Q&A with Alexander Von Zitzewitz, CEO at hello2morrow Inc.

MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Business Process, Marketo, Sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and IT Service Management, Andrea is also a strong business development professional and a storyteller. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? ANDREA LECHNER: Frankly, not having better options. I originally attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse thinking I’d major in Archaeology. I wanted to be Indiana Jones! But, after visiting the archaeology building – i.e. the cold, dark basement of the science building – where a girl sat to piece together pieces of an old Native American vase, I knew archaeology was not going to be the right path for me. And so, without being good at science and a major in art or art history was unlikely to pay my bills, I decided to go into “business”. I originally registered as a management major, but took my first marketing class and thought it was more interesting and switched my sophomore year. That was pretty much it. I’d never been involved in business classes or DECA in high school – I didn’t really know what to do or what jobs in marketing were even possible. I dumb lucked myself into it really. M7: As a storyteller, do you relate the brand to a story or story to the brand? AL: Both? Neither? I think there are stories in every brand, because there are people working on the brand and people engaging with the brand and people using what the brand creates. People, most often a single person, are at the heart of great stories. You can start with the “point” of the story you’re trying to tell. Say you have a software that help accountants better create reports for board meetings. It’s likely you’ll want to tell a success story about an accountant getting promoted to CFO in part because your software helped better communicate their work product to the board. You could have the idea for that and go looking for that story in your customers. OR, you could hear that story, and say, “That’s amazing!” and share it with customers, partners and internal people. Stories are all around us – the most important thing is to keep your ears and eyes open for finding them.

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MEDIA 7 | November 28, 2019

Ed Breault, Chief Marketing Officer at Aprimo is a marketer with over 18 years of industry experience. At Aprimo, Ed is responsible for the global brand and growth which includes all Paid/Owned/Earned media, Brand Experience, Product Marketing, Industry Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Strategic Communications, Content Marketing, Analyst Relations, Alliance Marketing, Public Relations, Events, Demand Generation and Account-Based Marketing. MEDIA 7: What’s your superpower? ED BREAULT: I would say it’s applying the full spectrum of art and science that is required in marketing today. Not just left or right brained, but whole-brained strategy. Being human yet data-driven and really understanding numbers and (the right) metrics to make connections to business drivers. Add storytelling to that, so I can effectively communicate to my team, the CEO and CFO as well as my Board of Directors on those metrics, and connecting all that we are doing in marketing to the mission of the business. Then quickly shifting gears to the art and creative aspects of marketing that are required to engage an audience and tell great commercial stories that take complex concepts and craft them in a way that is interesting for people to pay attention to. I have to be the ultimate point of truth for the brand. M7: At Aprimo, how have marketing leadership roles and responsibilities evolved over the past few years? EB: There are so many dimensions needed by marketing leaders today. There are several elements driving this evolution, it’s the new experience battlefront that is emerging and also marketers themselves driving changes. From a market perspective, there is a clear appetite for disruption and consumers are wanting more experiential elements to their buying experience and interactions with brands. Take a few direct to consumer disruptions like trialing products in-home, purchasing directly from a brand or even wanting to ensure that the producer’s trade practices are in line with the buyer’s or even a regulator’s for that matter. Then we want to try before we buy, and we emotionally care about the supply chain of products. Do we TRUST this brand to do business with them? Behind all of this is a story that needs to be told, and it is those marketers who know their audience well and make connections that will win the commercial game. Back to the marketer, there are so many diverse backgrounds that marketers bring now and I’m really intrigued by those who have unconventional backgrounds because they contribute something uniquely new to the field. I love hearing about the marketer’s journey.

