Connectivity, Data, and People: The New IT Ecosystem

[00:00:00] Intro: Technology has transformed how we live, work, and connect. And behind that change are visionary people with bold ideas. Welcome to the Bridgecast, where host Scott Kinka explores hybrid work, AI, and our evolving future with tech’s brightest minds. Presented by Bridgepointe Technologies, the nation’s leading tech advisory firm. Experience a better way—the Bridgepointe way.

[00:00:35] Scott Kinka: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Bridgecast. We are joining you live at the Channel Partners Conference in Las Vegas. And if you’re noticing the orange hue to the room, we are in the Lumen Lounge.

[00:00:48] Jim Ortbals: Very much so.

[00:00:48] Scott Kinka: Well done, guys. Thank you. I am joined today by Danny Benedetti, who is the Vice President of Partner Solutions at Lumen Technologies. This is Danny. But a surprise guest here—I was fully unprepared—Jim Ortbals on Day One?

[00:01:11] Jim Ortbals: Day one.

[00:01:11] Scott Kinka: Day one. Senior Vice President of Global Partner Solutions. Jim and I knew each other way back in the day. We’ll obviously get back to that at some point. Danny, who I was prepared to talk about—I’m going to ask you to talk about yourself. Danny has built his career at Lumen through a series of leadership roles in the channel over the years and has played a key role in shaping how Lumen engages partners and, more importantly, helps those partners deliver value to enterprise customers.

In a world where enterprise IT ecosystems are becoming simultaneously more distributed and interconnected, Danny and his team sit at the center of the partner community that helps organizations translate infrastructure into business outcomes. Danny and Jim, welcome to the Bridgecast.

[00:01:42] Danny Benedetti: Thanks for having us.

[00:01:43] Scott Kinka: Thrilled to have you. Day one. How’d they rope you into this?

[00:01:47] Jim Ortbals: Yeah, nothing like drinking from the fire hose and jumping right in headfirst. I would say “feet first,” but that’s probably not right. Headfirst is more like it. No rest for the weary, so I’m excited to get going.

[00:01:57] Scott Kinka: I love it. Well, we’ll come back to you in a minute because I gave you a little background there. Jim, this is day one. The role is—let me make sure I get the title correct—Senior Vice President, Global Partner Solutions. Can you walk us back through your career a little bit? You can start from when we met if you like.

[00:02:12] Jim Ortbals: Yeah. Going back, I spent seven years at Cisco in, ironically, the service provider channel. That’s where we met. That’s where I have a lot of history with Lumen before it was Lumen. A lot of the different companies that have rolled up into Lumen, I was dealing with them on the vendor side. I’ve had stops at VMware and, most recently, Zscaler, where I ran their Global Service Provider practice.

My background has been very informed from an SP and a telco perspective through the course of my career. Most recently, I was at BeyondTrust, a leader in the identity security space. So, I’ve spent a lot of time in cyber recently. This is day one leading the channel organization, and I’m thrilled to be here and excited about the opportunity in front of us from a customer and partner perspective.

[00:03:03] Scott Kinka: It’s super interesting that you’re saying Lumen was your account when you were at Cisco. You supported them. I love that. We might get into that; we’ll see where that goes. Danny, you’ve grown your career with Lumen across multiple channel leadership roles. We’ll talk a little bit about Lumen’s transformation as we go, but just give me a moment in the journey—something that shaped how you think about partners in technology distribution.

[00:03:26] Danny Benedetti: Oh, it’s so critical. You cannot have technology distribution without partners. It is at the core of the entire distribution model. The ability to extend the reach and the expertise that the partners bring to the relationship—it’s everything. Without it, you just don’t have a channel. You don’t have that means of distribution at scale.

[00:03:49] Scott Kinka: Yeah, that’s amazing. Has your perspective on the role of the partner in this ecosystem changed over the time you’ve been at Lumen?

[00:03:56] Danny Benedetti: Yeah, it’s completely changed. I’ve spent the last sixteen years in the channel. Think about 2010 and where the channel was then; it has grown. Every five years, there is a monumental shift. You think back to 2015, 2020—the times that we went through COVID—and now we’re in 2026, marching towards 2030, and we’re in this AI revolution where everything is changing.

