Skip to content
Artwork for Tech Talks Daily
TechnologyNewsTech News

Tech Talks Daily

Neil C. Hughes

If every company is now a tech company and digital transformation is a journey rather than a destination, how do you keep up with the relentless pace of technological change?

Every day, Tech Talks Daily brings you insights from the brightest minds in tech, business, and innovation, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways.

Hosted by Neil C. Hughes, Tech Talks Daily explores how emerging technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, fintech, quantum computing, Web3, and more are shaping industries and solving real-world challenges in modern businesses.

Through candid conversations with industry leaders, CEOs, Fortune 500 executives, startup founders, and even the occasional celebrity, Tech Talks Daily uncovers the trends driving digital transformation and the strategies behind successful tech adoption. But this isn't just about buzzwords.

We go beyond the hype to demystify the biggest tech trends and determine their real-world impact. From cybersecurity and blockchain to AI sovereignty, robotics, and post-quantum cryptography, we explore the measurable difference these innovations can make.

Whether improving security, enhancing customer experiences, or driving business growth, we also investigate the ROI of cutting-edge tech projects, asking the tough questions about what works, what doesn't, and how businesses can maximize their investments.

Whether you're a business leader, IT professional, or simply curious about technology's role in our lives, you'll find engaging discussions that challenge perspectives, share diverse viewpoints, and spark new ideas.

New episodes are released daily, 365 days a year, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways around technology and the future of business.

Play
  • 86 episodes
  • daily
  • Avg 28 min
  • English
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • #3678
    August 11 · 24 min

    AI Agent Security: Why Identity and Access Control Matter More Than Guardrails

    What happens when an AI agent is compromised, manipulated, or simply does something nobody expected, but already has permission to access your most sensitive systems? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Geoffrey Mattson, CEO of SecureAuth, about why securing enterprise AI requires businesses to think beyond protecting models and start paying much closer attention to identity, authorization, access control, and what AI agents are actually allowed to do. Geoffrey argues that AI agents present a different security challenge from traditional software. Conventional applications can be tested against relatively predictable behavior. AI models are far less deterministic, particularly when prompt injection, excessive permissions, unexpected behavior, and autonomous actions enter the equation. His advice is to assume an agent could behave unpredictably and control what happens when it attempts to access a database, execute a financial transaction, call an API, or interact with another business system. We discuss what this means as companies race to introduce agentic AI. Geoffrey shares examples of employees granting AI tools permissions without fully understanding what they have approved, along with agents gathering information that creates unexpected privacy and compliance problems. This creates a difficult challenge for CIOs and CISOs. Boards want AI adoption because of its potential competitive value, while employees increasingly depend on AI tools to do their jobs. Simply blocking agents is unlikely to work. Security teams instead need mechanisms that allow innovation while controlling what those agents can access. Geoffrey explains why Zero Trust becomes particularly relevant here. Rather than authenticating a user or agent once and assuming it remains trustworthy, enterprises need to continually evaluate whether an action should be permitted at that specific moment. This leads to the concept of continuous authorization. Geoffrey explains how identity security is moving from asking "Who are you?" toward understanding intent, behavior, context, and authority for individual actions. This becomes increasingly important when one AI agent can create sub-agents, which can then create additional agents and pass permissions down the chain. We also discuss why agentic AI is exposing years of accumulated security debt. Many of the underlying problems are familiar: excessive privileges, inconsistent access controls, incomplete Zero Trust implementations, and systems that trust identities for too long. AI agents amplify those weaknesses because they can operate at machine speed. Geoffrey describes this as combining the unpredictability of humans with the power of machines. For CIOs, CISOs, security architects, identity teams, and business leaders deploying agentic AI, this conversation offers practical questions to ask before connecting agents to enterprise resources. What can the agent access? What authority does it have? Can that authority be reduced as tasks are delegated? Is every important action evaluated independently? And can access be revoked immediately when behavior changes? The goal is not to prevent organizations from using AI agents. It is to create a security layer that gives developers and employees room to experiment while ensuring agents only have the authority they need at the moment they need it. As autonomous AI becomes part of the enterprise workforce, identity alone may no longer be enough. Businesses increasingly need to understand intent, control authority, and continuously decide whether the next action should be allowed.

  • #3677
    August 10 · 22 min

    Is Your Network Holding Back Your AI? Kentik CEO Avi Freedman on AI Infrastructure

    Companies are spending billions on GPUs, data centers, foundation models, and AI infrastructure. But what happens when the network connecting all of it cannot keep up? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Avi Freedman, co-founder and CEO of Kentik, five years after our previous conversation. Avi has been operating large-scale networks since the 1990s, including more than a decade at Akamai, and brings a rare combination of founder experience and hands-on knowledge of how the internet actually works. We discuss why network performance is becoming an important factor in determining the return companies receive from their AI investments. If organizations cannot move data efficiently to models or deliver inference reliably to users and applications, expensive compute infrastructure can sit waiting while performance suffers and costs increase. Avi explains what technology leaders should measure to determine whether their network is helping or hindering AI workloads. This includes establishing performance baselines, synthetic testing across cloud and AI providers, understanding dependencies across the digital supply chain, and using observability to identify what changed when performance deteriorates. The conversation also examines network intelligence and why collecting telemetry alone is not enough. Organizations need to connect network data with the applications and users affected, understand historical behavior, determine which problems matter, and give network teams enough context to act quickly. Agentic AI introduces another opportunity. Avi explains how AI agents can increasingly perform the work of experienced network engineers by monitoring baselines, investigating alerts, troubleshooting problems, and recommending actions. But fully autonomous networks remain some distance away. Most enterprises currently want humans deciding whether significant production changes should be made. That leads us into governance. As businesses give AI systems access to increasingly important infrastructure, credentials, permissions, guardrails, and oversight become major considerations. Avi warns about ungoverned AI systems gaining proxy access to corporate infrastructure and explains why companies need clear boundaries around what agents can see and do. We also revisit a lesson from decades of internet infrastructure: individual components will fail. Rather than attempting to create networks that never fail, businesses should design for resilience through redundancy, over-provisioning, monitoring, and architectures capable of continuing when something inevitably breaks. For founders, CIOs, CTOs, network engineers, and infrastructure leaders building around AI, Avi offers practical advice on observability, network resilience, autonomous operations, AI infrastructure, and knowing when networking expertise should be developed internally or brought in from elsewhere. And we finish somewhere unexpected: how CEOs can use AI to make better decisions by explicitly asking it to disagree with them. Avi explains why turning AI from a sycophantic assistant into an argumentative colleague can expose weaknesses in an idea, improve communication, and help leaders test their thinking. AI may be transforming software, compute, and business operations, but none of it works without connectivity. As AI becomes part of the operational backbone of the enterprise, understanding the network underneath it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.

