Editor's Note: This is Part 3 of How AI is Changing Enterprise Security, a three-part video interview with Swamy Kocherlakota, executive vice president, agentic AI startup at Zscaler, produced jointly by Zscaler and FastForward. This installment looks at The new job of the CISO. AI is reshaping
The AI industry is in the midst of a serious debate about open-weight models with the arguments centered on safety versus openness. While the AI labs argue that open weights lack sufficient guard rails -- pretty rich given the recent spate of reports of private models run amok – Capital One
I was at a party last weekend and had a couple of conversations with college professors about their use of AI. I was curious how they were dealing with the tools, whether they were embracing them or blocking them. These two were at opposite ends of the spectrum, though interestingly
Hi everyone. The summer is rolling along and I'm happy to be back home. I want to thank each of you for reading my newsletter every week. Please share this week’s edition with a friend, and encourage them to subscribe. It really helps.💌 Sign up here. ForwardThinking
Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of How AI is Changing Enterprise Security, a three-part video interview with Swamy Kocherlakota, executive vice president, agentic AI startup at Zscaler, produced jointly by Zscaler and FastForward. This installment looks at Making sense of AI agents. As agents proliferate in
For 25 years, Google was a reliable waystation on the way to a website. You entered a few keywords, clicked a link or two and generally found what you wanted. AI search is altering that relationship. And it's not just changing how we search, it's eroding
Hi everyone. This week we return to a normal format with the news of the week. Let me know if you like the news briefs or prefer the streamlined version I've been running the past couple of weeks. Send your comments to feedback@fastforward.blog. If you like
Editor's Note: This is Part 1 of How AI is Changing Enterprise Security, a three-part video interview with Swamy Kocherlakota, executive vice president, agentic AI startup at Zscaler, produced jointly by Zscaler and FastForward. This installment looks at Building for an AI world. Swamy Kocherlakota joined Zscaler
The following post is a collaboration between Alex Wilhelm from the Cautious Optimism blog and FastForward. I set the stage regarding IBM’s messy quarter, digging into what analysts think about the company’s future prospects. Next, Alex dives into the financials to try to answer the question of what
If you were to walk around Silicon Valley these days, you’d find nary a negative word about AI. It’s advancing fast. It’s powerful, so powerful we should be afraid of it. And if you’re not all in, you’re going to be left in the dust
Hi everyone. My working vacation continues, so I decided to send out another abbreviated newsletter without the news of the week. I'll be publishing normally again starting next week. If you like my newsletter, please share this week’s edition with a friend, and encourage them to subscribe.
Pega CEO Alan Trefler founded his company back in the 1980s when the enterprise world was very different than it is today, but he's been around long enough and seen enough shifts to speak with an authority that few others can when it comes to enterprise software. His
Commentary
I've been off for a couple of weeks, enjoying vacation, but still keeping one eye on tech news, and it's a little unbelievable how much happened in two weeks in July, a time when news is supposed to slow down. Consider that over the last couple
Newsletters
Hi everyone. I've been on vacation this month, but I had an itch to write, so I decided to send out an abbreviated newsletter this week without news of the week. If you like my newsletter, please share this week’s edition with a friend, and encourage them
Profiles
I caught up with Jai Das, co-founder of Sapphire Ventures, in April at HumanX, the conference devoted to all things AI. He's been investing in enterprise startups for more than two decades, and while he recognizes that AI is transforming his business, he's not getting
Profiles
Abby Kearns has spent more than a decade in the open source world, starting at Pivotal before going on to lead the Cloud Foundry Foundation and later serving as CTO at Puppet. Today she is CEO at ActiveState, a company that focuses on keeping the open source software library supply
Analysis
At Pega World earlier this month, the company announced it was ditching tokens in favor of outcome-based pricing, a system where the company only gets paid if an AI agent produces a favorable outcome. What's driving this change? Don Schuerman, CTO and head of marketing at Pega,
Commentary
As many of you know, I'm a Boston sports fan, especially the Red Sox. This year they are among the worst teams in the league, and it seems their story is a case study in how difficult transformation around AI can be. Ownership brought in a hardcore stats
Newsletters
Hi everyone. Thanks for reading. I appreciate each and everyone of you. Just a heads up, that I'm headed on vacation at the end of next week, so there will be no FastForward for the next couple of weeks. Just a reminder, if you need a professional moderator
Analysis
The following piece is the result of a collab with my long-time friend, occasional colleague, and forever writing partner Alex Wilhelm. Alex is the author at Cautious Optimism, which I both enjoy and recommend. As with many of our collabs, I handles news and context, and Alex closes with
Profiles
Disclosure: I was paid by Zscaler to moderate a video interview with Zscaler executive Swamy Kocherlakota at the company's Zscaler Zenith Live 2026 earlier this month. The quotes from Jay Chaudhry come from two interviews, one in April and one in Las Vegas at the conference. Both were
article
Back in 2021 when money was still cheap and interest rates were low, companies weren't all that concerned with controlling cloud costs, but as the economy worsened in subsequent years and interest rates rose, management became more interested in finding ways to save money. Enter FinOps tools, which
Commentary
Disclosure: I was paid by Pax8 to moderate a fireside chat with CEO Scott Chasin at the company's Beyond 2026 conference, and some of his comments from that conversation are quoted in this piece. Pax8 had no input into or review of this piece before publication. My editorial
Newsletters
Hi everyone. There was no newsletter last week as I was moderating a CEO fireside at Pax8 Beyond in Salt Lake City on Monday, then flew to Vegas on Tuesday for the Zscaler Zenith conference where I recorded a video interview with their EVP of the Agentic AI Security Startup