Data Unchained

What is really slowing down enterprise AI? According to Pradnesh Patil, Founder and CEO of Altimate AI, the answer is not always the model. It is the data work behind it. In this episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley talks with Pradnesh Patil about the pressure facing modern data teams as AI adoption accelerates. They discuss why data engineers are buried in pipeline backlogs, how token co...

In this episode of Data Unchained, Molly Presley talks with Kevin Moore, CEO of Quilt Data, about what it takes to make scientific and enterprise data ready for AI, collaboration, and discovery at scale. Kevin explains how life sciences teams are managing massive multimodal data sets across AWS, S3, sequencing workflows, lab notebooks, metadata systems, governance requirements, and regulatory dema...

In this episode of Data Unchained, Molly Presley talks with Mike Heroux, Senior Research Scientist at ParaTools and Scientist in Residence at Saint John’s University, about what the future of AI can learn from decades of high performance computing. Mike shares lessons from open source scientific software, the Exascale Computing Project, national lab collaboration, world models, AI for science, and...

Molly Presley sits down with Mike Seashols, CEO of Secuvy, and Floyd Christofferson of Hammerspace to discuss one of the biggest enterprise AI challenges today: governance. This episode explores why enterprise AI is really a data problem, how the wrong data creates risk, and what it takes to make live enterprise data AI-ready without massive migrations or added complexity. Demo: https://hammerspac...

In this episode of Data Unchained, Molly Presley talks with Jack Hogan of SHI about why enterprise AI success depends on more than just powerful models or infrastructure. Their conversation explores what it really takes to make data usable for AI, from governance and security to discoverability, context, and operational readiness. They also dig into why so many enterprise AI projects stall, what b...

Global namespace is becoming a critical strategy for cancer genomics, precision medicine, and life sciences data infrastructure. In this episode of Data Unchained, Molly Presley speaks with William Baird from Guardant Health about managing 160PB of genomic data across HPC, on prem systems, and multi-cloud environments. They break down why 80% of this data is still active, how researchers need fast...

Enterprise AI adoption is accelerating across industries, but many organizations are discovering that the real challenge is not the technology. It is the data behind it. In this episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley speaks with Juan Sequeda and Tim Gasper from ServiceNow about what it truly means for enterprises to become AI ready. The conversation explores why metadata, governance, and co...

The global SSD shortage is reshaping data infrastructure, storage planning, and enterprise scale workloads. In this episode of Data Unchained, we talk with storage journalist Chris Mellor of Blocks and Files about the causes behind the NAND supply crisis, the pressure on GPU pipelines, the rise in flash pricing, and the limited fab capacity that will continue into 2027. We explore the future of di...

In this episode of Data Unchained, Molly Presley sits down with storage industry legend Tom Coughlin to break down the surge in global demand for NAND, DRAM, SSDs, and hard drives. AI is reshaping the storage market faster than anyone anticipated, and this conversation delivers the clearest look yet at what is happening, why it happened, and what enterprises can do about it. Tom and Molly dive dee...

In this episode of Data Unchained, we sit down with Hao Zhong, CEO and Co-Founder of ScaleFlux, for an in-depth conversation on the future of storage, the rise of computational SSDs, and the massive shift underway in data center architecture. Hao shares the evolution from HDD to SSD, the impact of PCIe and NVMe on performance, how modern acceleration frameworks emerged, and why high-density storag...

In this Supercomputing edition of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley is joined live from the St. Louis Convention Center by Ari Berman, former Founder and CEO of Fireteam and current member of the Starfish team. The conversation explores the growing convergence of high performance computing, AI, and large scale data management, with a focus on unstructured data visibility, global file systems, and...

In this episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley is joined by Carl Watts of the Library of Congress for a deep dive into what it takes to manage and preserve one of the largest and most complex data environments in the world. Carl shares firsthand insight into overseeing more than 150 petabytes of historical data, navigating large scale tape migrations, and confronting the governance, copyrig...