  • #3676
    August 9 · 33 min

    What Clarecast Data Reveals About AI and Quiet Restructuring

    Is AI really causing widespread job losses, or are a small number of announcements creating a much larger narrative? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Marvin Pohl, chief data scientist and cofounder of Clarecast, about AI layoffs, quiet restructuring, predictive workforce intelligence, and the responsibility that comes with forecasting company growth. Marvin's career began in physics and physical chemistry. After completing his PhD in Germany, he worked at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley before moving into data science at BASF. He describes how his role changed as generative AI entered the workplace. Initially, he encouraged skeptical colleagues to understand what language models could do. Today, he often finds himself warning people against accepting confident AI answers without checking the evidence. Clarecast was founded by Marvin, Jonathan, and CEO Bradley Taylor. The company combines employment profiles, job postings, technology adoption, stock information, industry data, and other signals to forecast how businesses may develop. Marvin says Clarecast covers over four million US companies and produces company-level forecasts extending 18 months. We discuss Clarecast's report on "quiet restructuring." The report considers whether AI-related workforce contraction may appear through slower hiring, unfilled positions, internal reorganization, automation, and the creation of new AI-related roles rather than widespread mass layoffs. Marvin says fewer than 100 companies in Clarecast's database had publicly attributed layoff announcements to AI. He describes this as a small proportion of the companies being analyzed and says projected US workforce growth appeared broadly flat rather than approaching a sudden collapse. However, Marvin is careful about what those findings can prove. The report presents a hypothesis, its model outputs are estimates, and correlation does not establish causation. Companies can change their hiring for many reasons, while employment data often takes time to reflect what has happened. Many of the AI-related announcements included in Clarecast's early analysis were also less than six months old. Marvin says a reliable assessment of whether companies followed through will require additional time because job postings, employment profiles, and reported headcount do not update immediately. We also discuss how Clarecast plans to apply its company intelligence to sales prospecting. Marvin argues that poorly personalized AI outreach is reducing response rates. Clarecast wants to help businesses identify a smaller number of companies that are showing signals of genuine need, allowing sales teams to spend additional time on relevant and personalized communication. How should business leaders use predictive intelligence without turning a probability into a predetermined outcome? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3674
    August 8 · 27 min

    Creating a Coordination Layer for AI Agents With Blue Language Labs

    What happens when an AI agent is authorized to make a payment, but nobody can verify the wider agreement behind it? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Zor Gorelov of Blue Language Labs about the infrastructure businesses may need as AI agents move from answering questions to negotiating, approving, purchasing, coordinating, and settling commercial activity. Many current business processes depend on human coordination. People reconcile spreadsheets, chase signatures, confirm deliveries, review exceptions, and resolve disagreements between systems. This work often remains invisible because employees absorb the ambiguity through emails, calls, and follow-up. Agent driven business changes the speed and volume of those interactions. One agent making an isolated payment can be handled as a software transaction. Several agents coordinating dependent actions across companies, banks, suppliers, platforms, and customers creates a much larger infrastructure problem. Zor argues that authorization answers only part of the question. An agent may have permission to pay, but every participant also needs to understand what the payment covers, which conditions apply, who can approve changes, what evidence confirms delivery, and when funds should be captured, refunded, or settled. Blue Language Labs is developing an open source protocol designed to structure those commitments. Blue Documents represent machine executable agreements containing participants, permissions, obligations, conditions, and the current state of a business process. Blue Mandates provide agents with revocable authority. A business can define spending limits, permitted actions, and thresholds requiring human approval. The meeting notes include the example of a restaurant operator allowing an agent to accept smaller bookings automatically while requiring approval for catering orders involving over 20 people. Blue Timelines provide an append only, hash linked record of actions, approvals, and changes. The aim is to give participants an independent history they can use when resolving disputes, instead of relying on conflicting emails or records controlled by one company. Zor brings the concept to life through a travel package assembled by an AI agent. The agent identifies a boutique hotel with spare inventory, a restaurant with available tables, and a local guide with unused capacity. Each business defines its terms, the agent assembles the offer, and the participants approve their roles. The customer purchases one package. Payment can be authorized at the beginning and captured according to agreed conditions as the hotel, restaurant, and guide confirm fulfillment. If one participant declines or fails to deliver, predefined rules determine whether the agent finds a replacement, changes the package, or triggers a cancellation. We also consider how Blue differs from traditional workflow systems, agent orchestration tools, and blockchain smart contracts. Blue is designed for coordination across separate businesses without requiring every participant to join one company platform or use global blockchain consensus. The opportunity could be especially valuable for smaller companies. Agents may allow several independent businesses to combine inventory, services, and expertise into offers they could not create individually. Adoption will depend on whether businesses, banks, and customers trust the protocol, accept shared definitions, and retain meaningful control. What would need to be written into a machine executable agreement before your organization could rely on another company's AI agent? Listen to the conversation and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3673
    August 7 · 24 min

