Data centers in the AI era: upheaval and innovation

Agent sandboxes, including microVMs, are all the rage during KubeCon North America this week in Salt Lake City. But prevention will never be perfect, especially as agents grow more capable and intelligent, warns one Cisco exec who's had a front-row seat to a decade of development in cloud-native security. She points out that being able to detect malicious activity quickly on the network is just as important -- when, and not if, it happens. Featuring: Liz Rice, chief open source officer, Cisco Isovalent In today’s episode, we’ll cover… Isovalent, Cilium and eBPF integration into Cisco networks Convergence between NetOps and SecOps Surviving the 'vulnpocalypse' Open source sustainability challenges And more! References: Nvidia, Google agent sandboxes meet within CNCF Infrastructure anchors new IBM agentic security stack Glasswing results put AI ‘vulnpocalypse’ to the test Agentic network operations set to surge amid AI tsunami To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

According to one systems integrator, Apple laptops and Mac Minis can help bridge infrastructure gaps for companies early in the agentic AI development process who have a hard time getting their hands on GPU servers. In fact, in some cases, a cluster of three Apple laptops can outperform a GPU server at a fraction of the price. Kush Patel, Chief Innovation Officer, Tusker In today’s episode, we’ll cover… Infrastructure roadblocks to AI deployments – it's not just GPUs When local AI makes more sense than cloud AI How consumer-grade hardware can support local AI workloads And more! References: AI spending is up 18x: How IT leaders are managing costs Nvidia price hike will raise IT costs for all, analysts say 10 top AI hardware and chip-making companies in 2026 To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

Following IBM’s acquisition of HashiCorp, company leaders including Tyler Lynch stepped into new roles at IBM. In this interview, Lynch breaks down IBM's overall Automation portfolio, dives deep into the latest product updates around agentic security, details the role of products such as HashiCorp Vault and Terraform in those updates, and looks ahead to the future. Featuring: Tyler Lynch, Outbound CTO, IBM Automation In today’s episode, we’ll cover… Security, Identity, and HashiCorp Vault 2.x An update on HashiCorp Boundary, Consul and Nomad IBM Automation 2.0 And more! References: From perceptron to Concert: The operations data model at IBM Think ‘26 IBM Bob AI coding agent ships, HashiCorp AIOps previewed IBM - HashiCorp AI roadmap takes shape at HashiConf To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

The world has undergone a "great storage squeeze" over the last year, as memory shortages have driven up storage prices across all markets. The pinch is felt most strongly in AI infrastructure buildouts, which demand massive capacity from data storage systems to supply frontier models and AI agents with relevant data, as well as high-performance delivery of that data. An experienced enterprise storage executive reflects on how AI could be both the cause of storage management woes and their potential remedy. Featuring: Adrian Johnson, CRO, Hitachi Vantara In today's episode, we'll cover… The multi-faceted AI infrastructure problems CIOs face Data sovereignty concerns' effect on storage management How Hitachi Vantara is using agentic AI for storage supply chain management And more! References: How the 'Great Storage Squeeze' impacts infrastructure strategies It’s 10 p.m. Do You Know Where Your Data Is? Hitachi Group site selected as "Global Lighthouse Factory" To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

Data centers and their resource demands on surrounding communities have become national political news as AI infrastructure grows. Meanwhile, the industry's focus is about to shift again, from training frontier AI models to AI inference, which calls for smaller, more distributed facilities and raises a different set of potential concerns. Henry Cubillan is senior vice president of Americas Commercial for Kelvion, a manufacturer of cooling and thermal management technology. In this episode, he sheds light on emerging data center cooling approaches that demand less water, along with their trade-offs. He also discusses how the industry should respond to public controversy about AI data centers. In today’s episode, we’ll cover… New buildouts vs retrofitting existing data center facilities Evaporative cooling, closed-loop liquid cooling and dry cooling Striking a balance between data center power and water usage The outlook for enterprises with growing AI inference workloads And more! References: Data center builders confront public AI backlash AI data centers can run hot to stay cool: report A shadow water problem: AI's power demand shifts consumption upstream To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

