AWS for Software Companies Podcast

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228

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Oct 2026

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About the show

Stay ahead of the rapidly evolving cloud and AI landscape with the AWS for Software Companies podcast. Hear from renowned software leaders, respected industry analysts, and experienced consultants alongside AWS experts as they explore the technologies shaping the future—from generative AI and agentic systems to intelligent cloud architectures, and modern data management. Learn how AI agents are transforming enterprise workflows, how leading companies are modernizing their cloud strategies with security best practices at the core, and what's driving the next wave of SaaS innovation. New episodes drop regularly to keep you informed on the trends that matter most to your business. ]]>

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October 13, 202613 min

Ep228: Free to Freemium: How Veeva Transitioned While Retaining Trust

Discover how Veeva transformed a free clinical research platform into a sustainable freemium business, balancing with their mission through transparent communication, fair pricing, and smart migration tooling built on AWS. Topics Include: How Veeva builds industry cloud software for clinical research sites Why clinical trials sit between healthcare delivery and life sciences How a free platform grew into a self-sustaining business Balancing monetization and mission: free tiers, fair pricing, annual true-ups Giving 15 months' notice and over-communicating the why Building migration tooling to move users from multi-tenant to enterprise Handling edge cases and migration issues through radical transparency Navigating customer pushback amid 2025 NIH funding cuts What a strategic AWS partnership looks like beyond infrastructure Getting more from AWS by sharing long-term goals, not transactions Advice for SaaS leaders: set boundaries, prioritize fairness, own the message Preparing teams for change without gaming out every objection Participants: Nick Frenzer – General Manager, Site Solutions, Veeva See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

October 6, 202626 min

Ep227: How BlackBerry Is Migrating 1,500+ VMs to AWS in Canada

Go inside a massive, still-in-progress migration of 1,500+ servers out of two Canadian data centers, with candid lessons on what works, what was surprising, and what to do differently. Topics Include: Inside a live migration: 1,500+ servers leaving two Canadian data centers. How BlackBerry became a secure communications and QNX vehicle software company. Decades of legacy systems, and why standing still became costlier. Three converging forces: VMware licensing, hardware end-of-life, and FinOps gaps. The goals: close data centers, exit VMware, modernize only what matters. Choosing partners and funding programs that work as one team. A five-week assessment with parallel workstreams and five key workshops. Rehost, re-platform, or refactor: pragmatism over migration ideology. Early lessons on discovery, cost transparency, and over-communicating. Building the landing zone: accounts, networking, identity, and security. Discovery, right-sizing, then migrating, validating, and cutting over workloads. Wave planning: start simple, save the most complex workloads for last. Day two: cost tagging, observability, and AI-assisted modernization backlogs. Final advice: business case first, migrate now, modernize later. Participants: Jason Whissell – Vice President, IT & Business Application Solutions, Blackberry Mehran Najafi PhD - Principal AI Architect & Head of AI Solution Architects, AWS Canada, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

September 29, 202628 min

Ep226: The Intelligent Legal Work Platform - Clio's Journey on AWS

From data-center chaos to billion-dollar acquisitions: the real story behind Clio 's cloud journey, compliance battles, and rapid AI-driven transformation. Topics Include: AWS-Clio partnership: migrate, modernize, add AI, then co-sell Legal industry ran on WordPerfect, mainframes, and homemade billing Clio launched 2008, same year as AWS's first database Now serves 400,000+ legal professionals across 130 countries Landed legal tech's largest-ever acquisition, raised $500M Series G Ships code 50-100 times daily in a regulated industry Started split across a data center, Azure, AWS, some GCP Nine years of acquisitions, fundraising, and rapid team growth Sharded databases, added regions for compliance and low latency Engineering team grew from 40 to over 650 people Lawyers once feared cloud security and data ownership questions Three principles: data security, system resilience, data regionality Stage one: survival, learning EC2, RDS, S3 basics Stage two: earning trust through SOC 2, PCI compliance AWS became a compliance partner, not just a host Stage three: AI reshapes coding speed and company culture Integrating acquisitions scattered across Heroku, GCP, Azure, others VLUX deal added a billion-document legal case-law database Rapid acquisition-to-launch playbook: some products shipped in days Strategy: avoid single AI vendor, preserve maximum optionality Participants: Jonathan Watson – Chief Technology Officer, Clio Martin Bazinet – Director of Technology, AWS Canada, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

September 22, 202625 min

Ep225: From COBOL to Agile Workflows - Accelerate Mainframe Modernization with AWS Transform and Pega Blueprint