    Scaling Embedded Finance Around Customer Value With Zip Co

    What separates an embedded finance partnership that changes customer behavior from an integration nobody would miss? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Rory Herriman, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operations Officer for Zip's US business. Rory works across product, technology, operations, and business strategy, giving him a broad view of what happens after the API connection is complete and real customers begin using the service. Rory challenges a common understanding of embedded finance as placing one financial product inside another company's experience. Customers rarely wake up wanting embedded finance. They want to complete a purchase, manage their money, or solve a practical problem without an unnecessary interruption. The real test is whether the two businesses create something together that neither could provide independently. Rory calls this derived product market fit. Both products may succeed separately, but the combined experience must generate additional value for the customer if the partnership is going to last. Technology integration is only one part of the work. As businesses add customers and partners, they create new customer journeys, compliance obligations, servicing models, governance requirements, and operational processes. Rory argues that this complexity grows exponentially rather than linearly. This changes how technology teams should approach architecture. Instead of creating another custom integration for every opportunity, each partnership should contribute reusable capabilities to a wider platform. APIs, shared services, configuration tools, support processes, and governance models can then serve the growing ecosystem. We also discuss what partnership conversations reveal. Rory sees customer journey discussions during the first meeting as a positive sign. A conversation dominated by revenue division or integration mechanics may indicate that the participants have not established why the customer needs the combined service. His internal test is refreshingly simple. If the company launched the capability and removed it several months later, would the customer notice? If the answer is no, the partnership may have created technical activity without meaningful customer value. AI also enters the discussion. Rory believes AI can move financial services toward adaptive experiences where the product responds to the customer's circumstances. This offers opportunities for personalization and automated servicing, but it also increases the importance of responsible design, governance, customer consent, and clear accountability. For leaders building one-to-many embedded finance models, Rory's advice is to begin with the customer journey, establish alignment on values and service expectations, and build platforms that become stronger with each partnership. Would your customers miss the financial services you are embedding, or are they simply another feature occupying space in the journey? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3673
    August 6 · 26 min

    Building Creator Trust Through Better Payments With Tipalti

    What happens to creator loyalty when somebody delivers the work, attracts an audience, and then waits weeks to be paid? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Rob Israch, President at Tipalti, about the payment infrastructure supporting the creator economy. Platforms may be able to add thousands of creators quickly, but the systems behind onboarding, tax collection, approvals, global payouts, communication, and reconciliation often struggle to keep pace. Rob cites research suggesting 87 percent of creators have experienced late payments. For a creator, payment is a direct test of whether a platform values their contribution. Delays, incorrect amounts, limited payment methods, or receiving funds in the wrong currency can damage trust and encourage successful creators to take their audiences elsewhere. This makes the payout experience part of creator retention. A platform may offer excellent creative tools and attractive commercial opportunities, but those benefits are easily undermined when creators have to chase payment updates or submit the same information repeatedly. Global growth adds another layer of difficulty. Rob explains that payment teams may need to account for approximately 26,000 rules, varying tax identification requirements, local payment methods, currency preferences, fraud checks, and screening against over five sanctions databases. If the correct information is not collected during onboarding, payment errors can increase by two or three times. The resulting problem concerns the complete workflow. Creator information must be collected securely, tax details validated, payment recipients screened, approvals completed, funds delivered through the preferred method, and every transaction reconciled with accounting systems. Creators also need timely communication when a payment is attempted, completed, delayed, or rejected. We discuss how automation can connect those stages and reduce the manual work that causes errors. Rob also describes practical roles for AI, including more responsive onboarding, automated fraud detection, tax validation, and immediate answers to payment-status questions. These capabilities can reduce support requests while giving finance teams more time to examine performance, risk, and growth. They also provide creators with something remarkably valuable: confidence that they will be paid accurately and kept informed when a problem occurs. Should creator payments remain a finance process, or should platforms treat them as part of the creator experience and retention strategy? Listen to the conversation and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3672
    August 5 · 33 min

    Building Reliable AI Agents With Knowledge Gardens and MongoDB

    What happens when an enterprise AI agent can retrieve thousands of data points but cannot understand the customer, decision, or business moment in front of it? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Boris Bialek, Vice President of Industries and Global Field CTO at MongoDB. We examine why the enterprise AI conversation has become more professional as organizations move beyond demonstrations and begin putting agentic systems into production. Boris argues that many companies do not have a shortage of data. Their problem is turning scattered data into information and then into usable knowledge. A bank balance is data. A complete view of a customer's relationship with the bank is information. Recognizing that the customer is currently researching a mortgage and may need assistance within the next 20 seconds is knowledge. This distinction leads to Boris's concept of a knowledge garden. Structured records, unstructured content, live signals, conversations, and business context are organized around a customer or outcome. Different departments can access the parts relevant to their work while AI agents receive the context needed to respond quickly. We also discuss integration debt. Boris recalls one system that required 18 seconds to assemble a customer view and says many enterprises are working with approximately 40 primary data sources. An agent can spend so much time coordinating access across APIs, caches, and applications that the business problem becomes secondary. Trust becomes equally important once an AI agent can act. Boris introduces two measures: the agent confidence score and the business risk score. The first evaluates whether an agent's output appears reliable based on its data, behavior, and context. The second considers the consequences of allowing that decision to proceed automatically. Together, these scores can help organizations decide which actions should pass automatically, which need further machine validation, and which should reach a human reviewer. Boris also explains why data lineage and complete audit trails must be designed into production systems from the beginning. For teams beginning this work, his advice is practical. Choose one business outcome, connect two or three relevant data sources, create a working prototype, and involve business and technical leaders in the same conversation. The goal is to demonstrate how data, context, confidence, risk, and human review work together before expanding the system. Does your organization have an AI data problem, or does it have a knowledge and context problem? Listen to the conversation and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3671
    August 4 · 28 min

    Turning Warehouse Blind Spots Into Real Time Intelligence With Dexory

    What happens when a warehouse management system believes stock is present, but nobody can find it on the warehouse floor? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Oana Jinga, co-founder of Dexory, who oversees the company's commercial strategy and product roadmap. Dexory has developed autonomous mobile robots capable of scanning inventory at heights of up to 18 meters while creating a continuously updated digital view of warehouse operations. The company says its robots have scanned one billion locations across 12 countries. Its customers include Maersk, DHL, Samsung, GE Appliances, Stellantis, GXO Logistics, and C.H. Robinson. However, the real story goes beyond the size of the robot or the number of locations scanned. It concerns what businesses can do once they have accurate information about their physical operations. Oana explains why warehouses often become data blind spots. Businesses usually know what entered the facility and what eventually left, but stock movements, damaged items, misplaced pallets, and inefficient use of space can remain difficult to track between those events. Dexory's robots scan approximately 10,000 to 12,000 pallet locations per hour. Oana recalls one customer discovering around £1.5 million in stock it had considered lost or written off. Other scans have revealed repeated pallet movements and potential opportunities to recover around 10% of warehouse capacity through better organization. We also discuss why visibility alone does not create business value. Dexory initially gave users large volumes of information, only to discover that extensive lists of problems could overwhelm warehouse teams. Its platform now prioritizes the actions requiring attention, helping users concentrate on a manageable number of issues each day. Oana explains why physical AI faces different challenges from software operating entirely within digital systems. Warehouses change constantly as people, vehicles, stock, temporary obstacles, damaged areas, and local working practices alter the environment. Robots and AI systems therefore require current physical data rather than relying on an old floor plan or assumptions recorded in another system. For companies considering warehouse robotics, Oana recommends starting with the operational problem. Leaders should observe how work happens, speak with employees about bottlenecks, define the result they want, and appoint an internal owner responsible for adoption. A robot sent to collect stock from an empty or incorrect location cannot complete its task, regardless of how capable its software may be. We also consider the future of warehouse work. Oana argues that robots can remove repetitive inventory walks and manual counting, allowing employees to interpret data, investigate problems, and improve operations. She also shares her experience as one of the few women in robotics a decade ago and explains why visible female role models can make the sector feel accessible to a wider group of people. Could physical AI help your warehouse teams make better decisions, or would inaccurate data and unclear ownership prevent the technology from delivering value? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3670
    August 3 · 26 min

