Do Your Tasks Need Agents... Or Automation?

Do you really need an AI agent for every task? Of the 1.5 billion automated actions Tines performs for customers every week, 92% rely on deterministic workflows, just 7% use AI agents, and 1% involve human judgment. It's a surprising breakdown in an industry racing to put AI agents on everything.Eoin Hinchy, Co-founder and CEO of Tines, joins host Chris Brandt on IT Visionaries to explain why the future of automation isn't about choosing between AI agents and traditional workflows, but knowing when to use each. They explore how AI can reason through unfamiliar security threats while deterministic systems handle predictable responses, and why that distinction matters for speed, cost, and reliability.AI is making software creation accessible to everyone. As employees build their own applications and workflows, how can organizations maintain security, visibility, and control without slowing innovation? Chapters0:00 How AI Is Transforming the Enterprise Software5:58 Why AI Agents Aren't Always the Answer11:49 Combining AI Agents With Traditional Automation15:57 The Future of Enterprise Software in an AI World22:00 The Growing Security Risks of AI-Generated Software26:06 Building Secure AI Workflows With Proper Governance30:15 How AI Can Maintain and Improve Its Own Code41:48 When to Use AI Agents vs. Deterministic Automation45:16 Building a Business in an Unpredictable AI Future50:15 Why People Are Still the Competitive Advantage in AI -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If AI is better than your developers, why are your best engineers still writing code?Software engineering is the only engineering discipline where we make the engineer also turn the wrenches. Nicky Pike, Field CTO at Coder, argues that AI is finally letting your best engineers become architects while agents do the mechanic work — and lays out exactly what has to change about how you hire, govern, and provision your teams to make it real.Nicky has 20+ years in developer infrastructure — Xbox Live, private cloud at CVS Health, Cloud Foundry at VMware/Pivotal, and now the 'first mile' problem at Coder. He's a self-described 'platform guy, not a developer' who's watched this pattern play out through four platform shifts and sees the same arc happening faster. What you'll learn• Why the developer laptop is the worst possible endpoint for running AI agents• The identity split that fixes 'AI slop' overnight — human vs. agent permissions• Why Uber blew through their entire AI budget in four months (and how to avoid it)• How the software bottleneck moved from the inner loop to the outer loop — and why GitHub can't keep up• What to actually tell junior devs asking 'am I cooked?' ConnectNicky Pike on LinkedInCoder Chapters• 0:00 Introduction• 1:15 From Air Force crew chief to platform CTO — the 'works on my machine' problem• 2:44 Why this is the most interesting moment in tech since the cloud• 4:46 AI is Home Depot for software — the citizen developer reframe• 8:33 The homegrown-app problem coming back to bite us• 10:16 How Minecraft kids built Coder — and the 'first mile' problem• 13:00 Why the developer laptop is your biggest AI security hole• 16:17 AI is a Mensa student on caffeine — the identity fix that changes everything• 19:31 Uber blew through their AI budget in 4 months — the tokenomics trap• 20:36 Sovereign AI, open weights, and self-hosting the future• 29:02 The bottleneck moved — why GitHub can't keep up• 31:46 The airplane magazine trap — why bolting AI on will destroy you• 36:33 Software engineers have been doing two jobs this whole time• 40:27 GTG 1002 and why the disease is also the cure• 43:02 What happens to open source when AI writes the code• 48:19 What to tell junior devs asking 'am I cooked?'  -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Would you trust AI at only 80% accuracy? What about for your enterprise? KPMG Chief Digital Officer Kelle Fontenot explains why AI success cannot be measured by headcount reduction alone - and how synthetic data can help companies test agents safely, protect sensitive information, and focus on the moments that matter most to employees. -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you tell your AI NOT to delete your database you’re good right? In this episode of IT Visionaries, Chris Brandt sits down with Daniel Meyer, CTO of Camunda, to explore why prompts alone are not enough to govern AI. They discuss the difference between governance by instruction and governance by structure, why enterprises are struggling to turn AI investments into meaningful outcomes, and why adding agents to legacy processes often creates faster versions of the same old problems. Daniel also explains how one company reduced a four-day process to just 17 minutes—and why results like that only happen when organizations fundamentally rebuild how work gets done. Highlights: • Why enterprises need guardrails AI cannot override • How orchestration connects people, systems, and AI agents • Why process redesign matters more than simple automation • How businesses can safely enable non-technical teams to build with AI • What the orchestrated enterprise could look like over the next five years Connect Daniel Meyer on LinkedIn Camunda IT Visionaries   Chapters 2:16 Why Business Processes Are Enterprise Algorithms 2:40 Why AI Investment Isn’t Delivering Bigger Outcomes 4:29 What Real AI Leverage Looks Like 6:35 Rebuilding the Software Development Process Around AI 11:19 Why Companies Struggle to Understand Their Own Processes 15:29 How Harmony Made a Process 90x Faster 16:40 How ProcessOS Reengineers Business Processes 19:54 Building AI Agents You Can Actually Trust 21:49 When an AI Agent Deletes the Database 22:28 Governance by Instruction vs. Governance by Structure 25:03 What AI Governance Can Learn From Human Access Controls 38:45 How to Test and Switch Between AI Models 45:00 Is Enterprise Software Becoming Headless? 46:51 The Rise of the Orchestrated Enterprise -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 compliance, enrich tickets, and help engineers understand what changed when something breaks. They also explore why networking may be uniquely suited for AI-assisted operations. Networks are deterministic, but the problems can be difficult to spot - especially when outdated documentation, configuration drift, and human error pile up over time. Before AI changes the network, maybe it should learn to watch it. Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6zZmgPOW7I Chapters 0:00 - Why AI Should Watch the Network 1:03 - Finding What Changed 3:51 - Beyond Config Management 7:15 - From Detection to Safe Remediation -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 40,000-person workforce — and she's spent the last four and a half years steering that organization through cloud, data, and now an AI wave reshaping how every one of her people does their job. In this conversation, Kelle reframes 'change fatigue' as 'change saturation,' reveals that KPMG employees built 25,000 AI agents in the last six months alone, walks through the synthetic-data acquisition powering regulated AI testing at scale, and explains the brand-new Anthropic partnership turning a 140-year-old services firm into a products company.   What you'll learn • Why 'change fatigue' is the wrong diagnosis — and what 'saturation' changes about how you roll out AI • Why KPMG refuses to use AI as a head-count lever — and why that decision is actually accelerating adoption • How 40,000 KPMG employees built 25,000 AI agents in six months — and what that means for who counts as a 'builder' • Why the CIO, CTO, and CDO all report to one person — and what would break if they didn't • How synthetic data lets a regulated firm test AI at scale without the breach risk • What KPMG's Anthropic partnership signals about the future of professional services   Connect Kelle Fontenot on LinkedIn KPMG US IT Visionaries Podcast   Chapters 0:00 AI Change Has Become AI Saturation 1:29 Why “Change Fatigue” Is the Wrong Diagnosis 3:27 Prompting Like It’s November 4:46 Giving People Space to Innovate 6:38 AI Is Not a Headcount Lever 10:07 Building AI in a Regulated Business 11:24 The Risk Container Around AI 14:12 The AI-Augmented Auditor 17:21 The Agent Governance Problem 20:59 Why Digital, Data, and Tech Sit Together 22:59 Building an Inside Startup 30:04 Innovation Has to Happen at the Edge 36:48 The ROI Math for AI Agents 38:50 Why KPMG Bought a Synthetic Data Company 44:09 KPMG’s Anthropic Partnership 51:03 Shipping AI at Scale 52:10 Kelle Fontenot’s Advice for Leaders -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 it up • The lift-and-shift parallel: cloud costs went up for the same reason AI ROI is missing • Why the LLM-to-focused-language-model shift mirrors