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- 🧩 SAP–Snowflake link-up targets cleaner AI data pipelines
🧩 SAP–Snowflake link-up targets cleaner AI data pipelines
SAP–Snowflake Data Tie-Up, IBM Refocuses on AI, Pain-First Product Insights from Cy Khormaee
Aimply Team & Zack Tembi
November 10, 2025
SAP–Snowflake Data Tie-Up, IBM Refocuses on AI, Pain-First Product Insights from Cy Khormaee
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Welcome to this week’s edition of CIOsurge!
This week:
SAP and Snowflake are finally making SAP-context data usable in modern AI stacks, giving CIOs a cleaner path from ERP to agents.
IBM is trimming headcount to double down on higher-margin software and AI, so now’s the time to recheck SLAs and services coverage.
This week’s guest insight: Cy Khormaee says AI only works when it starts from a real, expensive customer pain, not from the tech.
Let’s make this week a game-changer.
Stay sharp. Stay ahead.
đź’ˇ Guest Expert Insights: Cy Khormaee
🎯 Start With the Pain, Not the Tech
A 3x founder who shipped and sold security at scale, Cy is blunt about why startups live or die: the customer pain is the only immutable thing. Tech, packaging, delivery, and messaging all change. If the pain is small or fuzzy, no clever model or agent will save you.
Work backwards from an uncontroversial, expensive problem. Validate the “must fix” before you chase the “can build.”
Once the pain is nailed, you have a thousand ways to solve it. That freedom lets you pivot quickly without losing the plot and keeps you out of the trap of hunting for a market to fit a neat piece of tech.
🛡️ Why Start AegisAI: A Founder’s Pain Point
As CEO and co-founder of AegisAI, Cy Khormaee is unflinching about the “why” behind the company: relentless, sophisticated email attacks had become the unmovable wall for enterprise security teams, and every organization still lost sleep over phishing, BEC, and costly false alarms. His perspective is shaped by years building large-scale security products at Google—where the technical approach kept morphing, but the underlying threat never shrank.​
Cy’s frustration peaked watching teams scramble to keep up with AI-powered attacks, even as the best model or ML upgrade couldn’t solve the root pain. The real breakthrough was accepting that the problem—ever-adaptive email threats—wasn’t a tech challenge but a business imperative. He saw that customers didn’t need another clever filter; they needed a solution that finally anchored their biggest pain: uncertain, expensive breaches and wasted response cycles.​
Working backward from this “must fix,” he resisted the urge to chase incremental tech, instead validating—across hundreds of enterprises—that the core pain was loud, expensive, and uncontroversial. Once the scale and clarity of the pain were mapped, Cy and his founding team (ex-Google engineers steeped in reCAPTCHA and Safe Browsing) designed AegisAI’s agentic security platform to pivot and adapt as attack methods evolved—never losing focus on fixing the central problem.​
For Cy, that focus is what separates enduring companies from clever, short-lived tech demos.
🧩 SAP–Snowflake link-up targets cleaner AI data pipelines
SAP and Snowflake will connect SAP Business Data Cloud with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud so enterprises can share SAP-contextual data into Snowflake and build AI agents on top of it. The move builds on their Open Semantic Interchange work, giving SAP shops access to Snowflake’s AI, data engineering and marketplace tools while keeping SAP-backed governance.
This is the kind of partnership CIOs have been asking for: keep SAP’s business context, but let modern AI/data teams work in Snowflake without rebuilding semantics from scratch. If you’re piloting agentic AI, this should shorten the path from SAP data to usable AI workflows.
To get real value, insist on clear lineage, shared semantic models, and role-based access that maps to your SAP identities. Otherwise you just created another expensive data hop. Fold this into your 2026 data platform roadmap alongside SAP’s own agent plans so you don’t end up with two parallel AI stacks.
- Zack Tembi
🏠IBM trims headcount to fuel software-and-AI pivot
IBM will cut a low single-digit percentage of its 270,000-person workforce in Q4 2025 as it rebalances toward higher-margin software and AI/cloud demand tied to Red Hat. The move follows slower growth in its cloud software segment, which spooked investors despite strong YTD share gains, and signals tighter cost discipline around AI-era bets.
This is classic “fund the future” behavior. When growth in the segment Wall Street cares about (cloud software + AI) softens, the easiest lever is workforce realignment. For CIOs buying IBM, this likely means sharper focus on software, platform, and AI services—not broad, people-heavy engagements.
The takeaway: expect IBM to push higher-value subscription and platform offerings and to be more selective on services. If you have long-running IBM support or infra deals, now is a good time to reconfirm SLAs, support continuity, and delivery resources—especially if you’re in the middle of an AI or hybrid cloud rollout that depends on IBM talent.
- Zack Tembi
🗞️ At A Glance
đź’ˇ CIO Spotlights
GE Aerospace appoints Daniel Laakso CIO for defense-focused Edison Works
Daniel Laakso joins GE Aerospace as CIO for Edison Works, its advanced tech arm supporting national defense innovation.
A former U.S. Army IT and operations leader, Laakso brings over 20 years of military experience, including CIO roles at Fort Belvoir.
He’ll oversee digital strategy, system implementation, and security compliance for mission-ready aerospace initiatives.
Impact Climate Technologies promotes Bob Toupin to CIO to advance digital growth
Bob Toupin has been promoted to CIO at Impact Climate Technologies, joining the executive leadership team.
Toupin will lead IT operations and digital initiatives, focusing on modernization, process optimization, and innovation.
CEO John Moon credited Toupin’s leadership and vision for strengthening ICT’s infrastructure and preparing it for future growth.