    How Infobip Uses AI Companions to Keep Sports Fans Coming Back

    What can Formula One and football teach businesses about building customer relationships that continue long after a single event? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Ben Lewis, Vice President of Marketing at Infobip, about the company's work with AI-powered sports companions and what those experiences can teach customer experience leaders in every industry. Ben explains how Infobip worked with TGR Haas F1 Team to create RaceMate, an AI companion available through WhatsApp and Apple Messages for Business. Fans can access team information, driver histories, race schedules, trivia, personalized content and interactive experiences without downloading another application. We also discuss PitchMate, Infobip's conversational companion for global football fans. It remembers a fan's preferred team, can deliver personalized schedules and match information, and supports quizzes and other interactive features across an extended tournament. For me, one of the most useful lessons is the decision to meet fans inside messaging channels they already use. We have all downloaded an application for a conference, flight or one-off event, used it for several days and then forgotten it exists. RaceMate and PitchMate allow the conversation to remain available in the same place someone would message a friend. Ben also explains why Infobip measures success through returning users, conversation duration and the number of interactions rather than relying solely on clicks. TGR Haas F1 Team is currently using RaceMate to grow its fan community and provide useful content rather than constantly pushing merchandise. The same thinking can apply far beyond sports. We discuss travel companies contacting customers during unresolved claims, healthcare providers sending poorly timed automated messages and brands promoting products without recognizing that a customer is already involved in a dispute. Connected data can help prevent these disjointed experiences. Our conversation closes with practical advice for businesses adopting agentic AI. Ben recommends connecting customer data with campaigns, testing carefully, establishing guardrails and defining when an AI agent should transfer a conversation to a person. Are businesses investing too much in new customer applications when the better experience could already live inside WhatsApp, RCS or Apple Messages for Business? Please share your thoughts with me.

  • #3369
    August 2 · 22 min

    How Technology Can End the Late Payment Crisis Costing UK Businesses £11 Billion

    Late payments have become so common that many businesses simply accept them as part of commercial life. But should they? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Pat Bermingham, founder and CEO of Adflex, about why late payments continue to cost the UK economy an estimated £11 billion every year, why thousands of businesses fail because of cash flow pressures, and how technology could help change payment behavior rather than simply respond to it. Pat argues that late payments are rarely an administrative accident. In many industries they have become an informal financing mechanism, allowing larger organizations to protect their own cash flow while placing increasing financial pressure on smaller suppliers. Construction is one example, but the challenge extends across many sectors where long supply chains and uneven bargaining power make delayed payments the norm rather than the exception. We discuss why new government proposals to strengthen payment regulations represent progress, while also examining why legislation alone cannot solve a structural problem that has developed over decades. Instead, Pat believes technology can play a much bigger role. He explains how virtual commercial cards and Straight Through Processing (STP) allow buyers to access extended finance while suppliers receive payment far more quickly, without introducing additional friction into the payment process. Rather than forcing suppliers to accept card payments directly, the technology automates the process behind the scenes while improving reconciliation, increasing visibility and supporting healthier cash flow across the supply chain. The conversation also explores why many organizations still rely on fragmented payment systems created through years of acquisitions and disconnected technologies. Modernizing payment infrastructure can reduce delays, improve operational efficiency and help businesses build stronger supplier relationships rather than treating late payment as a normal business practice. Pat also shares how an earlier career as a music producer shaped his thinking about technology. Watching digital innovation transform music production helped him recognize how technology can simplify complex processes while also creating new business models that challenge established industries. For finance leaders, procurement teams, CIOs and business owners, this episode provides practical insights into improving cash flow, strengthening supplier relationships, modernizing payment processes and preparing for a future where prompt payment becomes both a commercial advantage and an increasing regulatory expectation. Changing payment legislation is important. Changing payment behavior is what will ultimately strengthen businesses, protect suppliers and create more resilient supply chains.

  • #3668
    August 2 · 28 min

    AI, Value Creation and the Future of Business: Why Automation Is Only the Beginning

    Most AI conversations begin with productivity. Joanna Pachnik thinks that's the wrong place to start. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Joanna Pachnik, founder of Blueclip, about why AI is changing far more than the speed of work. It's changing how businesses create value, what customers are willing to pay for, and what competitive advantage will look like over the next decade. Drawing on her experience leading global supply chain transformation projects at Ernst & Young and Mars before founding Blueclip, Joanna argues that knowledge is becoming increasingly accessible through AI. Research, analysis and reports that once took weeks and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars can now be produced in hours. That doesn't eliminate the need for expertise. It changes what expertise is worth. Rather than paying for information alone, organizations increasingly want implementation, measurable outcomes and practical experience that AI cannot easily replicate. Joanna explains why unique industry knowledge, benchmarking, practical experience and genuine human relationships may become more valuable as AI becomes more capable. We also discuss why so many enterprise AI initiatives struggle to deliver meaningful results. Joanna believes the technology is rarely the biggest obstacle. The real problem is poor data, undocumented processes and organizations trying to automate before building the foundations AI depends upon. Her advice is simple: prepare your data, document your processes, create a company knowledge layer, then introduce AI one use case at a time. The conversation also explores why AI should be viewed as a business transformation initiative rather than an automation project. Instead of accelerating existing processes, companies should ask whether those processes should exist at all. AI creates an opportunity to redesign how organizations operate, continuously improve decision-making and move people toward higher-value work. We also examine the importance of human oversight. Joanna believes AI should begin with people reviewing and guiding its outputs before gradually taking on more responsibility in carefully selected scenarios. Human accountability remains essential, particularly when AI supports material business decisions. For business leaders navigating AI strategy, digital transformation and enterprise innovation, this conversation offers practical advice on creating long-term value instead of chasing short-term AI hype. It explains why the companies that succeed will not necessarily be those using the most AI, but those prepared to rethink how they create value, organize knowledge and redesign their businesses around new possibilities. The future belongs to organizations that see AI as more than another productivity tool. It belongs to those willing to transform how they work, how they serve customers and how they create lasting business value.