Komprise has amassed $85 million in funding and multiple patents for its metadatabase, which lends structure to unstructured data. Data processing is increasingly in the spotlight as enterprise AI struggles to reach production. "It's garbage in, garbage out," according to Krishna Subramanian, COO at Komprise, something more enterprises are realizing as they develop context engineering practices for AI agents. But Subramanian argues that common techniques such as RAG and vectorizing data aren't enough to ensure quality results. In this episode, we also discuss: Metadatabases vs distributed data lakehouses Metadatabases vs knowledge graphs The art and science of data classification Why, at Komprise, "we don't believe in 100% automation." And more! References: Context is king as agents evolve, but problems persist Komprise adds Iceberg for unstructured data management Atlassian's Secoda acquisition adds data catalog for Rovo AI ServiceNow digs deeper into data for AI with Data.world buy To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

IT Ops Query caught up with an AI infrastructure development executive from a global cooling and air-conditioning manufacturer at the Yotta 2026 conference in Las Vegas this week, to discuss the wide range of topics generating buzz at the show. Just a few of the fast-paced developments on the minds of data center operators: how to do a better job communicating with communities where new facilities are being built, how to keep up with the insatiable need for AI infrastructure capacity, and rethinking power and cooling designs to improve efficiency. Featuring: Yong Tan, global vice president, AI infrastructure development, Airsys USA In today’s episode, we’ll cover… Modular data center approaches for fast buildouts Integrating "white space" and "gray space" infrastructure more tightly Two-phase liquid cooling 800 volt direct current And more! References: Report: Anthropic locks in $518B AI infrastructure commitments Akamai's potential $20B Anthropic deal scales AI beyond GPUs Power grid operator faces data center stress test To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

A recent whitepaper by the founder of a fledgling think tank identifies three common failure modes in agentic AI governance, chief among them the idea that AI models can be trusted to govern themselves. That founder, and the six companies he's founded, propose a new way to more effectively bind and guide AI agents – from the outside. In this episode, he shares with IT Ops Query his multi-faceted proposals for new industry standards in agentic IT governance and certification. But now that he's built it, will industry stakeholders come?  Featuring: Jim Ford, founder and architect, Equilateral AI  In today's episode, we'll cover:  The inherent conflict of interest in constitutional AI and guardrails  Authority drift and salience delusion  Proposed industry standard approaches to guiding and capturing agentic intent  How to avoid the pitfalls of SBOM  And more!  References:   The AI agent governance gap: How CIOs can gain control   AgenticOps for infrastructure faces a deterministic dilemma  Is AI our agent, or are our governments becoming agents for AI? | Computer Weekly  Authority Must Live Outside the Model – Equilateral  To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.  To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.  

Splunk .conf 26 in Denver was the coming-out party for the Cisco subsidiary's Agent Observability tool, which combines continuous behavior evaluation with troubleshooting and security features to keep autonomous agents in line. Two Splunk executives break down new Tokenomics and Observability Studio features introduced for the GA release, and share trends they see among enterprise customers preparing for autonomous AI agents in production. Featuring: Vikram Chatterji, senior director of agent resilience at Splunk Patrick Lin, SVP & GM, Observability at Splunk In today’s episode, we’ll cover… Splunk's special sauce for tokenomics Claude Code integration through Observability Studio How Agent Observability fits into corporate governance systems And more! References: Splunk's path to autonomous AI starts with tightly constrained agents Cisco Cloud Control unites AgenticOps for IT infrastructure Cisco Galileo buy reflects blurring lines in AI observability To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure. To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

About a year after leaving HashiCorp following its acquisition by IBM, Dave McJannet is back with a proposed infrastructure substrate for the next platform shift brought about by AI agents. McJannet likens the state of today's AI governance to last decade's "Cloud 1.0." His new company, Dome Systems, anticipates the "2.0 moment" when initial hype and piecemeal automation approaches give way to more standardized automation. Featuring: Dave McJannet, co-founder, Dome Systems In today’s episode, we’ll cover… What's missing from existing AI governance tools What Dome's agent operations platform is and is NOT Where Dome is headed now that it's shipped its first products And more! References: The best AI governance tools and platforms in 2026 Who owns AI's decisions? Reengineering AI governance How governance as code controls AI agent risk To learn more about AI and IT Operations, check out TechTarget Infrastructure.