IT Visionaries

Does AI watch your network? Read-only of course! In this segment from IT Visionaries, Chris Brandt and John Capobianco discuss where AI agents can create real value for network teams before they ever touch production infrastructure. Instead of jumping straight to full automation, John makes the case for read-only AI: agents that document the network, compare changes over time, run tests, support c...

Your people aren't tired of change — they're saturated. There's a difference, and it's the difference between an AI rollout that lands and one that bounces off your workforce entirely. Kelle Fontenot is the Chief Digital Officer at KPMG US, where the CIO, the CTO, and the Chief Data Officer all report to her. She owns internal innovation, architecture, platform, engineering, and data across a 40,0...

Companies are making the exact same mistake with AI that they made with cloud. FICO's CIO Mike Trkay breaks down why 95% of companies are failing at AI alignment, why "automating a bad process faster" is the #1 trap, and why regulated industries are already abandoning LLMs in favor of focused language models.   Key takeaways: • Only 5% of AI pilots make it to production — and MIT's research backs...

Network automation has been "coming soon" for over a decade. So what's actually different this time? John Capobianco, Head of AI & Developer Relations at Itential, built NetClaw — a CCIE-level AI agent that manages network infrastructure through Slack and WhatsApp. It hit 300 GitHub stars in two weeks. It can analyze packet captures, configure routers, run compliance tests, and generate documentat...

Your basic search is missing a massive section of the internet. In this IT Visionaries Spotlight, Chris Brandt talks with Sudheesh Nair, Co-Founder and CEO of TinyFish, about the hidden layer of the internet - the data, pricing, and real-world context that never shows up in search results. The future isn’t better search. It’s AI that can operate the web for you - executing multi-step tasks, naviga...

Think AI is about automating what you already do? That's the same mistake companies made moving to cloud, and FICO's Mike Trkay says you're about to waste millions proving it. Mike is Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Customer Officer (CCO) at FICO, an analytics software company that processes billions of decisions per day and powers 80% of fraud detection. In this episode, Mike explains w...

AI is forcing enterprises to rethink everything from hardware to governance, and most organizations are attacking it in silos. Mano Bhattacharyya (CTO, Nutanix) breaks down why AI isn't just an application layer problem, but an end-to-end transformation that spans compute (GPUs, ARM, DPUs), data management (unclean enterprise data, knowledge graphs), security (agent gateways, MCP server risks), an...

Think 5G is about faster phones? That's what telecom companies want consumers to believe. The truth is far more interesting. In this episode, Elena Fersman (VP and Head of AI Innovation at Ericsson) reveals what 5G networks are really built for: industries, not consumers. Through network slicing, edge computing, and cognitive systems, 5G creates the infrastructure that makes AI applications possib...

Compliance and regulatory reporting used to mean endless spreadsheets, fragmented data sources, and teams drowning in manual work. Today, AI is transforming how the world's largest companies manage financial reporting, sustainability disclosures, and audit workflows—not by replacing humans, but by giving them time back to do strategic work. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits...

Most companies don’t realize it yet, but the way they built their technology foundations is quietly becoming a liability. Cloud costs are rising. Platforms change underneath you. AI is reshaping infrastructure from hardware to data to governance. And the strategies that once felt “safe” are now the ones creating the most risk. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Man...

Most people assume the internet is stable, durable, and ready for whatever comes next. The truth is a bit more complicated. Modern networks were never designed for today’s scale, and for the first time we are seeing technology that can make them smarter, simpler, and far more reliable. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt talks with Anil Varanasi, CEO and Co-Founder of Meter, about...

Most leaders assume AI and search already see the whole internet. In reality, they all operate on the same tiny slice of the web. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Sudheesh Nair, Co-Founder and CEO of TinyFish and former CEO of ThoughtSpot, to unpack why only a small percentage of the web is indexable and how that cripples enterprise AI. Sudheesh explains why the...