  • #3667
    August 1 · 32 min

    Preparing 911 for AI Satellite Calls and Cloud Infrastructure With Intrado

    What happens behind the scenes when you dial 911, and is the infrastructure ready for AI, satellite messaging, video, and precise location data? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by John Snapp, VP of Technology at Intrado. John has spent around 23 years working with cellular, location, and 911 technologies. He explains how a mobile emergency call is located, routed through a dedicated network, and directed to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point. We discuss where AI can provide practical support inside emergency communications. Translation can help telecommunicators understand callers without waiting for an interpreter. Real-time transcription can capture details and suggest established procedures. AI voice agents can also handle suitable nonemergency inquiries, giving trained staff additional time for calls where lives may be at risk. John is clear that emotional emergency calls still demand human understanding and authority. AI can supply information, identify possible synthetic voices, and reduce administrative work, but trained telecommunicators remain responsible for interpreting the situation and directing the response. Our conversation also examines the infrastructure beneath these capabilities. Legacy 911 networks were designed largely for voice and limited amounts of data. Next Generation 911 introduces IP connectivity capable of carrying text, images, video, and richer location information. John explains how this foundation has made satellite texting possible and why similar capabilities were far slower to introduce using older networks. Moving to NG911 creates its own problems. Different vendors can comply with the same technical standard while implementing it differently. Calls may also need to move between modern and legacy call centers, making interoperability testing between jurisdictions a major part of deployment. We also consider cloud resilience, local survivability, connectivity diversity, telephony denial of service attacks, AI generated swatting calls, and the danger of adopting automation before establishing governance. John recommends starting with lower-risk areas such as quality assurance and nonemergency calls, communicating openly about AI use, and expanding only after teams understand the operational impact. As emergency communications become richer and increasingly connected, how should public safety agencies balance faster innovation with the reliability and human judgment every caller depends on? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3666
    August 1 · 32 min

    AI-Powered Cyberattacks Are Coming for Your Printers. Is Your Business Ready?

    When organizations review their cybersecurity posture, printers are rarely the first systems that come to mind. Yet they often account for around 20% of network endpoints while receiving, storing, processing, and transmitting sensitive business information every day. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Jim LaRoe, CEO of Symphion, to discuss why printers and other connected IoT devices have become one of the most overlooked areas of enterprise cybersecurity and why AI-powered attacks are raising the stakes for organizations that continue to ignore them. Jim explains how many businesses continue to treat printers as simple office equipment rather than Linux-based network devices with privileged access to email systems, file servers, identity services, and critical business workflows. Because responsibility for these devices often sits between procurement, managed print providers, IT operations, and security teams, they can easily fall outside normal cybersecurity processes. We discuss how the threat landscape has changed over the past year as AI enables attackers to automate reconnaissance, credential theft, lateral movement, and ransomware deployment. Jim explains why organizations adopting Zero Trust principles also need to rethink how they secure and manage connected endpoints that have traditionally been overlooked. The conversation also explores certificate lifecycle management, cyber hygiene, firmware management, endpoint visibility, and why unsupported devices can introduce unnecessary risk into modern enterprise environments. For organizations managing hundreds or even thousands of printers across multiple locations, Jim explains why protecting these endpoints does not need to create additional operational burden. Instead, security should become an ongoing operational program that continuously monitors devices, detects configuration drift, applies security controls, and helps organizations maintain compliance without disrupting critical business workflows. We also discuss the governance challenge many organizations face. Before companies can reduce risk, someone needs to own it. That means establishing accountability, assigning budget, understanding which devices exist across the business, and recognizing that printers and IoT devices deserve the same attention as servers, laptops, and other managed endpoints. If you're responsible for cybersecurity, IT infrastructure, risk management, or digital transformation, this episode offers practical advice on protecting forgotten endpoints, strengthening Zero Trust strategies, improving endpoint visibility, and reducing the hidden risks that AI-powered attackers are increasingly looking to exploit. Sometimes the biggest cybersecurity vulnerability isn't the system you forgot to patch. It's the one you forgot was connected in the first place.

  • #3664
    July 31 · 37 min

    How BOLTS Technologies Brings Crypto Agility to Blockchain Security

    What happens to digital asset ownership when the cryptography proving that ownership can no longer be trusted? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Yoon Auh, cofounder of BOLTS Technologies, about quantum computing, blockchain security, and the need for crypto agility. Yoon brings an unusual perspective to the subject. Before moving into applied cryptography, he spent years building and operating high performance trading systems at firms including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Geode Capital, and Magnetar Capital. Yoon explains that blockchain ownership ultimately depends on digital signatures and public keys. Most major blockchain systems use variants of elliptic curve cryptography because it has historically offered speed, compact signatures, and dependable protection. However, sufficiently powerful quantum computers could eventually challenge the mathematics supporting that protection. The risk does not begin when such a quantum computer arrives. Yoon describes how attackers can collect encrypted traffic today, store it, and attempt to decrypt it later. This creates an immediate concern for governments, financial institutions, and businesses holding information that must remain private for many years. We also discuss QFlex, the post quantum ready API developed by BOLTS Technologies. The company describes its approach as cryptographic logistics, allowing different cryptographic methods to be selected at the transaction level. Yoon argues that a small payment and a multimillion dollar asset transfer should not automatically receive identical protection, particularly when stronger cryptography may require additional processing, storage, and cost. Another concern is uncertainty around the available post quantum algorithms. Yoon explains that cryptographic methods can survive years of examination before a weakness is discovered. His argument is that organizations need the ability to change algorithms quickly if one becomes vulnerable, rather than making a permanent choice and hoping it survives every new attack. The conversation also examines digital asset sovereignty. Who decides how a transaction is protected: the platform, the protocol, or the asset holder? BOLTS Technologies believes that choice should return to the holder, while QFlex aims to provide that control without hard forks, network downtime, or protocol changes. The interview also covers the company's research background and its pilot work with the Canton Foundation. Yoon closes with a lesson from his trading career. Backup and failover exercises often failed because they were treated as occasional events. His advice is to make exceptional processes routine, ensuring that the organization has already practiced changing systems before the moment arrives when it has no other option. Should digital asset holders control the cryptography protecting every transaction, or should platforms continue making that decision for them? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3663
    July 30 · 25 min

