Gordon Benzie, Author at Making Every Word Count

Rock & Roll in Tech is When Hardware Meets Software

Picture the modern IT ecosystem as a stage under blinding lights. The crowd’s roaring, the amps are humming, and the show’s about to start. But before the first note hits, every musician must be in sync. That’s how hardware and software must work together today – not as separate parts, but as members of the same band, feeding off each other’s rhythm, tone, and timing.

The Edge Awakens: Why the Future of AI Won’t Live in the Cloud

For years, enterprises treated the cloud as the ultimate destination for computing. Centralized infrastructure promised scale, accessibility, and predictable cost. Data lakes grew endlessly, and AI models flourished in vast clusters of remote compute power. The future of AI may now bring the end of the cloud’s golden era.

The push to put everything on the cloud worked – until the laws of physics and economics caught up. Latency, bandwidth, privacy, and energy are now real constraints. Every byte that crosses a network consumes time, power, and money. As AI models grow larger and more complex, the cost of moving data often outweighs the value of processing it.

This is where the next chapter in the Future of AI begins. Intelligence is migrating from distant data centers to the physical world, bringing data closer to its source. The cloud was the foundation, but the Edge is becoming the next frontier.

Will AI Shatter the Old Walls Between Software and Hardware?

I’ve spent many years in high-tech leadership, having worked in several product marketing and analyst relations roles. I’ve overseen rebranding campaigns, new product launches, and messaging strategies, working with many teams focused on delivering products that bridge multiple architectures and deployment strategies. My experience has been primarily from a perspective of enterprise software. This includes understanding buyer personas, value propositions, and how to achieve the lowest total cost of ownership. More recently, I’ve begun working in the hardware and chip development industry, in the area of AI semiconductor design. Interestingly, I see more parallels today between the software and hardware industries – a convergence I attribute to the increasing influence of AI.

Now the direction is to orchestrate AI capabilities across hardware and software platforms. This shift is an “agentic” transformation. This wasn’t always the case. In September 2024, Salesforce was an early pioneer in taking a software approach to building agents. One of their Dreamforce 2024 tracks, Build Innovative ISV Apps with Agentforce, discussed how “ISV partners can build Agents and actions for Agentforce using Apex, flows, and prompt templates.”

I don’t recall any conversations about taking an agentic strategy to hardware back in 2024, but I might have missed it! My focus at that time was on closely monitoring the field service management vertical of the enterprise software stack.

The New Role of Analyst Relations in the AI-Driven Buyer Journey

Marketing has transformed many times over the past two decades. The rise of websites reshaped commerce. SEO altered how companies attract buyers. Now, artificial intelligence is driving another major disruption – possibly the largest yet. The constant theme is clear: how to best invest resources to elevate brand awareness and customer engagement. The methods keep evolving, and the rules shift every few years.

At the Product Marketing Alliance Analyst Relations Summit on August 21, 2025, this shift was on full display. I attended the track titled “If GenAI can’t find you, neither can your buyers: The new role of AR in an AI-driven, buyer-led world.” The session was hosted by Rick Nash, CEO of Spotlight, and James Cadwallader, CEO of Profound. Together, they addressed how LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, and Anthropic are incorporating industry analyst content and other third-party sources to shape AI-generated outputs. The message was clear: the role of analyst relations (AR) is entering a new era of importance within the AI-Driven Buyer Journey.

Those interested in watching the entire presentation can do so by registering to attend the Analyst Relations Summit. Once you have registered and created a profile, you should then be able to access the recordings.

Building the Right Analyst Relations Program: Assessing Your AR Maturity

An analyst relations (AR) program can be a powerful business asset. It can influence market perception, shape product decisions, and help sales win deals. But one truth stands above all: an AR strategy is not “one size fits all.” Picking the right program depends on several factors. One is your organization’s level of AR maturity.

Those who are new to analyst relations might find interest in reading this article, Understanding Industry Analyst Relations: Definition, History, and Impact.

Every organization must build its AR program from its own perspective. That means aligning it to your unique goals, budget, and current maturity level. A strategy that works for a fast-growing startup might fail in a multinational enterprise. The challenge is understanding where you are now and what steps will deliver the greatest value next.

Here’s Why You Need a Nurture Marketing Strategy

Marketers can sometimes think in narrow lanes, especially those working at larger enterprises. Success metrics are highly refined and focused such that it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Growth marketers might just focus on new business, social media specialists target engagement and “likes,” while those responsible for customer marketing might just see events as their core KPI. Nurture marketing can sometimes fall through the cracks.

Unfortunately, this perspective can limit your organization’s overall marketing effectiveness. Instead, take a step back and picture your marketing universe as having three groups:

Current customers
Future potential customers
People who will never buy from you

That third group is real. Don’t waste your time or budget trying to convert them. Instead, just focus on the first two and then apply this concept to all of your campaigns.

How to Maximize the ROI of an Analyst Relations Program

How to measure the ROI of an Analyst Relations program.

Many companies rush into analyst relations thinking only of magic quadrants and top-right dots. That’s a mistake. Before investing, organizations should understand the levels of AR. These range from reactive engagement to proactive, strategic partnerships. Each level brings different types of return – some measurable, others less so. Yes, having top-tier analysts validate your position in a report can be helpful. But analyst relations is much more than chasing rankings. And the ROI of an Analyst Relations program needs to reflect this strategy.

A robust AR program can provide market intelligence, validate your roadmap, and steer your long-term strategy. Those are real advantages – even if they’re hard to quantify. Think about the risk of not engaging. What if your competitors are aligning with analyst insights and you’re not? What if you miss a major shift in buyer behavior or tech adoption?

Why Storytelling is the Secret Weapon Product Marketers Need

People remember stories far better than they remember facts. That’s not just opinion – it’s science. Studies show the brain engages more areas when listening to a story than when hearing data alone. I recently attended the Product Marketing Alliance Positioning, Messaging, and Storytelling Summit held on July 10th this year. It was a great conference and a good reminder of the importance of storytelling.

In 1993, cognitive psychologist Roger Schank, a scientist who made influential contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and focused much of his research on how people learn, explained that human memory is story-based. We recall life as episodes, not as bullet points. In another study, researchers at Stanford found that stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. That’s why anecdotes beat slide decks.

When someone hears a list of specs, they might nod politely. But when they hear about someone like them solving a real problem, they lean in. Stories light up the brain’s sensory regions. They create empathy, emotional connection, and recall.

Win the Hidden Buyer Journey with Smart Influence

Attending the American Marketing Association (AMA) conference in June 2025 reminded me why I prioritize events like this. Each time, I aim to return with at least three new concepts I can apply or share. This year, one insight hit me hard—and it’s still on my mind. It focused on how, today, more than ever, a hidden buyer journey exists. Marketers need to take notice.

Up to 98% of a buyer’s journey happens before they ever visit a vendor’s website.

That’s not a typo.

This number flips traditional demand generation strategies on their head. It also presents a real challenge: how do you influence a buyer before they ever know you exist?

The Right Metrics to Measure Analyst Relations Performance

In far too many enterprise software companies, analyst relations is treated like a box to check. It’s viewed as something that “just needs to be done.” Brief the analysts. Send the slide deck. Analyst relations performance is measured by showing up in a quadrant next year. Done, right?

Wrong.

This mentality is costing companies real momentum. When leadership sees analyst relations as a compliance function instead of a strategic lever, the program becomes misaligned with growth. It gets funded without being understood. It gets evaluated using shallow metrics. And worst of all, it misses the chance to position the company as a true force shaping the industry’s future.

The culprit? Bad assumptions—and worse KPIs.