FastForward

1 month ago | fastforward.boldstart.vc | Ron Miller

It seems like every couple of years, we hear about companies making the move from the cloud back on prem, or at least to co-location facilities where they are content to manage their own hardware and reduce their cloud bills. There was a lot of talk about this in April 2023, which prompted me to explore the subject. My conclusion at the time: “For most companies, the cloud remains an essential part of their technology strategy, and few are going back to running their own data centers anytime soon.

1 month ago | fastforward.boldstart.vc | Ron Miller

While there was lots of news coming out of IBM Think 2025 last week in Boston, one thing that stuck out for me was the emphasis on smaller models. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, especially in the enterprise, where companies need to concentrate on their own data to get an AI advantage. In a training article from February Splunk’s Muhammad Raza explained the key differences between small language models and large language models.

1 month ago | fastforward.boldstart.vc | Ron Miller

Salesforce chief trust officer Brad Arkin has been a security executive for over a decade with stints as chief security officer at Adobe and chief security and trust officer at Cisco before joining Salesforce at the end of 2023. Arkin has seen the security role evolve along with his title. At Salesforce, it’s about creating an atmosphere of trust both internally and externally, hence the title.

1 month ago | fastforward.boldstart.vc | Ron Miller

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1 month ago | fastforward.boldstart.vc | Ron Miller

Shopify CEO Toby Lütke turned heads last month with his company-wide, AI-first mandate. But it didn't take long before other companies like Fiverr, Box, Duolingo, HubSpot, Meta and Google quickly followed suit with similar pronouncements. Although these directives vary somewhat, they all share the core goal of encouraging employees to use AI to improve their work process and efficiency.