In this Supercomputing 25 edition of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley talks with Hunter Hagewood of Vanderbilt University’s ACCRE research computing center about the urgent storage and performance challenges that pushed Vanderbilt to rethink its entire HPC strategy. Hunter explains how procurement delays, faculty chargeback pressures, millions of small medical imaging files, manual GPU data stag...

In this landmark 100th episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley sits down with Jonathan Flynn, Director of Applied Systems at Hammerspace, live from Supercomputing 2025. Together they explore the performance engineering breakthroughs that enabled Hammerspace and Samsung to deliver a historic IO500 10 Node Production result using only standard Linux, the upstream NFSv4.2 client, and off the sh...

In this episode of Data Unchained we sit down with Ellison Anne Williams, Founder and CEO of Enveil, to explore one of the most important questions in modern technology: how do you protect your data from AI. In this conversation, Ellison Anne breaks down how data can be used securely across environments you do not own, trust, or control, why AI models silently leak sensitive information, and how e...

As we count down to the 100th episode of Data Unchained , we’re revisiting one of the conversations that perfectly captures the spirit of this show: how data mobility is transforming business. In this look-back episode, host Molly Presley welcomes Harry Carr, CEO of Vcinity , for a deep dive into the technology that’s redefining how enterprises access and move data across distributed environments....

Welcome to another episode of Data Unchained hosted by Molly Presley. In this episode, Molly sits down with Ted Weatherford, VP of Business Development at Xsight Labs, to explore the cutting-edge future of data infrastructure. They dive deep into the rise of DPUs (Data Processing Units), how they compare to GPUs, and why 800G networking could change the balance of supercomputing forever. From AI d...

In this episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley sits down with Paul Lekas, Head of Global Public Policy for the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), to explore the future of data, AI, and public policy. From privacy legislation to the challenges of AI training data, Paul offers a unique perspective on how industry, government, and civil society must work together to build a...

Chris Mohr, President of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), joins us to unpack the legal and policy challenges shaping the future of data, AI, and digital information. Discover how companies, policymakers, and innovators can prepare for an era where AI regulation, copyright liability, and privacy standards are evolving faster than ever. If you’re a CIO, CTO, or business le...

In this episode of Data Unchained,we sit down with David Flynn, Founder and CEO of Hammerspace, to explore how next-generation infrastructure is transforming the future of AI factories, hyperscaler data centers, and enterprise-scale AI deployments. From exabyte-in-a-rack architectures to parallel file systems native in Linux, this conversation reveals how organizations can drastically lower CapEx,...

In this episode, Rita Gupta, AMD Fellow and recent recipient of the Superwomen of FMS Leadership Award, shares her 25-year journey in technology—from being one of the only women in engineering school to leading innovation in CXL, memory technologies, and supercomputing infrastructure at AMD. She opens up about career-defining moments, the importance of embracing discomfort for growth, and her miss...

What does AI transformation really look like inside a 180-year-old company? In this episode of Data Unchained, we are joined by Younes Hairej, founder and CEO of Aokumo Inc, a trailblazing company helping enterprises in Japan and beyond bridge the gap between business intent and AI execution. From deploying autonomous AI agents that eliminate the need for dashboards and YAML, to revitalizing siloe...

What if the reason your data strategy is failing has nothing to do with technology—and everything to do with storytelling? In this episode of Data Unchained, host Molly Presley sits down with Scott Taylor, “The Data Whisperer,” to unpack why data leaders keep missing the mark when trying to engage the business. With decades of experience helping global enterprises understand the value of foundatio...

In this episode of Data Unchained, we are joined by RJ Kedziora, CEO and co-founder of Estenda Solutions, for a deep dive into the massive and urgent data challenges facing healthcare. We explore the decades-long lag in healthcare data integration, how AI is quietly transforming clinical workflows, and the critical difference between data overload and actionable insight. From diabetic retinopathy...

In this episode of Data Unchained, we sit down with Malcolm Hawker, former Gartner analyst and Chief Data Officer at Profisee, to expose the real barriers to AI adoption. We explore why Master Data Management (MDM) is the foundation enterprises overlook, how decentralized systems and unstructured data derail governance, and why CDOs must evolve their role or risk irrelevance. This conversation cha...