    Moving From AI Pilots to Production With Boomi

    What prevents a successful AI experiment from becoming a dependable production system that delivers measurable business value? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Ed Macosky, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Boomi, about AI pilot purgatory, integration, governance, model selection, token costs, and the technical skills businesses may need as adoption grows. Ed leads Boomi's product and engineering teams while also using AI tools inside his own organization. That gives him a view from both sides: creating technology for enterprise customers and applying it within active product development workflows. He believes many AI pilots begin with the wrong question. Teams become interested in the latest model or feature before defining the business problem they want to solve. The experiment may work during a demonstration, then fail when it encounters real data, access controls, security policies, and production systems. Placing company information inside a data lake and adding a language model does not automatically create a business application. The system must access current data reliably, respect employee permissions, connect with existing applications, and operate within governance rules that security teams can approve. Ed recommends beginning with a defined business opportunity and establishing the access required to support it. Existing APIs can already provide authentication, permissions, and governance. MCP can offer another route into enterprise systems, but those connections still require security, monitoring, and management. Team alignment also matters. An AI center may be racing to test models while an integration center concentrates on a different set of priorities. When those groups fail to coordinate, the pilot lacks the connectivity and automation required to become part of a production workflow. The discussion then turns toward fragmentation. Every technology wave produces new vendors, frameworks, and specialist tools. Early experimentation benefits from variety, but mature companies can eventually find themselves maintaining a complicated collection of products held together with custom code and, occasionally, the digital equivalent of duct tape. Ed does not recommend placing every function with one provider. He does argue for enough consolidation and abstraction to prevent experimentation from creating years of technology debt. Governance and observability should also work horizontally across different environments, including platforms such as SAP, Salesforce, and several AI model providers. That becomes increasingly important as businesses introduce autonomous agents. Leaders need to know which agents exist, what systems they can access, what actions they can take, and how each decision is recorded. AI gateways and agent control towers can provide a wider view across otherwise separate technology environments. Ed also introduces the idea of the frontier engineer. A prompt engineer concentrates on communicating effectively with a model. A frontier engineer understands how the model works, including its logic, mathematics, algorithms, and suitability for different workloads. He does not believe every company needs a large team of these specialists. However, he argues that enterprises need at least one person capable of assessing vendor claims and deciding whether a frontier model, specialist model, or open weight model fits a particular workload. Cost creates another reason to examine model selection. Sending every employee request or agent task to the most capable frontier model can become expensive. Some repeatable workloads may run on open weight models inside the company's cloud or hardware environment, giving finance teams greater cost certainty. Boomi is developing Boomi Prompt to route requests according to their complexity and requirements. A simple factual request might go directly to an API. A forecasting task may use a smaller model. A difficult analytical request could be sent to a frontier model. Ed uses the weather as a helpful example. Retrieving next Tuesday's forecast does not require a language model when a public weather API can return the answer directly. Asking a model to perform every form of automation wastes tokens, computing power, energy, and money. The episode closes with practical advice for CIOs. Avoid starting with a broad objective such as agentifying the entire business. Choose a department, identify a small number of tasks, define the expected return, and work backward. Once the team proves value and understands the operating requirements, it can repeat the process elsewhere. Could intelligent routing, stronger integration, and clearer business outcomes finally move enterprise AI beyond pilot purgatory? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3662
    July 30 · 28 min

    Moving From AI Experiments to Autonomous Operations With Dynatrace

    What must happen before a business can trust AI agents to detect and resolve operational problems without waiting for human intervention? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Josh Clay, Regional Vice President of Solution Engineering for Dynatrace in the UK, about autonomous operations, AI observability, fragmented telemetry, business outcomes, and the growing pressure to control token and data costs. Josh has spent much of his 11 years at Dynatrace discussing the road toward autonomous operations. The earliest version involved reducing the time organizations spent inside IT war rooms. He remembers calls with 30 or 40 people attempting to establish which team was responsible for an incident. He jokingly calls this the "mean time to innocence." Modern observability reduced many of those investigations from several hours to between 30 and 60 minutes. Agentic AI creates the possibility of going further by identifying a problem, understanding its cause, and resolving it before the customer experience is affected. That ambition also introduces risk. Josh cites Dynatrace research showing that 52% of respondents view security, privacy, and compliance concerns as barriers to AI adoption. He believes many organizations still lack full observability across their existing technology environments, making autonomous agents harder to supervise. Josh shares a warning from Alex Hibbert of Storia Group: AI can amplify existing technology problems. If telemetry is fragmented, data quality is poor, or teams cannot see how services depend on one another, adding autonomous agents may increase the speed and scale of the resulting failure. Trust therefore depends on visibility. Josh describes observability as a control plane for agentic AI because it can show what an agent is doing, why it made a decision, and what happened afterward. Defined guardrails and real time information can give leaders confidence without asking them to surrender control blindly. The adoption figures show how early this work remains. Josh says 50% of businesses have AI operating in limited production use cases, often performing one isolated task. Only 23% describe their deployments as connected across the wider organization. We discuss how observability has progressed beyond technical monitoring. An airport can measure whether technology changes improve e-gate availability and passenger processing times. A bank can examine whether application performance affects mortgage completion rates. These connections allow leaders to measure AI through business results rather than relying entirely on response times and infrastructure metrics. Reliable agents also need suitable data. Dynatrace says AI agents operating with deterministic data can work 12 times more accurately and three times faster while using two and a half times fewer tokens. These remain company findings, but they demonstrate why context and causality can affect cost as well as reliability. Fragmented telemetry creates another barrier. Logs may sit in one platform, front end monitoring in another, and metrics or traces somewhere else. Attempting to reconstruct every relationship for an AI agent can become expensive and difficult. Josh recommends bringing observability data into a connected environment where relationships between services, cloud resources, traces, metrics, and logs are already understood. He also warns against collecting information simply because it exists. Data hoarding increases ingestion costs and can introduce personal information into systems without a clear business need. The conversation then moves toward AI FinOps. Leaders want to know what agents cost, how many tokens they consume, and whether those costs produce a measurable return. Josh describes a Dynatrace proof of concept that identified potential annual savings just below £250,000 within one small environment. That example reinforces a recurring concern. Organizations are racing to place AI into production, then moving to the next project without reviewing whether the previous environment is appropriately sized or financially efficient. Josh hopes companies will develop a more pragmatic view of AI as another enterprise tool. That means establishing agreed methods for deployment, monitoring, cost management, incident response, and measuring business results. Could observability provide the confidence businesses need to move from isolated AI experiments toward autonomous operations? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3662
    July 29 · 34 min

