How SailPoint’s CIO Is Securing AI Agents, Machine Identities, and Enterprise

**Sree Kancharla** (0:00)
But I personally don't understand, even as a technology leader, how are we preparing our next generation? We are not going to work forever, we are going to retire. So if you're not taking the pressures, how are we really developing that talent so they can come and take over our roles?

**Peter High** (0:17)
Welcome to Technovation. I'm your host, Peter High. My guest today is Sree Kancharla. Sree is the Chief Information Officer of SailPoint, a leading provider of enterprise identity security solutions, serving organizations around the world.
SailPoint recently surpassed a billion dollars in annual revenue. As CIO, Sree leads SailPoint's global technology organization, overseeing enterprise systems, infrastructure, data, analytics, security operations, and digital transformation initiatives. She's been a prominent voice on how identity security must evolve in the era of generative and agentic AI, emphasizing that security can no longer be treated as a compliance afterthought, but instead must serve as a strategic enabler of modernization and business transformation. She also leads a customer zero program at the company, influencing SailPoint's products and engaging with customers who, in many cases, are her peers. Sree, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today.

**Sree Kancharla** (1:07)
Thanks for having me here, Peter. I'm very excited to be here today.

**Peter High** (1:11)
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Now on to the interview. Well, for those who may be less familiar with it, talk a bit about SailPoint's business if you would.

**Sree Kancharla** (2:14)
Yeah. SailPoint is very much focused on the identity security platform. I'm pretty sure, I think, Peter, everyone are hearing the identity word these days. I don't think anyone is flipping that word because all the big vendors are everyone. There is too much noise around identity.
But SailPoint, almost for two decades now, is very much focused on the identity security. We all know identity access management, but then we are very much focused on identity access and compliance and governance space. That's the strength of SailPoint.
As identity security, we focus on governing and managing all identities, now like human identities, non-human identities. Now, recently from the last two years, all machine identities and AI agent identities are becoming super relevant and critical. We manage them and then govern them so that we actually can see how the digital identities are managed, and then for the auditors, how do we govern? That's just a bit about SailPoint, but there is a lot of depth and breadth around this.

**Peter High** (3:18)
I'm looking forward to getting more into that phenomenal overview so far though. Sree, talk a bit about your role. What's within your purview as the Chief Information Officer of the company?

**Sree Kancharla** (3:28)
So my purview on SailPoint is all of the IT portfolio naturally, the PMO, infrastructure, global support, and all the enterprise applications and data. But I'm also the customer zero, so identity security is part of my organization too.

**Peter High** (3:46)
So talk a bit about being customer zero in an organization like yours and the way in which you influence the product as a persona among others that the company sells to as well.

**Sree Kancharla** (3:56)
So I think customer zero was one of the reason also which attracted me to joining SailPoint, Peter. But I also feel blessed to be the customer zero right now in this agentic era, being deploying SailPoint at SailPoint. The reason for that is three different reasons. One is when I joined SailPoint almost three years back, the day one I walked into our organization, Mark McLean, our CEO said, Sree, we are not using our own platform to the extent we wanted to use, and so we can share to our customers. Can we do something about this and then can you help navigate that journey? That was my first discussion with Mark.