Heavy Strategy

Packet Pushers

From technology to workplace culture, from geopolitical trends to economics, Heavy Strategy debates pivotal questions in enterprise IT. Hosts Johna Till Johnson & John Burke bring their technical expertise, analytical acumen, and contrasting viewpoints to discuss complex topics of interest to IT leaders. Frequently irreverent and always thought-provoking, these are the conversations you wish you could have at the leadership table. Tune in and join the think tank, where unanswered questions are better than unquestioned answers.

Play

Open in

21 episodes
fortnightly
Avg 36 min
English

Episodes 21

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.

#140
August 18 · 42 min
HS140: AI and Technical Debt – Boon or Bane?
Does AI increase or reduce technical debt? Join Johna Johnson and John Burke as they discuss how to make strategy in environments in which AI fuels untrammeled growth in enterprise complexity–but a…
#139
August 4 · 33 min
HS139: When “One Cloud to Rule Them All” is NOT the Answer: Regionalization
IT folks spent a lot of time in the last 20 years creating globe-spanning infrastructures that maximize performance while minimizing the number of data centers or cloud instances they operate. More…
#138
July 21 · 30 min
HS138: When “One Cloud To Rule Them All” Is NOT the Answer: Repatriation for AI and more
Some enterprises are finding reasons to pull back from a cloud-first IT strategy and run workloads in on-premises data centers. John and Johna dig into why companies are making the change, including…
#137
June 30 · 38 min
HS137: Did AI Turn “Everybody Codes” into “Nobody Codes”?
“Everybody codes” was an enterprise buzzword. In this era of AI vibe-coding and single-use coding, should everyone code? Should anyone code? John and Johna talk about enterprise strategies with res…
#136
June 23 · 50 min
HS136: How AI Is Changing Enterprise Software Development (Sponsored)
AI can generate working code quickly. Building reliable software to run infrastructure platforms is still a multi-year engineering challenge. In this sponsored episode, BlueCat chief strategy…
#135
June 16 · 31 min
HS135: AI Spyware in Chrome Spotlights Attractions of DaaS
VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and Desktop as a Service (DaaS) have been arriving “real soon now” for the past couple of decades. Will the advent of vendors’ AI spyware (as Google is intro…
#134
June 2 · 32 min
HS134: Dodging the AI Iceberg: Midcourse Corrections
By now most organizations have AI strategies (among their other tech strategies). But how do you know when it’s time to make a midcourse correction? Better still: How can you predict when, and what k…
#133
May 26 · 49 min
HS133: Approaching Zero…Trust (Sponsored)
Most enterprises have some kind of zero trust strategy, but a lot of them could be better described as good intentions rather than active programs being implemented. Making good on a zero trust…
#132
May 19 · 36 min
HS132: Heart of Glasswing
How can enterprise IT folks prepare for the age of Mythos? Anthropic says its Claude Mythos model is so much better at finding software vulnerabilities that it has delayed public release. Instead…
#131
May 5 · 34 min
HS131: Cybersecurity Strategy: Defending Against AI
Enterprise strategists need to worry about securing their environments against AI-powered attacks. John and Johna discuss what cybersecurity and IT leaders need to consider in developing a…
#130
April 21 · 37 min
HS130: Wait, AI Doesn’t Secure Itself? Developing an AI Security Strategy
Your enterprise better have a cybersecurity strategy for AI. But where to start? Everywhere! Securing AI means securing all the AI layers and throughout the lifecycle: data, model, and applications,…
April 10 · 34 min
HS128: Planning for an AI Bubble Burst
How should you shape your IT strategy around the possibility–or is it probability–that the AI economy is a true bubble and will burst soon? John Burke and Johna Johnson revisit the signs indicating t…
#129
April 7 · 39 min
HS129: Achieving Operational Excellence
The best strategy in the world won’t succeed if a team falters operationally. But what is operational excellence, and what does it take to acquire it? Cal Poly faculty member (and former Intel s…
#127
March 17 · 38 min
HS127: You’re Not Thinking About Your Network the Way You Should (Sponsored)
Mav Turner, Chief Product Officer at Kentik, joins John Burke and Drew Conry-Murray for an in-depth conversation on the importance of deep visibility into enterprise networks. As networks grow more…
#126
March 10 · 39 min
HS126: AI Everything, AI Everywhere, AI All At Once
At CES in January, NVIDIA, AMD, Siemens and others spun elaborate tales of a world suffused with AI: AI in the cloud, AI at the desktop, AI in the factory, AI underneath enterprise software and as…
#125
February 24 · 33 min
HS125: How to Choose an IT Hiring Service
Every employer knows to conduct background checks. However, conducting background checks on IT professionals requires an extra layer of verification, given the privileged access they typically have…
#124
February 10 · 43 min
HS124: Administration DDoS on AI Regulation
The recent U.S. Executive Order 14365, Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, is the administration’s latest attempt to prevent the enforcement of most of the AI laws p…
#123
January 27 · 31 min
HS123: What Can You Stop Worrying About in 2026?
Are there some things that can come off your strategic planning radar for IT and cybersecurity in 2026? If you ask AI, you’ll get some surprising answers. Johna and John take a critical look at this …
#122
January 13 · 33 min
HS122: Insider Threats in the Age of AI
Leaders may shy away from thinking about insider threats because it means assuming the worst about colleagues and friends. But technology executives do need to confront this problem because insider…
#121
Dec 16, 2025 · 32 min
HS121: Digital Security Teammates: From Fantasy to Operational Reality (Sponsored)
Your next security teammate might not be a traditional hire — it could be a Digital Security Teammate (DST),” says Secure.com CEO Uzair Gadit. In this sponsored episode, Uzair explains the concept of…

Showing 1–20 of 21 episodes