated remediation for findings
    • Q&A 4: Data source Bedrock in leveraging

    Session wrap up

    Participants:

    • Arash Nikkar – VP, Head of Engineering – Lacework
    • Teddy Reed – Product and Security Software Engineer - Lacework
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    32 mins
  • Ep052: Bridging the Cloud Finance Divide - Experts Reveal the Evolving Art of FinOps
    Aug 27 2024

    Massimo Ghislandi from AWS interviews Frank Contrepois, Chief Innovation Officer of Strategic Blue and Dvir Mizrahi, Head of FinOps for WIX sharing perspectives and best practices for FinOps, implementation, challenges and future FinOps trends for software companies.

    Topics Include:

    • FinOps is a new approach to managing cloud finances, bridging the gap between finance, engineering, and business stakeholders
    • The implementation of FinOps can take a top-down or bottom-up approach, requiring collaboration and a common language across teams
    • Shifting the conversation from "costs" to "investment" and "efficiency" has been an effective strategy for driving cultural change
    • Focusing on automation, governance, remediation, and anomaly detection can have a greater impact than just cost observability
    • Educating finance teams on technical cloud concepts and vice versa is crucial for building trust and alignment
    • The future of FinOps may involve expanding beyond just cloud to encompass all IT assets and aligning with a company's overall values and business objectives
    • Potential changes in legislation or accounting practices related to cloud could drastically impact the FinOps landscape

    Participants:

    • Frank Contrepois – Chief Innovation Officer, Strategic Blue
    • Dvir Mizrahi – Head of Financial Engineering (FinOps), WIX
    • Massimo Ghislandi – ISV Marketing Leader, EMEA, AWS
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    44 mins