cloud-native vs lift-and-shift • What "AI native" actually means (and why chatbots aren't it)   Chapters 00:00 The 5% Alignment Problem 01:09 Only 7% Even Measure If Their AI Works 02:15 "You're Just Doing a Bad Process Faster" 06:29 LLM Repatriation and the Rise of Focused Language Models -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 documentation — all through natural language. John spent 15 years as a network engineer before becoming one of the leading voices in network automation. He's published multiple books, created dozens of open-source projects, and just launched the VibeOps community where 600+ network engineers share AI code without judgment. Key takeaways: • Why natural language is the breakthrough that makes network automation finally work (hint: nobody has to learn Python anymore) • The 5 use cases beyond config management that deliver value on day one — all read-only, all low-risk • How to go from human-in-the-loop to fully agentic network operations without triggering panic • Why "shadow AI" is the new shadow IT — and what leadership needs to do about it • The contrarian case that writing configs by hand is now a solved problem   Guest: John Capobianco — Head of AI & Developer Relations, Itential LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/john-capobianco-644a1515 X/Twitter: @John_Capobianco NetClaw: github.com/automateyournetwork/netclaw VibeOps Forum: Reach John on LinkedIn or X for invite   Chapters 0:00 Why AI Is Different for Network Automation 2:32 Natural Language: The Interface That Changes Everything 3:51 "The Network Should Be Like a Telephone" — Why Engineers Resist Change 6:08 The No-Win Life of a Network Engineer 8:08 OpenClaw: More GitHub Stars Than Linux 10:15 What NetClaw Actually Does (90 Skills, 43 MCPs) 11:37 The RFC Documentation Problem AI Can Solve 13:03 Day One Agent Rules: Start Read-Only 13:58 When Was the Last Time We Hired a Junior? 15:54 How NetClaw Hit 300 Stars in Two Weeks 19:54 Deterministic vs Non-Deterministic: Getting Engineers Over the Hump 23:36 War Stories: Fat Fingers, MTU Issues, and the DNS Nightmare 28:32 Documentation: The AI Use Case Nobody Can Argue With 32:34 Beyond Config Management: 5 AI Use Cases That Matter Now 36:00 The IDS/IPS Analogy: Why AI Agents Succeed Where Signatures Failed 40:02 AI Hallucination Is Overstated — Misalignment Is the Real Problem 41:53 Model Convergence: Why the Stuff Around the Model Matters More 46:00 Shadow AI Is the New Shadow IT 47:59 What Happens When AI Understands Your Business Context 53:59 The Optimistic Case for AI and Humanity 56:05 VibeOps: Building a Safe Space for AI-Curious Engineers 1:00:36 Is Vibe Coding Just Coding Now? 1:01:54 "Don't Write the Configs Anymore" 1:02:43 Closing & Where to Find John -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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, navigating complexity, and returning answers that actually reflect your situation.   Chapters: 0:00 The Internet You Never See 1:55 From Search to “Operating the Web” 4:30 The Real Value - From Pricing to Taste   -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 why 95% of AI projects never reach production, why companies are already repatriating workloads from large language models, and what really separates automation from transformation.   Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:23: Why FICO's CIO Is Also the Chief Customer Officer 4:52 The Office Space Problem: Why CIOs Are Really Translators   6:02 "Conduit in Chief" — The CIO's Real Job   6:45 How CIOs Accidentally Become Cost Centers 7:40 What FICO Actually Does (It's Not Just Credit Scores) 12:59 How Missile Guidance Tech Became Fraud Detection 17:59 When LLMs Can't Meet 150-Millisecond Latency 21:32 Why AI Strategy Is Harder Than It Looks 24:50 The Cloud Parallel: 5% Alignment and Why AI Projects Stall 27:08 "You're Just Doing a Bad Process Faster" 31:44 LLM Repatriation Is Already Happening 37:40 A FICO Score for AI Decisions 43:10 Global Regulation and Staying Ahead of Compliance 45:22 The Australian Banking Example: Focused Language Models in Practice 52:08 From Cost Center to Innovation Driver 54:40 What's Next: Agentic Architecture and Focused Sequence Models 57:49 "What's the Opportunity Today?" — The CIO Mindset Shift -- This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.---IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.