Most organizations are sitting on mountains of documents, PDFs, emails, and images they still cannot fully search, organize, or understand. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Tim McIntire, CTO of Hyland, to unpack why unstructured data is still one of the biggest blockers between AI hype and real results. Tim breaks down why so many companies struggle to access the...

If your business relies on video calls, messaging apps, or mobile devices, you are at risk for a new kind of attack. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Christine Gadsby, Chief Security Officer at BlackBerry, to explore how AI, deepfakes, and weakened telecom infrastructure are reshaping the modern threat landscape. Christine explains why enterprises can no longer t...

Security used to be a headache. Now it is a growth engine. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Taylor Hersom, Founder and CEO of Eden Data and former CISO, to break down how fast growing companies can turn cybersecurity and compliance into a true competitive advantage. Taylor explains why frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and emerging AI standards such as ISO 42001...

The promise of agentic AI has been massive, autonomous systems that act, reason, and make business decisions, but most enterprises are still struggling to see results. In this episode, host Chris Brandt sits down with Sumeet Arora, Chief Product Officer at Teradata, to unpack why the gap exists between AI hype and actual impact, and what it takes to make AI scale, explainable, and ROI-driven. From...

If you’ve ever shipped an AI feature that looked great in testing — only to watch it behave unpredictably in production — you’re not alone. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt talks with Lawrence Jones, Founding Engineer at incident.io, about the critical gap between AI that demos well and AI that works under pressure. Lawrence shares how his team designs tools that help engineers...

Every product a company ships depends on thousands of tiny decisions happening deep inside the supply chain. But most organizations are still making those decisions using stale spreadsheets, fragmented systems, and guesswork. In this episode, we explore how AI-driven procurement intelligence is changing the game – moving teams from reactive firefighting to proactive supply chain planning. Our gues...

AI was supposed to make life easier. So why are tech teams more burned out than ever?   In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt and guest co-host Lacey Peace unpack the real reasons behind the burnout crisis sweeping through tech and cybersecurity teams in 2025. From the “do more with less” culture to the false promise of AI automation, they explore how overwork, layoffs, and unrealis...

What happens when AI stops making mistakes… and starts misleading you? This discussion dives into one of the most important — and least understood — frontiers in artificial intelligence: AI deception. We explore how AI systems evolve from simple hallucinations (unintended errors) to deceptive behaviors — where models selectively distort truth to achieve goals or please human feedback loops. We unp...

Cisco’s Vijoy Pandey - SVP & GM of Outshift by Cisco - explains how AI agents and quantum networks could completely redefine how software, infrastructure, and security function in the next decade. You’ll learn: → What “Agentic AI” and the “Internet of Agents” actually are → How Cisco open-sourced the Internet of Agents framework and why decentralization matters → The security threat of “store-now,...

Cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and passwords anymore. It’s an all-out battle where hackers run businesses with customer support desks, insider threats can be disguised as your newest hire, and artificial intelligence is both the weapon and the shield.   In this special episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt switches roles and sits in the hot seat while Lacey Peace, host of Experts...

When your AI has to make decisions in the real world, the data you don’t have can hurt people.   DiffuseDrive CEO Balint Pasztor joins IT Visionaries to unpack the $124B data scarcity problem holding back autonomous systems — and how synthetic data (done right) can compress years of data collection into hours.   We dig into: why edge cases matter (and how to safely create them), closing the sim-to...

Discover how to turn decades of data into a competitive edge, build lasting customer relationships beyond the first click, and apply AI in ways that truly drive impact. Joining us is Vineet Mahajan, CTO of US News & World Report, who shares how he’s led the 90-year-old brand through a sweeping digital transformation. From rearchitecting infrastructure to deploying semantic search, generative AI, a...

IT leaders in regulated industries know the pain of navigating outdated, slow procurement systems – especially when critical missions depend on modern tools.  In this episode, Bryana Tucci, Lead of the AWS Marketplace for the US Intelligence Community, shares how government agencies are overcoming legacy procurement bottlenecks to access cutting-edge software, AI tools, and cloud services faster a...