Experts from Pegasystems and AWS reveal how AI-powered tools now modernize decades-old mainframe systems in weeks instead of years—unlocking trapped data faster than ever. Topics Include: Session covers accelerating mainframe modernization using AWS Transform and Pega Blueprint Agenda: challenges, joint solution, value prop, customer story, rollout mechanism Mainframe costs rise 20-30% yearly, straining IT budgets significantly Monolithic systems create long time-to-market, hurting competitiveness against newer rivals Mainframe data stays locked away, blocking AI adoption and innovation Retiring mainframe skills outpace new workforce training, compounding the problem AI now enables analyzing decades-old code bases within weeks, not years AWS Transform extracts business logic; Pega Blueprint visualizes modernized target applications Five-step journey: Transform, Pega Foundry, Blueprint, then deployment via Infinity platform Three Transform agents handle code, data, and activity analysis separately Data analysis covers data lineage and data dictionary schema extraction Outputs feed a knowledge graph, enabling natural language queries anytime Transform deterministically identifies distinct data paths from mainframe systems Data paths get grouped into business functions, each modernizable independently Final steps extract business logic and generate plain-English requirements Blueprint agent enriches Transform outputs, enabling intuitive workflow design Blueprint offers runtime previews and is publicly accessible at pega.com Pega Infinity platform handles both batch and online mainframe workloads Insurance company Unum modernized 1.5M lines of COBOL in three months Experience-Based Acceleration program delivers modernized, working code within four-to-six weeks Participants: Surender Kumar – Director, Mainframe Modernization, Pegasystems Ujwal Bukka – Sr Partner Solutions Architect, Business Apps, Amazon Web Services Sourav Sarkar – Sr Worldwide Specialist Solutions Architect, Mainframe & Legacy Modernization, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

September 15, 202621 min

Ep224: Billing the Unbillable: How Zuora Monetizes AI on Amazon AgentCore

Discover how Zuora turned its own billing platform inward to track AI costs down to the individual engineer, giving CFOs the trust and auditability they demand. Topics Include: AWS's Achint Naveen opens, introduces Zuora as a key partner Audience poll reveals AI monetization is still a struggle Zuora's Katherine Shealy introduces the company's AI monetization focus Zuora powers monetization for global brands like Twilio, Zoom Their platform spans CPQ, billing, metering, and revenue recognition Usage-based pricing has flipped seat-based SaaS models upside down AI companies face a 20-point margin gap versus SaaS Companies juggling multiple pricing models face major hidden complexity Traditional pricing models are breaking down under AI's dynamic costs Zuora's framework aligns teams early through an NPI-style process Their tech lets companies iterate pricing at engineering speed Zuora now tracks its own AI costs internally too Zuora AI runs on AWS Bedrock and AgentCore infrastructure AWS's Achint details the full stack behind Zuora AI AgentCore Memory gives Zuora's agents secure, persistent context Participants: Katherine Shealy – Principal Product Marketing Manager, Zuora Achint Naveen – Sr Account 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.com/isv/

September 10, 202646 min

Ep223: Cybersecurity in the Age of AI – Inside Sophos, the World’s Largest Agentic SOC

Sophos CSO Simon Reed reveals how attackers now operate like leveraged businesses—and how AI is making both sides of the cyber arms race dramatically more sophisticated. Topics Include: Intro: Simon Reed, CSO at Sophos , joins Kamil Davidov. Sophos defends 625,000+ organizations with AI-native Fusion platform. Sophos MDR runs the world's largest agentic SOC. Simon's journey: cybersecurity since 2001, from graffiti to warfare. Cyber threats framed as constant toxicity, not occasional lightning strikes. Sophos spans small business to enterprise, giving unique threat visibility. Attackers now operate as leveraged, ecosystem-driven businesses, not lone actors. AI dramatically increases attack quality, speed, and sophistication. AWS Local Zones cut latency for Sophos's threat intelligence cloud. IntellX connects every product to real-time global threat data. "Good day" means finding novelty before attackers exploit it. Worst days: sudden, unpredictable supply chain compromise scenarios. Sophos updates protection across 600,000 customers within minutes. Decisions made fast, on incomplete data, balancing speed and risk. Sophos has pursued AI and deep learning for eight-plus years. Agentic AI's next phase reduces laborious human security work. Simon prioritizes class-based, automation-scale defenses over budgets. Sophos cut data platform costs 30%, migrated ahead of schedule. Advice: hyper-engage AWS account teams, push for more. Closing story: Sophos helped stop ransomware hitting hospitals during COVID. Participants: Simon Reed – Chief Security Officer, Sophos Kamil Davidov – Sales Leader Israel ISV-BizApps, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

September 7, 202622 min

Ep222: Vibe Coding at Scale – How Retool is Securing the AI Software Boom

Vibe coding is accelerating code development within the Enterprise, but at what cost of security? Retool ’s CEO shares how you can accelerate software development while managing the risks effectively. Topics Include: Internal software runs pharmacies, grocery checkouts, and airport check-ins daily Retool manages and de-risks environment from insecure code AI has driven a 10x surge in code volume since 2025 More code plus less human review means falling code quality Non-engineers can now build working apps in minutes flat But deploying and securing those apps remains genuinely difficult Multiple CIOs found private company data exposed on the internet Uncontrolled model choice is quietly driving up company costs Attackers now deploy automated agent swarms, not lone hackers Defense is asymmetric: one flaw in, everything must hold Retool runs inside customers' own cloud, often on AWS A single data choke point enables logging, audits, authorization Guardrails, not their absence, actually let teams move faster Security audits reveal major gaps in nearly all companies checked Nearly all companies may face a serious hack within 18 months Participants: David Hsu – Founder, CEO, Retool See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

