The Impact of the Pandemic: Changes in Leadership Styles and Technology Approaches

On this episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast – Interview Series, host Daniel Newman welcomes Tim Tully, CTO and Senior Vice President of Splunk to discuss leadership through the crisis, how companies have changed in the last three months and new approaches to cloud, AI and ML technologies. Tim also gave a quick overview of .conf20, Splunk's upcoming virtual tech conference this October.

 

In our conversation, Tim and I explored how businesses have changed in the last few months. Digital transformation has been pushed forward faster than ever before with more technology adoption and better communication systems being utilized. It's apparent now that the working remotely can be successful, which ultimately removes hiring barriers that might have once been in place. Companies like Splunk can hire the best person for the job regardless of location.

 

Confronting problems with more empathy and EQ. Tim shared that the pandemic has forced Splunk executives to look at the problems the company is facing with a sense of empathy. They're more focused on understand how the situation has impacted employees and customers and their livelihoods. This has been an awakening for a lot of companies to really concentrate on employees and individuals over the bottom line.

 

Turning toward technology and data.  Tim and I discussed the technology Splunk has set up to help themselves and customers understand their data through the pandemic. The first piece of technology — the Remote Work Insights app, which is free on GitHub — is a dashboard that allows people to see how their resources are being used by employees at home. For example, customers can see how their VPN is being used and if they're going to need more bandwidth. They're able to make decisions based on data without ever slowing down the business. Tim also shared that Splunk has seen an uptick in their app usage. More clients are using the dashboards to quickly view KPIs wherever they might be. It's clear the way people work and how they approach technology are changing.

 

A change in architecture.  We also discussed how many companies are adopting more hybrid architecture. Tim shared that he has been encouraging Splunk customers to move to a hyperconverged data plane. It's the idea that data can live both on-prem and in the cloud but be in one data pipeline. Customers want the ability to process data where it is, reduce costs, and then route the data to products in different clouds. This is not a surprising move given Splunk's "Data to Everything" motto.

 

A different approach to machine learning. Tim shared his thoughts on the new direction Splunk is taking with machine learning (ML). When you think of ML, you most likely think about a hypothesis and plugging in data that's at rest to help a system learn. Splunk is taking a different approach with their stream processing which is a low latency level of processing that enables real-time machine learning continuously. Many tech experts and analysts have long surmised that ML would move this direction eventually. Splunk is making it happen.

 

A teaser to .conf20. Lastly, Tim and I talked a little bit about Splunk's annual conference .conf20 which will be taking place virtually this year on October 20-21. There will be keynotes and exciting new product releases — definitely something you don't want to miss. Sign up now to be notified when registration is open.

 

Disclaimer: This show is for information and entertainment purposes only. While we will discuss publicly traded companies on this show, the contents of this show should not be taken as investment advice.