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MEDIA 7 | November 21, 2019

Amy Barzdukas, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Poly is a marketing and communications leader with extensive experience in setting strategy, shifting perceptions, advising customers, digital marketing, revenue marketing, integrated marketing communications, and public relations in highly competitive product arenas. Amy is known for her ability to create and execute winning turnarounds on a global scale. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? AMY BARZDUKAS: I was always destined for marketing, even if I didn’t know it. As a child, I collected promotional brochures. I was fascinated by how the words and pictures were used to drive action. My first job was as an advertising copywriter, and I’ve never looked back. M7: How is Poly redefining the video conferencing experience for modern businesses? AB: We’re in an unprecedented time of change in our industry. Voice and video services are moving to the cloud, and companies are changing how they approach their communications needs. Poly is the largest provider of the devices – video conferencing, audio conferencing, headphones and desk phones – you use to connect to these services so you can collaborate with your colleagues. That uniquely positions us to shape the video conferencing experience, and we’re doing so in four ways. First, Poly has made both the Zoom Rooms and the Microsoft Teams video conferencing experience better than ever with our radically simple Poly Studio X video bars that deliver these experiences with no PC or Mac required. We’ve got decades of experience in understanding what makes meetings more human – for everyone in the room and those dialing in from other locations – and we’ve packed all of that into easy-to-install, easy-to-manage, and easy-to-use all-in-one powerhouses. Second, we are bringing the world of AV and video conferencing into the modern app economy. Our Studio X series and Poly G7500 video conferencing devices run a common platform that can be updated and enhanced through a series of regular software updates. This Poly platform, built on Android, can run applications like a smartphone does today. Third, Poly has introduced innovation that makes any video conference better. Our new Poly MeetingAI features use AI and machine learning to address the distractions that hit your senses in a meeting. We make it easier to hear what’s being said by blocking out the annoying noises that people make while talking, and we make it easier to see what’s going on in the room with the most advanced speaker tracking and framing, and our built-in production rules. Finally, we are pricing our solutions in a way that completely resets the calculations on what it costs to outfit a room. The Studio X30, for huddle room and smaller spaces, costs just about $2,100, including the Poly TC8 touch controller. All you add is the cloud service and a monitor, and you have a room up and running for under $2,500. That’s easily under the cost of other solutions and with better audio and video quality.

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APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Styra | January 23, 2023

Styra, Inc. creates and maintains Open Policy Agents (OPA) and is one of the leading cloud-native authorization firms. The company recently introduced the toolset for infrastructure to its Styra Declarative Authorization Service (DAS) and the industry’s broadest policy library. In addition, Styra offers NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-190 compliant policies within its expanded library that includes hundreds of validated policies to address security concerns associated with the use of containers. Styra speeds up the deployment of secure, compliant cloud-native infrastructure and gives enterprise platform teams the tools they need to deploy resources for distributed developers systematically. This saves time and money while keeping security best practices. To ensure security, compliance, and operational health, platform engineers repeatedly write or customize software that stops developers from making errors, and over time build customized guardrails that automatically impose security rules, compliance regulations, and other operational policies each time a developer makes a change. This effort often includes undifferentiated heavy lifting, which adds complexity, risk and creates a significant barrier to on-time delivery. It is when enterprises cannot afford to choose between security and business time-to-market platform, engineering teams can benefit from policy editing for business users, validate building blocks and policy-as-code guardrails to deliver infrastructure resources without compromising security instead of building them from scratch-in-house. Styra enables infrastructure-managing platform teams to: Eliminate manual policy creation and reduce production risks systematically for infrastructure deployments by utilizing policy templates and editing tools that are simple to deploy. Deploy faster with hundreds of Styra-validated AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes policies for Terraform from the most popular open-source tools and libraries. Easily enforce best practices and compliance for Kubernetes clusters with NIST SP 800-190 compliant policies from Styra, in addition to an extensive collection of Styra validated policies for PCI DSS, MITRE ATT&CK, CIS Benchmarks, and Pod Security Compliance. Enforce policy guardrails on CloudFormation stacks to prevent AWS resource misconfiguration during final resource change checks with the first general-purpose third-party CloudFormation hook from Styra. About Styra Styra Founded in 2019, Styra enables enterprises to enforce, define and monitor policy across their cloud-native environments with the combination of both open source (Open Policy Agent) and commercial solutions (Declarative Authorization Service). The company provides operations, security, and compliance guardrails to safeguard applications, also the infrastructure the company works on. Its policy-as-code solution allows developers, DevOps, and security teams to relieve risks, speed up application development and reduce human error.