    How Saviynt Zuma Secures AI Agents With Zero Trust

    How can businesses secure AI agents that read sensitive information, update systems and communicate with other agents on behalf of employees? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Sachin Nayyar, founder and CEO of Saviynt, about AI agent identity security and the controls businesses need before autonomous systems enter production. Saviynt manages over 100 million identities for over 700 customers. Sachin explains how enterprise identity has expanded beyond employees to include partners, applications, machines and autonomous AI agents. An AI agent creates a different access problem because it is both an identity and an application. It can receive permissions, access information and perform actions, but its behavior can also be governed through software while it is being developed and while it is operating. Sachin uses an HR copilot to demonstrate why context matters. Two employees can ask the same question about salaries but should receive different answers based on their roles, locations and applicable policies. Those decisions must be evaluated while the request is being processed without creating delays that make the system unusable. The risk grows when an agent crosses from one technology environment into another. An agent built within Microsoft may need to access Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira or another external system. Sachin warns businesses never to solve this problem by giving an agent a permanent administrative account. We discuss Zuma, Saviynt's identity security platform for AI agents and non-human identities. Sachin describes a four-part framework beginning with agent discovery and a central registry. Every agent should then receive one accountable human owner, temporary access for its assigned task and policy enforcement while it acts. Ownership becomes especially important when an employee leaves. Saviynt's approach begins an automated reassignment process and blocks actions if an agent attempts to operate without a current owner. The relevant security team can then investigate before allowing further activity. Sachin also explains why identity controls should enter the development process rather than being added after deployment. Saviynt is working with LangChain and other agent development platforms to make identity policies available while AI agents are being built. The conversation also covers Saviynt's partnership with Zscaler. Zscaler provides inline enforcement, while Saviynt contributes identity information about the agent, its owner, existing permissions and expected behavior. Sachin closes with an optimistic argument. Because businesses can place security controls into the code and enforce them while agents act, AI workloads may eventually become better governed than traditional human access. Could every AI agent inside your business be traced to one accountable owner, one approved purpose and a limited set of temporary permissions? Please share your thoughts with me.

  • #3661
    July 29 · 25 min

    Running Enterprise Computer Vision on CPUs With Ultralytics YOLO26

    What becomes possible when enterprise computer vision no longer depends on expensive GPU infrastructure? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Glenn Jocher, founder and CEO of Ultralytics, about YOLO26, CPU inference, edge AI, open vocabulary vision, deployment economics, and the practical work required to move computer vision from a promising pilot into production. Glenn's route into AI began inside the U.S. intelligence community. He worked with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency on particle physics applications, attempting to detect and track antineutrinos. Antineutrinos are extraordinarily difficult to detect because they pass through almost everything. Glenn describes them as the perfect spy. While searching for better detection methods, he discovered that computer vision researchers were solving similar problems with images. His original attempt to transfer those techniques into particle physics did not succeed. However, the work introduced him to a field where the technology could create a visible effect on everyday life. That led him toward open source development and eventually the YOLO models for object detection, classification, segmentation, and tracking. Glenn believes computer vision research has historically placed too much attention on small gains in accuracy while overlooking deployment economics. A model can perform impressively inside a laboratory and still remain unsuitable for a factory, warehouse, store, vehicle, drone, or medical environment. Price, latency, power consumption, data privacy, and deployment speed can determine whether the technology is commercially useful. This led Glenn and Ultralytics toward smaller models capable of running close to where images and video are generated. YOLO26 continues that approach with architectural changes designed specifically for CPU inference. Glenn says the model can process camera streams in real time at 30 frames per second and run across Intel CPUs, AMD CPUs, and lower power devices such as Raspberry Pi computers. This matters because specialist GPUs can increase the equipment cost and power requirements of a computer vision project. Running inference on existing CPUs or edge hardware can make deployment economically possible across larger numbers of cameras and locations. The scale already involved is difficult to comprehend. Glenn says Ultralytics models now process approximately three billion inference jobs each day, equivalent to around 30,000 every second. These jobs include images, videos, and collections of images being analyzed to detect, segment, or track objects. He attributes the platform's maturity to thousands of mistakes and bugs corrected through a rapid feedback cycle. New models are released, users report problems and request features, and the team incorporates that information into later versions. We also discuss the respective roles of cloud and edge infrastructure. Glenn sees cloud platforms continuing to provide the computing power required for training, while computer vision inference often belongs at the edge. Local processing can reduce latency, control operating costs, and keep sensitive video or medical information closer to where it was created. The smallest YOLO model is approximately three megabytes, according to Glenn. That allows it to reach mobile phones, vehicles, drones, battery powered devices, and other environments where a large language model would be impractical. Open vocabulary vision provides another development. Traditional object detection models are trained to recognize a fixed collection of objects. If a model learns to detect dogs and the user later wants it to detect cats, retraining can cause it to forget earlier knowledge unless both categories appear in the new training data. Glenn explains how promptable models can identify common everyday objects from text or visual instructions without additional training. A user could request a person wearing a blue shirt and white shoes, for example, and the system could search an image for that description. That flexibility could benefit businesses whose requirements change regularly. It reduces the need to create and label a new data set every time the company wants the model to recognize another common object. The range of current applications is already extensive. Glenn describes YOLO being used across robotics, parking, industrial safety, PPE detection, warehouses, aviation, security, traffic management, food quality, and manufacturing. Some of his favorite examples involve environmental problems. One company uses YOLO with underwater vehicles to identify and recover plastic from the ocean. Other applications detect smoke and fire early enough to support forest fire response. For leaders considering computer vision, Glenn recommends beginning with a defined problem and measurable outcome. A manufacturing company may want to reduce defects, but it still needs labeled examples showing the model what acceptable and defective products look like. He advises testing the idea through a limited pilot, measuring the return, and expanding only when the evidence supports further investment. Computer vision has become easier to deploy, but practical problems involving data, cameras, integration, reliability, and operating conditions still separate a demonstration from a production system. Could CPU inference and open vocabulary models make computer vision practical for processes your organization previously considered too expensive? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me. Useful Links Ultralytics website Ultralytics Platform

