ISPs and Vendors Need Each Other
How did CUJO AI first land on your radar, and what instantly stood out?
At the time, I was working at Telia and managing a contact center. The CUJO AI Founding Team reached out to me and proposed that we build a contact center for the company. At first, the company name caught my attention, since I’m a fan of Stephen King. Then I looked into what CUJO AI does, and there was no doubt that I wanted to join.
At Telia, one of our main responsibilities was handling internet outage–related support, which included quite a few cybersecurity-related issues. Having completed a master’s degree in telecommunications, I clearly understood how relevant cybersecurity was even back then. On top of that, AI had a particularly mysterious appeal at the time.
If you could advise your former team at Telia, what CUJO AI capability would you deploy first, and why?
Without a doubt: Safe Browsing, DDoS protection, and IP reputation. Telcos have come to see things quite differently since I was working there. Ten years ago, cybersecurity was just budding, and now it’s one of the main things, especially end-user security, that an ISP cares about.
Consumers have many complaints about malicious cyber activity, but their level of understanding – especially of how to fight it – is still extremely low. That’s why there is a strong need for a convenient and easy-to-use security service.
What opportunities are ISPs missing?
I feel many of them should pay more attention to usability and security. My core pet peeve is when operators provide legacy routers to consumers. I understand that swapping a CPE and upgrading is a huge expenditure, but that doesn’t make it any less of an issue for consumers.
Do you see differences between small and large ISPs?
Smaller ones can’t do everything a large ISP does, but it’s not like a large one can do everything either. Smaller organizations have their advantages; they can be more flexible.
European operators are smaller, and things move faster here. There’s also the mentality/locality question. In my experience, Europeans are a bit more conservative, while US telcos want the newest thing. Nevertheless, ISPs are becoming more similar to each other.
How do you see the ISP-vendor relationship?
CUJO AI is very small compared to almost any ISP, but the relationship is very complementary. We are agile and capable of providing a solution for the entire user base. They are huge organizations that have to move many parts to get anything done. Things are hard and can take a while at an ISP.
At CUJO AI, we have to wear many different hats. Large organizations usually have more segmentation, responsibilities are diluted, which means making decisions is not as easy. A decision often requires a consensus.
How do we facilitate this consensus?
We want our partners to make decisions that are right for them. Sometimes it involves effort from several people across Sales, Delivery, and Customer Success to find and get key people in a room and provide the info in the right approach that addresses their pains. Our goal is always to help our partners reach decisions that are right for them faster.
You mentioned pains, any examples?
Our converged solution, where the operator can provide the same level of cybersecurity, personalized experiences, and other services on both home and mobile networks.
Where do you see CUJO AI headed moving forward?
I believe the direction is moving toward implementing various internal network management and security management capabilities for customers, so that users can understand and manage their network with virtually no effort. At the moment, no one offers this as effectively as CUJO AI does – especially when you use the full set of our features.
Fun fact about you that your team might not expect?
I’m a fan of fantasy literature. Stephen King is my favorite writer.