Hashing out a provocative enterprise AI keynote - live at CRM Playaz IRL with Esteban Kolksy

Esteban Kolksy, Chief Distiller at Constellation Research, closed out the CRM Playas IRL (In Real Life) event in Atlanta with a provocative keynote the debunked enterprise AI myths, while making a case for where the value in AI truly lies. After Kolsky left the stage, we broke down his main points on why LLMs are becoming commodities, and why proper enterprise AI is superior to out-of-the-box frontier models. Is AI "intelligent" - or a fascimle of intelligence - and why does this matter? We argued, at times, before landing on why Kolsky hates context graphs, and why I believe the misuse of the word "grounding" holds us back. This keynote was worth hashing out: there are big takeaways for customers that want to avoid lock-in, and to accomplish something better with AI by making AI a strategic part of infrastructure, rather than a not-very-smart chatbot.

Yep, we're back. It's time to join us for our unscripted review of the enterprise year to date. We also have special guest Andreas Welsch on tap, for an agentic AI enterprise gut check, timed with the Wednesday, February 25th announcement of his new book, The HUMAN Agentic AI Edge. As always, the audience brought their savviest and snarkiest comments. Note: to check Brian's infamous slide deck, go to the live video replay at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yGo9a01lPA&t=3s.

After two full days at ZohoDay 2026, Jon Reed and Thomas Wieberneit quickly regrouped for some first impressions on the slew of news and potent topics, such as intelligence as a commodity, the tension between custom solutions and technical debt, advances in AI coding that impact Zoho's own development teams, and reactions from customers on site.

ZohoDay 2026 is in the books. But while the assembled mass of industry analysts were still in Austin, Jon Reed and Brian Sommer grabbed a quiet room for an unscripted recap. There was a flurry of news at this show to make sense of, some of it NDA but most of it not. The guys were on the clock this time, with only 25 minutes to hit on the hottest issues from customers, partners, and Zoho leadership - not to mention Zoho fleshing out the "Zoho ERP" news. Brian had his infamous hand-scrawled notepad on the state of Zoho, and Jon walked listeners through Zoho's take on the changing risks of SaaS in the AI era. (This podcast was taped prior to Jon's last AI deep dives with Zoho in Austin, but there was plenty of AI content to discuss regardless). As always, catch Jon and Brian's recaps on diginomica.com for more background as they appear...

During their Acumatica Summit podcast review, Jon Reed and Brian Sommer went off into a full-blown treatment of ERP versus AI agent disruptions. Sommer managed to expertly nudge Reed into blowing a gasket over LinkedIn AI exuberance, so we decided to release this back and forth as a separate 15 minute podcast (you can also hear the full Acumatica Summit review as a separate podcast). *** This debate is not intended as a complete coverage of this topic, just as a flavor for the issues ERP vendors and their customers are facing ***. Though this discussion references Acumatica, it's about the ERP market as a whole, and there is a contrast made between ERP vendors with legacy install bases and those with more flexible/real-time systems - without that older install base. Discussions where things run hot are fun, but for a more complete review of this topic, track Reed and Sommer's ongoing articles on diginomica.com.

An unforgiving storm kept Brian from the tarmac, but that didn't stop Jon and Brian from doing their annual Acumatica Summit review, the virtual edition. On the last afternoon of the show, Jon caught up with Brian for an online review of Acumatica's AI news and strategy... What moved the needle, and what didn't? The guys also delve into customer proof points, including the use case discussion Brian did with a customer this week. Brian also lured Jon into ripping into a major cloud ERP versus AI fanboys/girls rant, but to keep this podcast focused, that will be released next week.

On the second full day of the Acumatica Summer 2026, Josh Greenbaum crashes the show with Jon to make sense of Acumatica's cloud ERP customer impact as the AI plot thickens. We get into our candid talks with customers, partners and Acumatica leadership, and what we found in our own session crashing also. (Brian Sommer was not able to make it in person, look out for a virtual show review with Brian soon).

In the January edition of the Enterprise month in review, we interviewed Louis Columbus with the burning question: are ERP and supply chain vendors ready for AI security, and new attack vectors like prompt injection? Louis has been nailing this on his Venture Beat AI security blog - so we put him in the hot seat to see what we could learn. This podcast is only the Columbus interview, which has been optimized for sound quality. If you want to see the full video replay with slides, check: https://youtube.com/live/-DQBB6mYJ_g.

Are ERP and supply chain vendors ready for AI security, and new attack vectors like prompt injection? Our special guest Louis Columbus says no. Louis has been nailing this on his Venture Beat AI security blog - let's put him in the hot seat and see what we can learn. Your hosts Brian Sommer and Jon Reed will also share their underrated news stories of the month, and unleash their enterprise highs and lows via the infamous slide deck. As always, bring your savviest (and snarkiest) commentary and let's get this done. Note: this is the full show, including our first 20 minutes of underrated news stories and final whiffs. The interview with Louis Columbus is also being issued as a separate audio podcast. If you want to see the video replay with slides, check: https://youtube.com/live/-DQBB6mYJ_g.

In this special crossover podcast, I share my hot seat appearance with CRMKonvos - as hosts Thomas Wieberneit and Ralf Korb press me on the lessons we learned - if any - from enterprise AI and 2025. And how do customers prepare for 2026, given my skepticism of the tech predictions industry? Wieberneit and Korb weigh in with their field views as well, along with audience lessons.