Daniel Sheppard is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Akamai, leading GTM for Cloud Compute after previous product leadership roles at Google, Rackspace, and EA. He is also the founder of Prickly Pear Home Services in Austin, Texas. Operating at the intersection of enterprise cloud and real-world trade operations, Daniel builds production AI workflows to run his business, giving him a frontline perspective on where AI delivers genuine operational efficiency and where it falls short of expectations. He holds an MBA from Arizona State University. Daniel lives in Pflugerville with his wife, four kids, and two doodles, and spends his free time coaching youth softball.