In 2020, IBM announced it was spinning out its managed infrastructure services division as an entirely independent business. It would require essentially building a company from the ground up with everything from a new network to a new security posture to physical badges to get into the building. Yet it
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in FastForward #78 in the News of the week section. It is presented here in its entirety with light editing. Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world. In its most recent quarter, it reported revenue of over $96 billion, up
I had my first appointment with a new dentist this week and I noticed the shiny new modern equipment my previous dentist lacked. There was X-ray film that fit better in my mouth and a portable machine so the technician didn't have to move the heavy, awkward
Hi everyone. Welcome to our first September issue. Before we jump into this week’s newsletter, I’d like to thank Akamai for supporting FastForward as its very first sponsor. If you're interested in advertising here, please drop me a line at ads@fastforward.blog. If you like
Cisco acquires a lot of startups as part of its overall acquisition strategy. One of the issues any large company faces when buying younger companies is how to preserve the core innovation that makes that company worth buying in the first place. During our interview on FastForward on PPN last
Like so many technologies that came before it, it turns out that AI is more complex to implement than we first thought (or at least were led to believe). Survey after survey finds all but a few notable exceptions are stuck in proofs of concept, unable to scale to the
Hi everyone. Hard to believe that the summer is winding down already. I'm working from San Diego this week, hence the later newsletter delivery. If you like what you see, please share this week’s edition with a friend, and encourage them to subscribe. It really helps.💌 Sign
Since its earliest days, Cisco has been known as an acquisitive company. Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer, joined the company six years ago and he wanted to move the company from being reactive when deciding which companies to buy to being much more strategic and aligned with his
MetLife has been around since 1868. That means the company was operating when electricity was transforming business. Today, the company finds itself in the midst of an analogous shift, this time to AI. Insurance companies are famous for legacy software stacks. The question is how does the CIO push the
And every word you say Every game you play Every night you stay I'll be watching you ~Police, Every Breath you Take It's not exactly a secret that as we move around the internet, interact with search engines and seek guidance from AI bots, we spread
Hi everyone. One thing you can say about this summer is that the news never slowed down. It just kept coming, and I kept reporting and reacting to it to the best I can. If you like what you see, please share this week’s edition with a friend, and
You don't get much more enterprise old school than IBM's consulting division working with companies to roll out complex software (while jacking up the price of a process that's already expensive). OpenAI and IBM announced a partnership this week where IBM plans to launch
Commentary
It's been a wacky summer. We've seen the big AI labs watch their models run amok and go off hacking. We've seen Mark Zuckerberg make a lame attempt to write a happy manifesto (clearly with the help of AI) about his vision of our
Newsletters
Hi everyone. The Patriots used to call meaningful games hat and t-shirt games. This is what I call a milestone issue: #75. I'm proud and pleased to have published this number of newsletters, and I want to thank everyone who reads this every week. If you like
Analysis
Think back, if you will, to three years ago. Yes, ChatGPT had been released the prior year, but cloud companies weren't seeing much benefit yet. In fact, the market was in a lull. AWS growth plunged to 12% for Q2 and Q3 that year, growth numbers so abysmal
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
Profiles
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
Commentary
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
Newsletters
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
article
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
Commentary
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
Newsletters
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
article
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
Analysis
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