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HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE, APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE

CDS | February 01, 2023

Leading multi-vendor services (MVS) provider for data centers, CDS, recently announced its record YoY growth, a 15% rise in revenue compared to 2021. With a strong emphasis on boosting efficiency and finding practical, affordable solutions to optimize data centers, CDS has released two key updates to its software platform. First, the Raytrix MVS platform gets the new Enterprise Pricing Module, which enables customers to get faster data center maintenance quotes. The latest update with direct access to the CDS pricing engine enable partners to accelerate revenue opportunities by generating pricing quotes more quickly. The new Data Center Modernization Assessment Service by CDS helps partners identify opportunities and unlock savings in their existing enterprise systems. Additionally, this service increases its monitoring capabilities and doubled CDS’ capacity to connect with more enterprise storage systems, find possible issues, and fix them before they impact performance. Daniel Newton, CEO of CDS, said, “Our partner-first approach, coupled with our deep industry expertise, continues to build trust with our OEM partners and their major customers.” He further added, “With economic uncertainty being a top concern for many enterprises today, we’re looking out for their cost and operational efficiencies so they can focus on meeting the needs of their customers. In 2023, CDS is looking to expand our global footprint by increasing recognition of the strategic and cost-effective importance that multi-vendor services can bring to data centers and IT organizations worldwide.” (Source – Business Wire) About CDS CDS is the top supplier of multi-vendor support (MVS) services for data centers. High-end storage, server, and network devices are supported for mission-critical data centers via its Raytrix MVS software platform. Through OEMs and channel partners, CDS provides post-warranty support services for a variety of customers across the Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and Japan. The company's maintenance and support services are created to increase the return on investment for these systems by extending the useful life of the IT infrastructure of its clients. With the help of its partnerships with the top worldwide providers of data center infrastructure, CDS is supporting over 700 customers in 45 countries to unlock data center spending across business IT infrastructure with various maintenance needs and cost containment requirements.

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HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE, APPLICATION STORAGE

ZincFive | February 03, 2023

ZincFive, one of the most well-known companies that work with nickel-zinc batteries for power applications, has recently released the brand-new BC Series, nickel-zinc UPS Battery Cabinets called the BC2. This new product has forward and backward compatibility with megawatt UPS inverters, providing the smallest footprint per kilowatt, enhanced reliability, sustainability, less maintenance, and no thermal runway. As per the third-party analysis, ZincFive’s nickel-zinc batteries have a remarkable lower climate impact than lead-acid and lithium batteries. CEO and Co-Founder of ZincFive, Tim Hysell, said, "ZincFive continues to innovate with our powerful, safe, and reliable nickel-zinc battery technology, and the BC 2 is a great solution to address all current and future data centre needs." He further added, "In addition, the importance of sustainability in data centre backup battery systems continues to grow. Both ZincFive and our customers are committed to reducing carbon footprint and operating costs without sacrificing safety or performance." (Source – Business Wire) This battery cabinet has a width of 21 inches, has passed a seismic shake test with an SDS of 2.29 g, giving it a strong seismic footprint, and features active cooling, simple maintenance, and easy conduit landing. It has optimized packaging and design of the same old NiZn batteries with the best power density, safety, and sustainability, with total assembling capacity with batteries in the cabinet, and renders strong Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) credit for mission-critical data centers. About ZincFive ZincFive Awarded with 90 patents, ZincFive, a provider of nickel-zinc batteries and power solutions, utilizes the technology of The Power of Good Chemistry™ for the wellbeing of businesses, employees, and the environment. It is a private company based in Tualatin, Oregon, dedicated to the sustainability and safety of nickel-zinc chemistry, providing high power density, and optimizing performance for mission-critical applications, ensuring reliability, safety, and sustainability. It supports technology markets, the information technology sector, intelligent transportation, industrial engines, and data centers. Its products include the UPStealth® series, BC Series UPS Battery Cabinets, Monobloc Batteries, and Cylindrical Cells.

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