September 1, 202631 min

Ep221: The Agentic Inflection Point with Couchbase, SentinelOne and AWS

In a fascinating panel discussion, executives from Couchbase , SentinelOne and AWS share strategies ensuring the highest adoption and ROI when deploying AI and the pitfalls to avoid along the way. Topics Include: Agentic AI marks shift from clever data to autonomous agents Organizations sit at different AI maturity levels, not uniform Only 31% of adopters see measurable financial impact from AI Adoption friction, not access, is what stalls most AI value Segment your workforce: innovators, pragmatic majority, and reluctant laggards Give innovators tools, budget, and freedom before chasing laggards Visible recognition programs turn early innovators into internal role models AI-ready data infrastructure remains the top blocker to real adoption Future AI value concentrates at customer-facing, transaction-level touchpoints Coding tools see fast uptake; broader business adoption lags behind AI is quietly rewriting SEO, SEM, and lead-routing strategy Agent trust requires both clean data and strong safety guardrails Human-in-the-loop review lets AI handle investigation, humans decide outcomes In agentic AI, go-to-market partnerships matter more than past tech waves Strong tech-platform partnerships help smaller vendors punch above their weight Marketplace listings can cut sales cycles from months to weeks Best partnerships form around solving hard problems, not quarterly quotas Confidence gap: only 38% of employees feel AI-ready Participants: Deirdre Toner – President & Chief Commercial Officer, Couchbase Eran Ashkenazi - Chief Business Officer, SentinelOne Connie de Lange – Director, AWS Strategic Customer & Partner Marketing, North America, Amazon Web Services Matt Wood – Chief AI & Technology Officer, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

August 25, 202621 min

Ep220: The AI Architecture We Deleted - featuring Demandbase

Demandbase 's Vice President of Product explains why they deleted a fully-approved AI architecture two months before launch — and how the rebuild surpassed some of their customer’s highest expectations. Topics Include: AWS's Achint Naveen introduces Demandbase 's VP of Product, Chad Holdorf Demandbase unifies sales, marketing, and revenue data into one view November's architecture used many specialized agents, all committee-approved That design failed constantly — only a 30% conversation pass rate On May 11th, the team deleted the entire architecture Rebuilt in May with AWS Strands: one simpler, flexible agent Pass rate leapt from 30% to 94% almost overnight Week two retention rose from the low 20s to upper 80s Weekly active users grew 45% week-over-week after launch Real customer interviews play, calling the new AI a "dream" One user cut an hour-long report down to fifteen minutes Customers now trace ad impressions directly to closed deals Holdorf's advice: delete and rebuild when architecture gets too complex AWS's Naveen walks through Bedrock, AgentCore, and Strands AgentCore Memory highlighted as Demandbase's next area of exploration Participants: Chad Holdorf – Vice President of Product Management, Demandbase Achint Naveen – Sr Account 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.com/isv/

August 18, 202624 min

Ep219: Scaling Autonomous Operations with AWS DevOps Agent and ServiceNow

ServiceNow and AWS reveal how the DevOps Agent and MCP Server Console are turning incident response into a fast, autonomous, fully governed process. Topics Include: Govind Menon ( ServiceNow ) and Arun Jacob (AWS) discuss MCP and A2A strategy. ServiceNow understands workflows; partners with AWS to power them with AI. AI Control Tower governs and secures agent access to enterprise data. MCP is the industry standard for how AI agents read and act. Action Fabric spans A2A, REST APIs, and MCP for agentic work. AWS DevOps Agent, built on Bedrock, resolves incidents through sub-agents. Admin and operator access patterns integrate with Dynatrace, Datadog, Slack, GitHub. Demo: ServiceNow incident automatically triggers DevOps Agent investigation and resolution. DevOps Agent writes findings live back into the ServiceNow incident ticket. ServiceNow champions capping MCP servers at 30 tools for performance. MCP Server Console lets teams build scoped, use-case-specific tool servers. NowAssist skills, Knowledge Graph, and REST APIs become MCP tools. Live demo connects a 38-tool custom MCP server to DevOps Agent. Role-based access ensures users only see their permitted MCP tools. ServiceNow's autonomous ITOM agents point toward unsupervised future operations. Participants: Govind Menon – Head of MCP Product, ServiceNow Arunsingh Jeyasingh Jacob – Senior Solution Architect - ISV, Amazon Web Services See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/