You just think back ten years ago to where technology was, where partners were, and where we were as a provider. Ten years later, it’s all different. The pace of change is accelerating so fast.

[00:04:35] Scott Kinka: We’re going to explore those ten years because quite a bit happened. I think people know Lumen—you guys have stadium naming rights and all that—but I’m not sure everybody is entirely clued in on the heritage of the company. So we will talk a little bit about that. I’m going to come to you first, Danny, and then I’m going to ask the same question to Jim. Everybody I talk to on the show, I ask the same question: You’ve been in a leadership role for a long time; what’s your leadership superpower?

[00:05:05] Danny Benedetti: The ability to lead through change.

[00:05:10] Scott Kinka: Well, you guys have had quite a lot of it.

[00:05:11] Danny Benedetti: We have. When change happens, you can let it consume you and worry about all the things you can’t control, or you can care for those you are in charge of—those you have the opportunity and privilege to lead. That’s the most important thing you can do: be there for somebody else. Help them see that it’s going to be okay. Steady the boat; help keep the waters calm.

It’s about understanding that when change happens, everybody has a different reaction and processes it differently. But change is the catalyst for everything. There’s a quote that I’ve told my kids when I’ve coached, and I tell my team: “Everything you want is on the other side of hard.” When it gets hard, that’s when the magic happens because there’s something waiting for you on the other side.

[00:06:19] Scott Kinka: We’re going to talk quite a bit about change in a couple of minutes. But Jim, I’m going to come to you. Day one: leadership superpower?

[00:06:25] Jim Ortbals: It’s my sincerity and passion when it comes to trying to lead the way. I think the feedback I’ve gotten over the years is that my passion can be somewhat inspiring and brings people along on the journey. It adds to what Danny said about change management. If you have passion, clarity, and purpose, you can navigate and manage through just about anything. If you bring more people along with you, you’re going to be successful.

[00:07:08] Scott Kinka: Essentially, we talk a lot about how you can choose a job or you can choose a career. Obviously, we’ve all chosen careers. People with careers sometimes are very jealous of people who have jobs because they think, “I would love to just turn my phone off tonight.” But you do sign up for a lifestyle at the end of the day. Is that a little bit of a concern?

[00:07:30] Jim Ortbals: You know, it’s funny you bring that up because you do think about it: “God, I wish I could turn off the phone, put it down, and just show up nine-to-five and be done with it.” But I don’t think I’m wired that way. After about twenty minutes, I’d be ready to not do that. It’s how you’re wired, or how you’ve become wired over the course of your career.

[00:07:58] Scott Kinka: And it’s the people around you, too. Rising tide. I appreciate that. Let’s talk about rising tides at Lumen. This is a tricky one just to reorient us quickly. I think people are familiar with the brand, but in some pockets, leaders may have experience with earlier iterations of the business and may not be aware they are part of Lumen today. CenturyLink, Level 3, Qwest, even Savvis—these businesses are all now part of the legacy of Lumen. Danny, who is Lumen today, and what makes it different than those previous iterations?

[00:08:36] Danny Benedetti: Wow, so you brought up some names that were stalwarts in the industry. When you go through combining companies and the integration process, you learn so much about those who work there, but the DNA of the company is also evolving. It’s dynamic and always changing.

As you go through, you really start to see the strength of the assets. For the longest time, from 2010 to 2020, things shifted away from the network a little bit—UCaaS, SD-WAN, SASE. And then as we get into 2020 and beyond, we start talking about AI. We have a new CEO, Kate Johnson, and CFO, Chris Stansbury. There was a vision within Lumen of what AI meant and how the network needed to be dynamic. It could no longer be static.

The control of the network could no longer sit solely on the telco side. We needed to revolutionize our network to put control into the customer’s hands—to dial bandwidth up and down as they need and really “cloudify” the network. Multi-Cloud Gateway is something that we’re launching this month. It seamlessly allows the customer to move their cloud workloads to hyperscalers. These are the things the company was intentional about investing in. We call it being “the backbone for the AI economy” because the network can now scale to the needs of the enterprise on demand.

[00:10:36] Scott Kinka: It’s super interesting. Jim, I’m going to put you on the spot. I look at the way we think about network design as going through generations. Intrinsically, it changed in 2020. It wasn’t centered around a headquarters or branch locations anymore; it really became centered around the humans. Would we be prepared for the dynamics we need in network infrastructure today to support AI had we not gone through that dramatic transformation in 2020?

[00:11:21] Jim Ortbals: I don’t think so. I joined Zscaler at the beginning of COVID when the world stopped and everybody went home. It was really hard for a lot of enterprises to stand that up so quickly. They had to re-architect everything: VPNs, web proxies, etc. That forced such rapid change from an IT perspective that it set the stage for what we’re now going through with the AI revolution.

The pace of change is overwhelming to a certain extent, but they had to do this half a decade ago. Having successfully come out the other end, adjusting business models and infrastructure, I think that prepared them well for this. There is a direct correlation.

[00:12:41] Scott Kinka: I just think about how much changed so quickly. We weren’t in “elasticity” then. You mentioned VPNs—back in the day at Cisco, we were selling individual VPN licenses for 10% of the staff, and then suddenly everyone is at home. You have this office-centric network that no one is on, and overnight it became a people-centric design.

Danny, these organizations came together over a decade-plus. Let’s equate that to the experience of a Director of IT or a CIO. We are in an unprecedented era of equity-led roll-ups in healthcare and retail. IT leaders are dealing with the smashing of companies together. Give me a piece of advice from smashing all those companies together, and then maybe a word of caution.

[00:14:02] Danny Benedetti: Integration brings out a lot of interesting human aspects. It creates a lot of fear because people don’t know what’s going to happen next. You have people wondering, not what’s best for the infrastructure or the culture, but “What’s best for me?” The human element is deeply rooted in integration.

Leaders who understand that can navigate their teams through the fear. You have to get people to set the fear aside and say, “Let’s make the right decision for the technology and our people.” If you have a leader willing to do that, you have a team willing to do that. That accelerates the integration. You spend way less time and money because you’re making good decisions early on, rather than undoing decisions that were based in fear.

[00:15:50] Jim Ortbals: I’ve seen it from the outside in a lot of places. Especially at the board level, people think about how fast they can integrate. It’s not just cultural; it’s systemic. Security becomes a huge piece—I have a bias there because I spent the last eight years in cyber. You have to integrate without creating additional risk.

It’s strategic. It’s not just, “Yes, we see synergies,” but “How do we mitigate the risk of rolling this up?” You have to ensure you aren’t opening yourself up to attack vectors that weren’t there before while still trying to see productivity enhancement. If you set unreasonable expectations on speed, you’re constantly playing from behind.

[00:17:13] Scott Kinka: Rapid-fire opportunity: Regarding M&A or integration work—whether it’s network or people—is it better to “rip the Band-Aid off” because it’s easier to get the change out of the way, or “let it play out”?

[00:17:41] Jim Ortbals: Addressing the hard things early is the best way to do it. Whether that involves ripping the Band-Aid off or letting it play out, you need to understand quickly what those hard things are and then apply the right strategy.

[00:18:07] Danny Benedetti: I would say rip the Band-Aid off, but the people doing the ripping need to deeply understand what they’re doing. You can’t let it go on too long. If it’s grounded in good business decisions, there’s a phrase I like: “Go slow to go fast.”

[00:19:00] Scott Kinka: You guys position yourselves as “the company that connects data, applications, and people.” Is that marketing, or is that really how you’re challenging IT leaders to think about their networking right now?

[00:19:10] Danny Benedetti: People are at the core of everything. Even with AI and agentic AI, we’re the ones using it. It’s about the customer experience across the board. We aren’t building this out for the machines; we are building this out for the people to use AI and the advancement in technology.

[00:19:59] Scott Kinka: Jim, we find that there are still individual conversations too often about connectivity, cloud, and security as if they are independent decisions. Are we beyond that?

[00:20:34] Jim Ortbals: I’d like to think we’re moving towards getting beyond that, but no, I think a lot of decisions are still made in vacuums. Vendors often have a myopic view because they want to run through the sales cycle. But in the ecosystem, I see more outcome-oriented discussions.

What outcomes are they really looking for? It’s not just, “Network is sexy again.” Is it a secured network? A collaborative network? Does it address multi-cloud environments? We at Lumen want to deliver a variety of solutions that meet those needs rather than just a point product. Everyone is being challenged to do more with less, reduce the threat surface, and enable the generation of AI. Nobody knows how to do it perfectly yet, but we’re working toward it.

[00:22:32] Scott Kinka: You mentioned AI. We could do an entire episode on the mistakes we’re making—it feels like we’re doing “cloud” all over again. Give me a good use case of a customer or project where they approached it with that “slow to go fast” mentality.

[00:23:06] Danny Benedetti: One of the best use cases is what’s happening inside Lumen. Like a lot of enterprises, we have legacy systems, tools, and networks. The human capital required to analyze and fix all of that manually is too high. But we are building AI agents to perform these tasks.

It’s a digital workforce getting us intelligence on our systems and our network in real-time. It’s allowing us to build a roadmap for every employee and system. We are becoming so much more efficient. AI projects everything out and allows a project to change course on demand. We don’t have to wait six months to figure out one little piece was flawed.

[00:24:38] Scott Kinka: So there’s ROI to be gained today. I do feel like we’re hyper-focused on ROI early on. I keep telling customers AI is going to cost you more this year because of security, models, training, and governance. Does that contrarian view make sense to you?

[00:25:13] Jim Ortbals: I wouldn’t take an opposite position on that at all. I’ve been living in that for the last three years—how AI can transform your security posture. Look at what Claude is doing right now with code validation. It can write code, but it can also do a “dev check” to ensure errors aren’t injected. It’s a great unbiased sanity check to marry with human eyes. Marrying automation with the human factor is how we go far and fast.

[00:26:18] Scott Kinka: Danny, what’s the one thing about Lumen that you hope a listener would know?

[00:26:40] Danny Benedetti: It’s the people. We’re a technology company, but at the heart of it are individuals who care deeply. They show up because they want to be part of the AI revolution. Customers and partners are going to need the expertise and experience of what we’ve been through internally over the last several years. We get it, we understand it, and we want to be part of it.

[00:27:27] Scott Kinka: Rapid-fire segment: One sentence answers. Bold prediction for the next 12 to 18 months—tech, politics, sports, anything.

[00:27:44] Danny Benedetti: The 49ers will win the Super Bowl.

[00:27:47] Jim Ortbals: I was actually going to say the Chiefs will beat the 49ers again.

[00:28:05] Scott Kinka: Reading anything interesting right now?

[00:28:09] Jim Ortbals: I do a lot of self-help stuff, but I also love techno-thrillers. I just finished Mark Greaney’s The Hard Way. Fantastic book.

[00:28:22] Danny Benedetti: I am not reading anything because I’ve had a problem sleeping lately. If I start reading, I’ll stay up too long. Sleep is a premium as you get older.

[00:29:00] Scott Kinka: One sentence to sum up your leadership philosophy.

[00:29:02] Jim Ortbals: Servant leadership—leading from the front.

[00:29:02] Danny Benedetti: If you can’t interject humility into your leadership style, you’re going to struggle.

[00:29:02] Scott Kinka: Amen. Last one: Choose your dystopian future—zombies, aliens, the Matrix—but only one app still works on your phone. Which one is it?

[00:29:31] Jim Ortbals: My favorite app this time of year is the MLB.com app. This assumes they’re still playing baseball in the apocalypse. Otherwise, that’s not a future I want to be a part of.

[00:29:47] Danny Benedetti: I’m going DoorDash. I don’t care what planet I’m on; why forage when you can just order it up?

[00:30:02] Scott Kinka: Guys, this was great. If anyone wants to learn more about you or Lumen, where should they go?

[00:30:12] Danny Benedetti: Danny Benedetti on LinkedIn or Lumen.com.

[00:30:17] Jim Ortbals: The same. I’m Day One, so you’ll start to see more content coming from me soon.

[00:30:26] Scott Kinka: Amazing. That’s going to do it. If you found this useful, smash that subscribe button. Give us a five-star review on your favorite platform; it helps us reach more people like you. I’m Scott Kinka, and until next time—there’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the signal.