  • #3660
    July 28 · 26 min

    How Equifax Connects AI Data and Human Support in Government Services

    What can private companies learn from government caseworkers about adopting automation and using data more effectively? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with David Turner, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Government Services at Equifax Workforce Solutions, about public sector automation, data modernization, and the people responsible for delivering social services. The conversation begins with a surprising finding from an Equifax Government Services study of over 500 U.S. government employees. Every respondent expected efficiency to improve during the following year, while 95% believed automation would free time for higher value, human centered work. David explains why government employees may be more receptive to modernization than many people assume. Caseworkers operate under rising demand, staffing pressures, changing policy, and limited budgets. When technology removes repetitive administration or supplies information faster, they can see an immediate connection between the tool and the person waiting for support. We discuss how the meaning of automation has changed inside social services. A few years ago, it might have meant entering information into an online portal. Today, integrated connections can search data sources behind the scenes and return verified information during the caseworker's existing process. David describes continuous evaluation, which can identify when circumstances within a caseload have changed. Instead of searching every case for a possible update, a worker can direct attention toward the people whose income, address, or employment data indicates that further review may be needed. Income verification provides another example. Equifax says it can return income information in under one second, helping prevent the delays created when an applicant must leave the process to find a document. Those pauses matter when an eligibility decision already involves several stages and numerous external systems. The gig economy makes this work harder. Applicants may receive income from employment, contract work, digital platforms, and several side projects. Agencies need access to a fuller income picture without sending people back toward paper forms and manual verification. David also shares what Equifax has learned through its Day in the Life program. The team spends time with caseworkers to understand their processes, policy restrictions, and information constraints. He believes public sector leadership can remain closely connected to employees in the field because many agency executives previously performed those roles themselves. AI introduces further possibilities. David discusses how data and AI could eventually identify signs that someone who has left an assistance program may be experiencing financial difficulty again. Community groups, food banks, or other services could potentially offer support before that person returns to crisis. Such a system would also require careful decisions around consent, privacy, accuracy, and responsibility. The central lesson is refreshingly human. Technology creates value when it removes administrative pauses and gives experienced caseworkers additional time to understand someone's circumstances. Could public sector automation teach private companies how to connect technology investment with human outcomes? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

  • #3659
    July 27 · 28 min

    How Ensono is Building AI Resilience Beyond a Single Model

    What happens when an AI experiment becomes a production service that your employees, customers, and daily operations depend upon? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Brian Klingbeil, Chief Strategy Officer at Ensono, about AI infrastructure resilience, operational dependency, FinOps, legacy modernization, and the growing pressure to prove that enterprise AI investments are producing meaningful returns. Brian has been speaking with major enterprises through Ensono's Executive Advisory Council. Three years ago, many participants were experimenting with proofs of concept. Today, they are being asked to present AI projects that are already in production, approaching production, or demonstrating a clear return through productivity, lower risk, service quality, or financial results. That progression creates a new problem. When an AI model begins supporting product delivery, customer service, logistics, software development, or internal operations, it becomes part of the company's operating infrastructure. Leaders must then ask familiar IT questions about availability, monitoring, security, incident response, disaster recovery, ownership, and cost. Brian believes FinOps often provides the first warning. Token consumption can be difficult for CFOs and business leaders to interpret, particularly when hundreds of agents are operating across different models. Ensono's internal platform has produced around 1,000 agents, prompting questions about which are effective, which are expensive, and who should carry the cost. We discuss why chargeback and showback could change employee behavior. When AI spending is absorbed by a central corporate budget, teams may have little reason to question whether an expensive model is suitable for a routine task. When the cost reaches their departmental budget, the decision can look very different. Architecture also matters. Brian recommends systems that are loosely coupled and tightly integrated. Companies should be able to replace a model, provider, FinOps tool, or service as the market changes, while still connecting each component closely enough to deliver useful business outcomes. That creates a genuine tradeoff. Providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic can offer specialist capabilities that businesses may want to use. Avoiding every provider specific feature can limit what the technology delivers, while becoming too dependent on one provider can make future change expensive and disruptive. The conversation then turns toward legacy technology. Brian argues that many systems described as outdated still process airline reservations, banking transactions, insurance claims, government services, and other high volume workloads. Turning them off without suitable replacements would create far bigger problems than the word "legacy" suggests. AI can change the modernization decision. Ensono worked with Markerstudy Group to analyze six million lines of RPG code running on an IBM i platform. The resulting plan identified applications that should move elsewhere while preserving workloads that still benefited from the platform's reliability and transaction processing capabilities. Brian treats migration as one possible part of modernization. AI tools can document old code, support modern development environments, and allow younger developers to work with established platforms without immediately beginning a lengthy and expensive replacement program. We also discuss Ensono's use of AI operations. Brian says the company reduced mean time to repair by 50% while processing approximately 50,000 tickets each month. The example shows how AI value can be measured through service quality and operational performance rather than relying entirely on direct revenue. The result is a balanced conversation about moving quickly while building enough control to keep AI dependable. Organizations need space for experimentation, but production services also require ownership, budgets, recovery planning, and people who know what to do when something fails. If one AI model or provider disappeared tomorrow, how much of your business would stop working? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

Showing 61–80 of 86 episodes