A Wild Earnings Season

We're just out of the recent earnings season and we've seen a wild range of results and some interesting implications. Melissa Otto CFA, head of S&P Global's Visible Alpha research team, returns to discuss what that markets have been saying and what she makes of the data with host Eric Hanselman. Macroeconomic effects are having some impact, as consumer sentiment diverges across the top and the bottom of the economy. In technology, there are mixed feelings about AI as the hunt continues for use cases with decisive revenue returns. The hyperscalers are continuing to invest capital at staggering rates and, so far, the markets have mostly approved. AI supply chain companies, like NVIDIA, are generally moving forward with solid results. The larger question is where is the AI boom headed. There are constraints not only in supply chains for data centers, but also in energy supply. Agentic AI has a lot of promise, but needs to prove out its value and earn trust, as providers look to improve efficiency with more targeted silicon, like ASICs, to stand up alongside the forests of GPU's being deployed. As investors hunt for improved returns, they may be rotating to international opportunities and small cap companies that might be able to see faster returns from AI deployments. More S&P Global Content: Next in Tech podcast: Agentic Customer Experience Nvidia GTC in DC Blackwell expectations increase Otto: Markets are grappling with how to price AI-related stocks   Next in Tech podcast, Episode 239: AI Infrastructure For S&P Global Subscribers: A view of peaks and plateaus AI to lead tech spending in 2026, but orgs losing track of energy efficiency – Highlights from Macroeconomic Outlook, SME Tech Trends Hyperscaler earnings quarterly: Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft charge ahead on AI capacity buildouts Agents are already driving workplace impact and agentic AI adoption – Highlights from VotE: AI & Machine Learning Big Picture 2026 AI Outlook: Unleashing agentic potential Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman Guest: Melissa Otto, CFA Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith

For the 250th episode, we're looking a bit further forward to explore what enterprises should be thinking about as they look to put agentic capabilities to work. Melissa Incera, Alex Johnston and Sheryl Kingstone return to discuss the challenges and potential with host Eric Hanselman. As AI agents evolve beyond simple chatbots in customer experience and business operations, enterprises have to adapt both their infrastructure and data management capabilities to benefit from agentic potential. Automation is great, but getting to fully autonomous operations requires building more trust than exists today for most. In fact, 451 Research Voice of the Enterprise study results show that those who show a healthy skepticism about agent capabilities are the most successful in achieving their AI project goals. Agents are making big step forward in establishing continuity in processes by adding memory to AI model interactions. At the same time, concerns about cost are bringing up the need for the same types of visibility and control that's being used with FinOps efforts in cloud. All of this is taking place in an evolving regulatory landscape where the need for a balanced approach between innovation and safety is guiding the best outcomes. More S&P Global Content: Next in Tech podcast: Agentic Customer Experience Next in Tech episode 222:  FinOps Next in Tech | Ep. 205: Agentic AI Impacts AI for security: Agentic AI will be a focus for security operations in 2025 For S&P Global Subscribers: Agents in the enterprise: Laying the groundwork for automation The CX AI Agent Index 2025 Agents are already driving workplace impact and agentic AI adoption – Highlights from VotE: AI & Machine Learning Big Picture 2026 AI Outlook: Unleashing agentic potential Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman Guests: Melissa Incera, Alex Johnston, Sheryl Kingstone Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith

