Samsara CIO Stephen Franchetti on Scaling IT to Meet Business Demands

foreign speaks we're looking at one of the most difficult challenges the companies face one of the most important challenges which is how to scale it to meet increasing business demands to discuss that I'm joined by a major industry expert with me is Steven franchetti CIO at samsara Stephen very good to have with us today it's a pleasure to be with you here today James look forward to the conversation this morning these all across the U.S all across the world really that are right now dealing with this issue like we we you know we've got all sorts of expenses to manage however we need more in the way of I.T and it infrastructure how do we scale up how do we scale up uh cost effectively what trends do you see as companies grapple with this issue and what are some typical problems yeah so clearly there's a lot at play right now with the macro uncertainties that are going on and companies looking to do more with less and really potential pressure on I.T budgets and layoffs are happening across technology and really none of this makes it easier for the CIO to deliver on their agenda and to to your point-to-scale I.T but maybe stepping back a little bit about my background I've worked for a few rocket ship fast-paced hyper growth companies I actually joined workday around about the time they went public and saw them Drive scale as a company I was actually the first CIO at slack joining that organization before they went public really helping them to drive scale and now it's samsara where I've been for the last two years and and essentially doing the same thing but it was to think about one common thread between those three companies it's about how do you scale an organization and keep your agile Edge as you grow and it's almost like the law of large numbers right as your business begins to grow you're adding customers and new skus and and products and selling into new markets and geographies and your business just becomes more complex and you actually run the risk of your operations slowing down because of that complexity so I think the key is how do you keep the best parts of the startup culture that culture of innovation and speed to keep your agile Edge as you grow and for me there's I always think about three ingredients to kind of answer that question which are kind of the secret sauce for me firstly it's about automation right automation to drive productivity and ultimately simplify the user experience for your customers and and also for your employees and it seems like there's more opportunity than ever in this space right now with the explosion of AI the next thing I would say is about investing in data efforts right these big mountains of Big Data they're not going to get any smaller as we move forward we're creating huge amounts of data in in any organization so investing in that data stack becomes really important and then last but certainly not least James it's really about the people you have in your team and as I always say you're only as good as the people you have in your in your team within your organization and I think bring in those three elements together to drive an architecture that actually makes sense to run your business at scale a set of business processes and probably most importantly an overall user experience that makes sense to run your business at scale then I think you're on to something right that's huge value for any business out there James the the Personnel no doubt about that sometimes I think that that piece does get overlooked uh I'm curious from where you sit when you talk about the idea of scale we always think about Cloud as being this this magic platform for scaling is is cloud the answer that it was as Cloud turned out to be the the answer that it was promised to be when we when we were promised this hyperscaling environment yeah I mean for me I would say absolutely yes I think about the samsara environment and we are born in the cloud we're an eight-year-old company um you know talk a little bit about you know ultimately what samsara does but we're we're really here to help digitize the world of physical operations and we talk about physical operations we're talking about Industries like Transportation Logistics construction energy and utilities even Industries like farming are in there as well and by the way this is a huge Market that we're talking about about 40 of the world's GDP so it's truly massive and these are industries that have traditionally been underserved from a technology perspective with companies running systems that are often decades old and so so really what we're doing at samsara to your point is moving them to the cloud digitizing their business actually providing our customers with data and insights to give them end-to-end visibility into their entire business operation and actually enable them to try efficiency safety and sustainability within their their businesses incredibly important right now given the macro conditions out there with disruptions and supply chain and Rising interest rates and fuel costs and companies are really looking to for ways to become more efficient so for me I mean cloud is the answer I I consider myself a cloud native and we've actually pioneered what we call the connected operations Cloud really allowing our customers to analyze and act on their iot data and you think about say a large Transportation Company like Warner Enterprises or Estes Express lines two of our largest customers and actually the two of the largest Transportation logistics companies in the US and they literally have thousands of vehicles spread across the country and in the past it's been incredibly difficult for those companies to actually pull data together it's almost like those individual vehicles or assets or data Islands if you like and what we've enabled them to do through our cloud form is pool all of that information together about things like the efficiency of a particular vehicle the health of the vehicle the location of the vehicle we're actually processing about Six Trillion data points on an annual basis and of course the power of computing allows them for us to provide insights to our customers and they can look at doing things like reducing emissions analyzing video data to improve Road and workplace safety and then unlock digital workflows for employees in the field or in the office for that matter and of course we're using AI within all of that in in our suite of Technologies as well to provide those types of insights to our customers but it's all enabled by this Cloud SAS world that we've stepped into over the last couple of decades James yeah it's interesting about automation but I think it's it's such a big topic these days can you talk a bit more about the the role of Automation and and any advice you might have for companies to to further their automation deployment yeah well it seems like it's it's all about Ai and automation right now with the kind of explosion of generative AI that we've seen really over the over the last year and I think efficiencies driven by Ai and automation are are more impactful to your point than ever before especially given the current times um that we that we live in my main advice would be keep abreast of what's going on out there in the market I think about it teams that have this conversation with my own I.T team and and they always get caught up in the what's going on in the moment almost like the project Azure the issued Azure looking down and trying to execute on the on the day-to-day and what's in front of them and I think it's super important especially right now to look up and out so actually what's happening out there in the industry and it feels like we're in a time where AI is finally ready for prime time with the explosion of generative AI applications coming out the solve for very specific use cases for example we're using move Works in it t for automating it support interactions with our employee base we we automate about 25 of those interactions to provision software provide knowledge for users Jasper for marketing content to generate that great marketing content GitHub copilot is a great example again of developing software you think about generating code automatically or automatically as they've saved for for developers as well and ultimately the way I look at it is you want the people you hire to focus on the job that you hire them for ultimately right you want the sales folks to be out there engaging with customers and Engineers to be cut and code and building great products instead of spending time on administrivia so using Ai and automation to alleviate those tasks really enables our employees and customers to focus on the higher value work higher order work so we're really looking for ways to to educate yourself and understand what's going on in the industry from an AI and information perspective and then I think most importantly looking for ways to experiment within your organization choose impactful use cases where you can iterate quickly and and build momentum within the within the organization and they're certainly a hype cycle associated with AI and automation right now there's no question about that but I think the reason people are so excited about it is the potential for it to drive unprecedented productivity within any organization James well interesting about the the hype cycle I think you're very right about that AI is of course enjoying an enormous hike so I still go this moment I'd say sort of an exponential hype cycle the funny thing about that is I thought last year before you know chat GPT burst on the scene iot was having really its year I thought 2022 was in many ways the year of iot only only growing bigger this year of course I know samsara has a strong focus on iot can you talk about samsara and its iot offerings I always say I'm sorry addressing the iot in each of its clients yeah I mean and really we we kind of touched on this before but um it's about how do we deploy iot almost like inexpensive sensors out in our customer base um to allow them to all of a sudden gain insights and analytics about their end-to-end business operations and again we're playing in this realm of of physical operations and digitizing our customers environments the hardware is almost a means to an end iot is clearly in the sensors we deploy or our video cams our temperature sensors or our vehicle gateways gathering information about various different assets and this could they could be things like you know try directors within a farming environment it could be things like you know supply chain logistic equipment Transportation Vehicles across the country across the world for that matter and again traditionally those things have been very disparate very difficult to gather information about those individual assets and bring them together in a centralized environment so deploying these really simple and inexpensive iot sensors allows us to actually gather that aggregate that information and provide those insights to our customers and there's really great examples of where it's making a significant impact I think about Liberty Energy as a customer I just spoke to recently and they're a leading oil field services firm and they've actually used our our AI actually our samsara video solutions to leverage Ai and computer vision within those solutions to detect things like unsafe Behavior within their workplace whether it's a driver who's texting on their phone or whether it's an accident avoidance that that can happen we're detecting out there whether it's actually in in a physical workplace within a warehouse where we're again detecting inefficiencies or unsafe behavior and they've actually been able to reduce their accident rate by 50 percent over the course of the last year which for a company of their size is super significant and it's equated to literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for that particular customer so ultimately the goal we have at samsara and I think in the iot or the industrial iot industry in general but particularly at samsara is helping our customers make the shift from physical operations in an area that's typically underserved from a technology standpoint to more connected operations really digitizing how they run their business James well I think the big question that many companies are looking to is what's the future and how can we get ready for it now specifically in the area of scalene I.T because it feels like I it has gotten far more complicated with with AI growing exponentially Cloud continues to evolve rapidly iot machine learning data analytics it's all they're all evolving regularly at the same time what do you see in terms of the future of scalene I.T what what will this look like in oh three to five years from now oh my goodness yes it's the the billion dollar question I think about this a lot it is it may be the several billion dollar question yeah yeah that's right that's right nowadays certainly um and we talk about this as a team a lot actually and if I was to look into my my crystal ball into the future I think future scaling in the years ahead May mean actually more of what we've seen in the past and they often say that the best predictor of the future is what you've seen in the past right and I think trends that we've seen around speed and scale are going to be with us um into the future clearly and they're only going to accelerate as we move forward but I think the the Milestones to your point in the future may be shaped by I think the magnitude of these changes will bring even more innovation and new business models so that as we move forward and you touched on a few of them but I think about things like clearly accelerating Ai and it feels like now again AI is ready for prime time I was actually I've written a study the other day that protected by 2024 more than 50 percent of user touches will be augmented by AI either from a speech standpoint or the written word or computer vision algorithms which is pretty staggering when you think about it's only a year away right so it feels like we're finally getting closer to that virtual assistant which has really been the promise of of AI I think the other disruptions that are going to continue are things like local development platforms really looking to accelerate productivity for developers which I think is going to be really big um and will continue to to grow in its focus and then it's clear and we we touched on this before that we're going to create heaps more data within organizations we create a lot of data we talked about Six Trillion data points that we're processing on an annual basis just that samsara that will continue to increase as we increase our business so investment in the modern data stack becomes really important but I think the important point to me is I always think about the people elements of this right we think about these disruptions rapid firing our businesses from all this accelerated Innovation and of course it means we we also need to be nimble and agile and and open-minded and so I think it's up to the it organization to kind of harness all of this capability and bring it to Bear to add value for the business and you know to me it's about the people and employees and and we're going to need to adapt right there's going to be more milestones in the future around Tech literacy technology will become literally core to every role in the organization so continuous learning and experimentation with new technology teams are going to need to make space for mistakes right and maybe even budget and buffer um for for experimentation so to me when I think about the future of scaling I.T to to your question to me those business demands it really comes back to readying your team to take advantage of this new wave of innovation that we're seeing out there James you know I'm glad Steven that you brought up the idea of the staff again it's a I missed all the hullabaloo but Ai and machine learning and data analytics sometimes we forget about the actual staff that's it does it does make a difference uh in general I'd say thank you I mean you've said a lot of great stuff I've actually learned something uh thank you so much like it's going to be a really interesting sector to follow in the years ahead Stephen thank you so much for sharing your Insight today it's been great to talk to you this morning James and um good luck with uh the rest of the the the series

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