AWS for Software Companies Podcast

CTO Sam Pierson explains how Qlik’s associative engine and agentic AI are transforming the way businesses uncover insights and what’s next on the data frontier.
Topics Include:
Qlik is a 30-year-old data analytics and AI company with global customers.
Qlik's associative engine surfaces insights from data you aren't even examining.
A paper manufacturer optimized supply chain routing and navigated tariff complexity.
Generative AI can't easily query databases — Qlik's engine bridges that gap.
Qlik built an agentic layer enabling natural language conversations with your data.
MCP integration lets users access Qlik insights directly from tools like Claude Desktop.
Qlik runs entirely on AWS, with global regions built around local compliance requirements.
The AWS partnership prioritizes mutual success over transactional service relationships.
Agents will mature in 2026; some agentic bets will succeed, others will be refactored.
Fine-tuned, smaller language models will grow in importance alongside larger ones.
AI adoption requires restructuring workflows end-to-end, from product spec to go-to-market.
Qlik is hiring for curiosity and agency — people who experiment without waiting for permission.

Participants:
Sam Pierson – Chief Technology Officer, Qlik

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Sumo Logic's VP of Security Strategy reveals how a ground-up agentic framework transformed their platform, and why clean data and autonomous agents are rewriting the rules of cloud security.
Topics Include:
Sumo Logic is a cloud analytics platform ingesting data from complex IT stacks.
Built on AWS from the start, leveraging microservices for scalable solutions.
Early AI efforts produced a natural language query co-pilot for security data.
Bolting AI onto existing platforms proved brittle and one-dimensional.
Customer feedback drove a decision to redesign AI from the ground up.
The Dojo AI framework unifies purpose-built agents across the entire platform.
New agents include a SOC analyst agent, knowledge agent, and MCP server.
New frontier models on Bedrock give the whole platform an instant brain transplant.
Autonomous agents require rethinking security controls beyond traditional programmatic guardrails.
Federal and global customers demand rigorous, levelled-up security across all regions.
Clean, normalized data proved the biggest unlock for reliable AI query results.
Agent-to-agent communication and MCP will define the next era of AI platforms.

Participants:
Chas Clawson – Vice President, Security Strategy, Sumo Logic

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Avalara's Chief Architect Tim Diekmann reveals how AI and agentic technology are transforming tax compliance and accuracy across 40,000 jurisdictions leveraging AWS.
Topics Include:
Avalara provides tax compliance software across North America, Europe, and beyond.
They operate between commerce and government, covering 40,000+ jurisdictions.
Services span registration, sales tax calculation, and certificate management.
Avalara was the only company keeping pace with rapid tariff changes.
AI is used to parse unstructured documents like tax notices and publications.
Intelligent mapping automates ERP integration across vastly different system configurations.
GenAI lets customers query billions of transactions using plain conversational language.
Avalara and AWS are now engaged in a promising co-selling motion.
Time-to-go-live and transaction accuracy are the key success metrics tracked.
Amazon Q was rolled out company-wide, achieving 95% developer adoption.
AI literacy is now prioritized across legal, HR, and engineering teams alike.
Agentic AI will embed Avalara directly inside customer ERP systems going forward.

Participants:
Tim Diekmann – SVP of Engineering, Chief Architect, Avalara

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Honeycomb Co-founder and CTO Charity Majors explains why measuring the right engineering metrics in the age of AI matters more than chasing numbers.
Topics Include:
Charity Majors introduces Honeycomb as the original observability company for complex systems
Honeycomb solves high cardinality problems across millions of individual customer experiences
Their MCP tool ranked top five in Stack Overflow's most-used list
Canva lets developers interact with production software directly from their IDE
AI acts as an amplifier requiring strong reliability and observability foundations
Measuring success requires multiple metrics to avoid gaming single numbers
Honeycomb adopted Intercom's 2X productivity challenge enlisting employees to identify gains
Writing code was never the hard part even before generative AI arrived
Honeycomb created AI values prioritizing transparency and emotional safety for employees
Staff tested boundaries on resources and environmental impact prompting honest discussions
Honeycomb acquired Grok and shipped Query Assistant Canvas and MCP products
Future concerns include AI economics shifting and AI-native developers lacking foundational expertise

Participants:
Charity Majors – Co-Founder/CTO, Honeycomb.io

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/

Astronomer's Steven Hillion reveals how OpenAI, Anthropic, Uber, and Lyft use Apache Airflow to orchestrate AI and machine learning pipelines at scale on AWS.
Topics Include:
Steven Hillion leads data and AI at Astronomer
Apache Airflow surpassed Spark and Kafka in community metrics
Astronomer coordinates data flow like conductor orchestrating instrumental platforms
Organizations with data engineering teams use Airflow at scale
Customers already used Airflow for ML before official promotion
Uber and Lyft orchestrate pricing models using Airflow
Astronomer runs on AWS with close integration partnerships
OpenAI Anthropic and GitHub Copilot use Airflow for operations
Internal data team uses Airflow creating feedback loops
Evolved from constrained AI reports to agentic workflows
Platform monitors generative AI output quality at user interactions
Metadata and context increasingly critical for AI applications
Learn more at Astronomer’s Data FlowCast podcast

Participants:
Steven Hillion – SVP, Data and AI, Astronomer

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon.com/isv/