This year's AWS re:Inforce conference was larger and fueled by greater agentic capabilities. Part of the 451 Research team that was at the conference, Henry Baltazar, Scott Crawford, William Fellows and Melanie Posey, join host Eric Hanselman to explore the announcements and progress that's been made in expanding agentic capabilities and much more. As an incumbent infrastructure provider, AWS is looking to the top of the infrastructure stack to secure their advantage. A suite of developer tools, including the Kiro IDE, are looking to make the creation and operation of agents simpler. There was progress in FinOps, with greater cost transparency and support for partner opportunities in helping customers manage their cloud spend.   There was also a more enthusiastic embrace of multicloud environments, with the introduction of AWS Interconnect, a service that provides easy and scalable interconnection with other cloud providers, with Google being the first and Microsoft Azure said to be in the works. 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise (VotE) data shows dramatic increases in data migration volumes, making interconnection performance more critical. With the holidays in full swing, how many Mariah Carey song title references can you spot in this episode?   More S&P Global Content: Next in Tech episode 236: Data Migration Next in Tech episode 222:  FinOps AI for security: Agentic AI will be a focus for security operations in 2025   For S&P Global subscribers: 2026 Trends in Applied Infrastructure & DevOps Data Insight: SKU removals run out of steam — hyperscale SKU changes for November 2025 AWS' agentic strategy comes into focus with AgentCore platform and pre-built agents Cloud spending expansion on tap for 2026 despite bleak macroeconomic outlook – Highlights from VotE…   Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman  Guests: Henry Baltazar, Scott Crawford, William Fellows, Melanie Posey Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith

Supercomputing has shifted from an esoteric and exotic part of technology to much more mainstream, mostly driven by AI. The massive amounts of computational power that once were reserved for the largest of computing problems in high performance computing (HPC), like weather and seismic analysis, are now commonplace in the world of AI. Analyst Gabriella Brown returns to talk about complex computing problems, quantum computing and photonics with host Eric Hanselman. SC25 has grown to over 16,000 attendees and almost 600 exhibitors, enough to sprawl across St. Louis' Americas Center and into its football stadium. As they mature, the next step in enterprise adoption is working out how all of these will work together. AI is tackling many problems, but quantum could address a whole different class of computing questions. Quantum computing is scaling up and moving closer to becoming a key part of an everyday computing portfolio. Techniques like quantum annealing are finding practical applications today while pure-play quantum approaches are increasing the density and stability of their computing capabilities as they push for quantum advantage, the point at which they're doing things that classical computers can't. New areas like photonic computing were also on display at SC25, as well as all of the supporting infrastructure to power, house and cool HPC installations. As AI clusters head toward gigawatt power dissipation, they require specialized support.   More S&P Global Content: Cybersecurity, talent needs and ongoing adoption were key themes at Quantum.Tech USA 2025 Access to quantum hardware remains cloudy, but more options are starting to appear Quantum computing and the future of data privacy   For S&P Global subscribers: 2026 Trends in Applied Infrastructure & DevOps Information security, cloud and AI vendors stand out as critical to businesses – Highlights from Vo… Quantum Computing Market Monitor & Forecast Quantum computing competitive landscape and market forecast: Expecting $6.5B by 2029 Mea culpa — NVIDIA GTC brings quantum to the stage to help set the record straight Credits Host/Author: Eric Hanselman  Guests: Gabriella (Ellie) Brown Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith  

The worlds of IT security and operations are being pulled together and AI is a catalyst that's making it happen. The focus on observability that's been part of the DevOps movement, is playing an important role in improving security effectiveness and Scott Crawford, Mark Ehr and Mike Fratto return to look at how this is happening with host Eric Hanselman. Security teams have always wrestled with making effective use of telemetry data from the infrastructure and applications they are securing. Correlating data from just the security tooling is hard enough, let alone adding operational data to the mix. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems came into existence many years ago specifically to address this problem, but they were complex to configure and operate and needed tending to stay accurate. The volumes of data coming from observability initiatives was promising, but new approaches were required and AI and ML have been key to unlocking that value. Once again, we've hit an opportunity where it's all about the data and getting it to where it can be put to work. The Open Telemetry project simplified data interchange, but the question remained as to where all of this data had to live. It's not practical to get all of the data in one place, but data fabrics and federation can manage access effectively. Better correlation opens the door to many possibilities, including building a single source of truth for IT assets. There's a lot of benefit to bringing security and operations together.   More S&P Global Content: AI for security: Agentic AI will be a focus for security operations in 2025 AI in action: unleashing agentic potential   For S&P Global subscribers: 2026 Trends in Information Security Deal Analysis: Palo Alto Acquires Chronosphere Big Picture Report: 2026 AI Outlook – Unleashing agentic potential   Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman Guests: Scott Crawford, Mark Ehr, Mike Fratto Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith

As organizations have worked to leverage the power of AI in interacting with large language models, they've invested in prompt engineering to generate better results. But agents shift the need manage the full context of not only the prompt, but also the data that's being presented. Analysts Jean Atelsek and Alex Johnston return to the podcast to look at the new discipline of context engineering and how it's being put to work in AI environments with host Eric Hanselman. The process of context engineering looks at ensuring that the right data context is in place for agents to act on. It requires a shift from thinking that more data is necessarily better and understanding to getting the right data is the best insurance against agents picking up bad habits. We've come full circle in approaches to data and organizations need to raise the level of abstraction at which they address data need for agentic applications.  We've been working through waves of capability in the march to agentic operations. Organizations have access to the same models, but how they're used is where differentiation is possible. Agentic approaches demand greater sophistication and understanding around the context with which data is presented to applications. There has to be more careful curation, to get reasonable results. More S&P Global Content: AI in action: unleashing agentic potential Next in Tech | Ep. 224: Context Around MCP Next in Tech Podcast: Agentic Customer Experience For S&P Global Subscribers: Agents are already driving workplace impact and agentic AI adoption – Highlights from VotE: AI & Machine Learning Benchmarking digital maturity: Are businesses ready for agentic AI? – Highlights from VotE: Customer Experience & Commerce Pace of AI agent advancement could spur M&A in the sales automation market Big Picture Report: 2026 AI Outlook – Unleashing agentic potential Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman Guests: Jean Atelsek, Alex Johnston Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith

The latest Big Picture reports are out and cover a wide range of topics from financial markets to supply chains and onward to technology and AI. Two of the authors, Lindsey Hall and Chris Rogers, join host Eric Hanselman to talk about sustainability, supply chains and AI. These are tightly interwoven and their dependencies spill out into geopolitics, as well. Sustainability conversations have focused on climate adaptation and resilience. Climate risks are growing and yet only 35% of businesses have adaptation plans in place. The urgent demands for AI infrastructure are consuming both energy and the materials to build data centers. Meeting those needs is shifting sustainability priorities for the companies looking to deploy AI, as well as energy focus. Renewables are still a key part of energy plans, but they've moved to an all-of-the-above approach to fuel AI-driven consumption levels. It's been what could be called an un-fun year in supply chain. Uncertainty has become the new certainty. Changes in tariff policies have had the side effect of pushing the affected countries closer together. That's led to reshoring efforts, which have seen particular growth in ASEAN countries. One of complexities of this shift is that labor forces are now competing with manufacturing automation and robotics, rather than skills and cost differentials in different regions. The rise of agentic AI is only increasing pressure on infrastructure and energy supplies as it accelerates operational velocity.  More S&P Global Content: Insights in Motion: See the Big Picture How data, AI and standards can help address sustainability challenges 5 Climate Week NYC takeaways setting the scene for decision-making in 2026 Three Tools for Trump Tariffs 2.0 Climate costs are rising, but few companies have an adaptation plan All Things Sustainable Podcast Next in Tech podcast: Agentic Customer Experience CERAWeek Conference For S&P Global Subscribers: Agents are already driving workplace impact and agentic AI adoption – Highlights from VotE: AI & Machine Learning Benchmarking digital maturity: Are businesses ready for agentic AI? – Highlights from VotE: Customer Experience & Commerce Pace of AI agent advancement could spur M&A in the sales automation market Big Picture Report: 2026 AI Outlook – Unleashing agentic potential Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman     Guests: Lindsey Hall, Chris Rogers Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith

As the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, this year thoughts are turning to agents and the changing role of AI in commerce. Sheryl Kingstone returns to discuss the impacts and offer insights into strategies for putting agents to work and working in a world of agents with host Eric Hanselman. AI is spanning generations in technology adoption and engagement in ways that previous technologies have struggled. Search and digital engagement had strong splits between different generations. The natural language capabilities of chat interfaces are stepping across technology hesitancy. But it is creating challenges for businesses in reaching their customers. Search engine optimization is well understood, but how can a business ensure it's found by AI entities? Making more information available, but being more selective about which interactions get what data is a critical balance to achieve. Bot management has become a lot more complicated. Building trust in autonomous experiences is the next big hurdle that AI technologies have to accomplish. Gen Z users are more comfortable with automated actions, but trust is still key. Building connections with brand advocates is just as important as it's always been and now has to be delivered through AI. Internal chat can be a good start and it needs to be extended to become a more complete assistant-style interaction. It requires a significant improvement from legacy chatbots and the business it creates can make it worthwhile.   More S&P Global Content: 451 IT Insider: A roundup for IT decision-makers Next in Tech | Ep. 205: Agentic AI Impacts National Retail Federation looks to revitalize the modern commerce experience   For S&P Global subscribers: Benchmarking digital maturity: Are businesses ready for agentic AI? – Highlights from Vot… Pace of AI agent advancement could spur M&A in the sales automation market Big Picture Report: 2026 AI Outlook – Unleashing agentic potential   Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman  Guest: Sheryl Kingstone Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith  

One of the biggest banking and payments conferences, Money 20/20, has wrapped up and the enthusiasm for all things stablecoin has continued. Jordan McKee, Sampath Sharma and McKayla Wooldridge return to discuss how this is evolving with host Eric Hanselman. The cryptocurrency has become the buzzy headline in so many of the conversations at Money 20/20. But consumers are still wary of stablecoins and the larger questions is around how financial services companies will deliver valuable services using them. Unlike previous years, there were no dark clouds hovering over the payments markets. The industry is generally upbeat and starting to embrace agentic AI. Efforts are underway to standardize agent-driven commerce with the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP). It's a point of cooperation across payments companies that normally compete for share of consumer wallets. There's still work to be done in developing governance mechanisms for agentic transactions and those efforts will also need to build consumer trust.   More S&P Global Content: Inside the role of payments manager: Responsibilities, KPIs and strategy Next in Tech | Ep. 239: Stablecoins   For S&P Global subscribers: Interest in stablecoins and agentic commerce tempered by caution – Highlights from VoCUL: Connected… Data Insight: Cross-border payments volume to surpass $17 trillion by 2030 Cross-Border Payments Market Monitor & Forecast - Data Visualization Cross-border payments, stablecoins generate buzz at a low-key Money20/20 Asia   Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman  Guests: Jordan McKee, Sampath Sharma, McKayla Wooldridge Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith  

The equipment that fills data centers is evolving rapidly, driven by the need to fulfill the seemingly insatiable appetite of AI applications. The Open Compute Project (OCP) was founded by Meta/Facebook to promulgate equipment standards and its annual Summit has grown from a small specialized gathering, to an event that strains the capacity of the San Jose Convention Center. Senior research analyst Perkins Liu returns to offer his take on this meteoric growth with host Eric Hanselman. AI requirements are pushing ever greater scale both logically and physically, with the width of server racks doubling in the Open Rack Wide (ORW) specification to support greater density and better serviceability. The OCP Foundation is also working on silicon interoperability and is setting specifications for chiplet integration. Liquid cooling has moved from a nice to have feature to a required capability as a means to dissipate the huge amount of energy drawn by ever denser GPU arrays. Energy delivery is changing with the advent of higher voltage DC power. The early OCP efforts on 48 volt DC are paling in the face of new 800 volts designs. The OCP Foundation is also expanding its mission to include education, with the establishment of the OCP Academy. It aims to raise workforce skills in open hardware and will offer online training in data center technologies. That underscores not only the expansion of the OCP Foundation's mission, but also the increasing scale of the ecosystem that supports data center environments and complexity and interdependency that AI creates.   More S&P Global Content: Sustainability continues to drive datacenter infrastructure evolution Webinar: Talk to the Expert - Artificial intelligence, datacenters and energy: Is APAC ready for th… For S&P Global subscribers: Air cooling remains prevalent, but liquid cooling is gaining momentum – Highlights from VotE: Datac… Adjusted definitions of datacenter markets in China align with socioeconomic processes Datacenters increasingly use direct current to cope with AI workloads Credits: Host/Author: Eric Hanselman  Guest: Perkins Liu Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith