CIO Classified

Andy Boettcher has spent 33 years in tech, 13 of them in the Salesforce ecosystem, and his advice to CIOs can sound like heresy: stop waiting for perfect data. He compares the classic MDM project to an eclipse. You watch it coming for months, and then it’s gone. Today's transformation happens in weeks, and the competition is moving at that pace too, so a year spent planning is a year spent losing.In this episode, Andy explains how DoubleTrack maps every organization’s systems into eight core data domains before any technology enters the picture, and why “good enough” has to rest on fact rather than gut. He makes the case for managing AI like a new hire who needs ongoing oversight, calls out human-in-the-loop programs that amount to someone skimming logs, and gives a candid read on where Salesforce’s governance model has made Agentforce harder.Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes.3 Takeaways:Andy starts every engagement by reducing a company’s systems to eight data domains and mapping how that data feeds and consumes itself, then treats technology as the activator.“Good enough” data has to be grounded in fact rather than gut, and it gets re-earned every week as new tools arrive.Generative AI is built never to answer the same question the same way twice, so it needs oversight like a new employee, and human in the loop has to mean more than someone glancing at logs.Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(01:19) What DoubleTrack Does(02:42) Data-First Clarity(04:24) The Real Cost of Bad Data(06:07) What "Good Enough" Looks Like in Practice(09:18) Why AI Still Needs Guardrails(11:06) Salesforce Agents & Governance(13:54) Security & Identity Risks(16:52) The Founder Journey & How Innovation Really Happens(21:25) Lightning Round(22:29) Final Advice for CIOsAbout Andy: A data futurist and tech entrepreneur at heart, Andy Boettcher has spent three decades bridging engineering grit and business agility. From bootstrapping 7-figure IT startups and becoming a Salesforce Hall of Famer to advising Fortune 500s on AI strategy, his superpower is simplifying the complex. Sometimes this means architecting enterprise data systems, and sometimes it means explaining them to CEOs over bourbon. He’s great with both. Today, as Chief Innovation Officer of DoubleTrack, he leverages all he’s learned throughout his dynamic career to help organizations unlock hidden value in their data ecosystems, turning sprawl into strategy. Off the clock, he’s a proud dad, grandpa, and Jeep enthusiast (ask him about river-swapped engines), and living proof that the best career paths are built by following curiosity, not roadmaps.Guest Highlights:“It’s okay to be good enough. Because next week you’ll be good enough again, and the week after that you’ll be good enough, but you’ll have new tools.”“You would never hire an employee and just set them at their desk and never talk to them again and assume that they’re gonna do the same thing over and over.”“They have tools to help the crazy chaotic human brain express ideas that got muted for years, or died in committee.”Get Connected:Yousuf Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Andy Boettcher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyboettcher/ Learn more about DoubleTrack: https://www.doubletrack.com/ Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dilip Venkatachari came to banking from Google and PayPal, where moving fast was the default and scaling meant adding servers. As SEVP and Chief Information and Technology Officer at U.S. Bank, he now runs technology for an institution built on decades-old core systems where the data is people's money, and his team is moving agentic AI out of the experimentation phase and into how the bank actually operates.Dilip explains why he held off on productivity metrics during the bank's AI rollout and let teams run their own experiments first, why the real work of scaling AI turned out to be data, identity, security, and observability rather than model selection, and how he modernizes legacy systems by hollowing out the core in business-driven chunks instead of attempting a risky rip-and-replace. He also makes the case that banking's heavily codified procedures, from KYC to disputes, are unusually well suited to agents. Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes.3 Takeaways:Why Dilip's team launched "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" and deliberately skipped productivity metrics early, to avoid rewarding behaviors nobody understood yet.How U.S. Bank treats data, identity, integration, and observability as the real bottleneck to scaling AI, with the goal of making each new use case cheaper than the last.Why Dilip argues banking's codified procedures, from customer onboarding and fraud checks to dispute management, give agentic AI clear control points and a clear definition of what good looks like.Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(02:09) Dilip's Career Path(03:34) Tech Scale vs. Bank Scale(05:39) Innovation With Control(08:24) What CIOs Actually Prioritize(10:44) Scaling AI Use Cases(11:42) Agentic AI in Banking(14:13) Managing the Human Side of AI Adoption(16:10) Evangelize, Then Experiment(17:58) AI Plumbing & Security(18:43) Cybersecurity Group Therapy(22:59) Modernizing Legacy Systems(27:47) Leadership Lessons at ScaleAbout Dilip: Dilip Venkatachari is Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Technology Officer at U.S. Bank, where he is responsible for global technology infrastructure, security, products and services, and digital and technology transformation. He also serves on the board of U.S. Bank Europe. Dilip joined U.S. Bancorp in 2018 and joined the company's executive leadership team in 2023. In 2026, he was named one of American Banker's Most Innovative People in Finance for his work developing agentic AI and digital-asset infrastructure across the bank.Before U.S. Bank, Dilip held senior executive roles at Google and PayPal/eBay, and spent time at McKinsey & Company helping large U.S. and international banks accelerate their digital transformations. He also co-founded and led three startups — Compass Labs, CashEdge, and CommerceSoft. Dilip holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and master's and bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering from Rice University and the Indian Institute of Technology, respectively. He holds more than a dozen U.S. patents.Guest Highlights:"The hardest part here isn't proving that it works. The hardest part is how do you scale it? How do you industrialize it?""If we put productivity metrics, speed metrics right now, there's a risk we are creating incentives for behaviors which we don't quite understand.""AI for us is not just another technology program. It's a new way of building and running the bank."Get Connected:Yousuf Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Dilip Venkatachari: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilipvenkatachari/ Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ashwin Ballal trained as a materials scientist, then worked his way through marketing, product, and engineering roles at KLA-Tencor before the CEO asked him to run IT. Three CIO jobs later, now at Freshworks, he's become the company's single most important customer, shaping its product roadmap from inside the org he runs.In this conversation, Ashwin explains why AI-generated code needs more human verification, not less, why counting token usage tells you nothing about whether AI is actually working, and how Freshworks tore apart a "Frankenstack" of roughly 400 disconnected systems by refusing to customize its own workflows. He also gets candid about what worries him most heading into the next phase of enterprise AI: agents running with privileged access and few real guardrails. Listen in for an unfiltered read on where AI is actually delivering, and where it's just noise.Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes.3 Takeaways:Ashwin argues AI-generated code needs more engineers, not fewer, because someone still has to verify what the model produces before it reaches production.He says most companies are tracking the wrong AI metric, counting token usage instead of asking what revenue or savings actually resulted.Freshworks cut a "Frankenstack" of roughly 400 disconnected systems down by implementing tools out of the box instead of customizing them.Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(03:16) Early Life & What Drives Ashwin(05:06) From PhD to CIO(07:51) Career Lessons & Leadership Style(10:56) Why Freshworks, Why Now(13:57) The CIO as Product Customer(17:05) AI Adoption & Rethinking Workflows(22:24) Killing the Frankenstack(25:30) Agent Risk & Guardrails(27:20) Lightning RoundAbout Ashwin: Ashwin Ballal joined Freshworks in May 2024 as Chief Information Officer. His significant leadership experience of over 30 years in technology and business strategy will now be channeled to spearhead all facets of IT infrastructure, systems, and operations within Freshworks. Prior to this new responsibility, Ballal served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Medallia. He successfully led and revamped the IT and security, workplace services, corporate procurement, and travel divisions during his tenure there. His preceding role was as the Chief Information, Intelligence, and Data Officer of KLA Corp.Guest Highlights:"Oh, 90% of my code is written by AI. How do you know if it's right? Who verified it, right?""Let's count token usage. I mean, that's not a behavior you want. What outcomes change?""If you thought the SaaS crawl was the Wild Wild West, Yousuf, you ain't seen anything yet."Get Connected:Yousuf Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Ashwin Ballal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashwin-ballal-9a89961/ Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trevor Schulze has spent over a decade running AI transformations, going back to early work in visual computing and machine learning in the semiconductor industry. So when he says AI broke his old operating rhythm as CIO, it's not a hot take — it's a confession. A year into using GPT-era tools, he realized his old pace of decision-making, and his old definition of what a change agent does, no longer applied. If he's overwhelmed, he says, he can't imagine how the rest of the C-suite is holding up.In this conversation, Trevor lays out why he now treats his CHRO and general counsel as closer partners than ever, breaks down the 20/60/20 split he sees in how employees are actually adopting agentic tools, and explains "Genesys on Genesys" — his push to apply the same customer-experience thinking his platform gives to customers to Genesys's own employees. Listen for a clear-eyed look at what it actually takes to lead IT through this moment, not just talk about it.Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes.3 Takeaways:Why Trevor believes every CIO has to reallocate their own time and speed of working now that AI's pace has outstripped the old CIO playbook.Trevor's read on adoption inside his own company: roughly 20% of employees are already all in on agentic tools, 60% just need examples, and 20% won't touch it at all.Why Trevor started applying Genesys's own customer experience platform to the employee experience, once he realized employees deserve the same proactive attention as customers.Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(02:47) Genesys Cloud Explained(04:38) The CIO as AI Leader(05:56) AI Is a Team Sport(08:35) Why CIOs Need to Partner With CHROs(10:16) Transforming How IT Delivers(12:04) Keeping Up With the AI Pace(16:15) The Future of Customer Experience(18:00) Genesys Running on Genesys(19:51) Data, Scale & Privacy(21:14) Career Advice for CIOs(25:42) Lightning RoundAbout Trevor: Trevor Schulze is the Chief Information Officer at Genesys, where he leads the global information technology organization and is responsible for driving the company’s AI and cloud strategy to support innovation and growth.Trevor brings more than 30 years of experience in enterprise technology and digital transformation. Prior to joining Genesys in 2025, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Alteryx, where he led enterprise AI initiatives and digital modernization. He has also held CIO and senior IT leadership roles at RingCentral, Micron Technology, Broadcom, AMD, and Cisco Systems, with a focus on aligning technology with business outcomes.Guest Highlights:"I have to rethink my role as a CIO. I no longer can continue to function as a change agent in a company with my old behaviors or my old speed of working.""AI is a team sport.""What if attention is free? What if attention to your customer no longer is a cost structure you need to worry about?"Get Connected:Yousuf Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Trevor Schulze: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tschulze/ Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Parul Saini has spent enough time in serious IT leadership roles (Splunk, Zuora, Uber) to know the difference between organizations that are genuinely building AI capability and those that are performing it. Her read?  The governance assumptions that barely held together in the SaaS era are already being outpaced by agent deployments. The executives making AI strategy calls often haven't built anything themselves. And the boards mandating AI fluency are not getting results.This episode is a direct conversation about what it actually takes to close that gap — from why Parul believes every executive needs to personally build, break, and debug an agent before making another strategic call, to what responsible AI adoption looks like when the security tooling hasn't caught up with the technology. Listen or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ciopod.com for more episodes.3 Takeaways:Every executive needs to personally build an agent, watch it fail, and understand whyThe same governance gaps that took years to close in the SaaS era are already compounding in AI agent deploymentsThe most important thing Parul would do immediately in a new CIO role: rebuild how people experience work, starting with what she calls personalized productivityChapters:[00:00] Introduction[01:53] Career Journey & Uber Lessons[04:20] Scaling Trust & Partnerships[07:20] Founding AI AllyWorks[11:07] Managing AI Budgets[16:09] Operationalizing Agents & COE[21:13] The New CIO Playbook[23:43] Agent Security & Governance[25:30] Board Fluency & LeadershipAbout Parul: Parul Saini is the Founder of AI Ally Works, where she serves as a fractional AI and technology advisor for small and mid-size businesses navigating the shift to AI-driven operations. She brings deep enterprise experience from leadership roles at Uber, Splunk, and Zuora, where she built IT organizations that moved from reactive support functions to proactive business partners. At Uber, she led technology operations across a 30,000-person global company and drove early AI adoption starting in 2023. After stepping away from full-time executive life to prioritize her health, she recognized that the small businesses forming the backbone of the U.S. economy had no one with real CIO-level expertise in their corner on AI — and built AI Ally Works to change that.Guest Highlights:"I always thought my job was to take that cognitive overload that stakeholders have with regards to technology and take that on myself, so they can focus on their primary jobs and be a hundred percent successful.""The things that will prevent catastrophe are not moving as fast as the technology enabling these agents. Even now when I talk to my peers, I don't think the answer is clear.""Unless the agent you've built breaks and you have no idea what broke it—unless you understand what your teams are working with—you won't be able to make the right decisions or the right strategic moves. It's absolutely critical for us to have that hands-on experience right now."Get Connected:Yousuf Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/Parul Saini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parul-saini-it-management-leadership/Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fred Laluyaux has spent 25 years on the same problem: enterprises are drowning in decisions no human should be making. With 50 million digitized decisions across companies like Unilever, Exxon, and Hershey, he now has the data to prove it. When operators override the machine, performance goes down. Not sometimes — in aggregate, every time.In this episode, Fred breaks down the agentic vs. deterministic tradeoff most CIOs are getting wrong, why the software stack most companies rely on today is heading for collapse, and what a company whose entire stack is just SAP and Aera tells you about where enterprise software is going. Hit play.3 Takeaways:After 50 million digitized decisions, the data is clear: when operators override the machine, performance drops.One Aera customer runs their entire operation on SAP and Aera. Nothing in between. That's where the stack is going.Fred calls them "born in digital" decisions — they can't be made by humans because the value is gone before the meeting starts.Chapters:[00:00] Introduction[03:08] Fred’s Career Journey and Lessons Learned[05:17] Why Aera Was Created[05:45] The Vision for a Self-Driving Enterprise[08:28] The Decision Memory Problem in AI[10:28] The Reality of AI ROI[11:58] From Analytics to Decision Intelligence[12:56] Humans vs Fully Autonomous Systems[15:28] What It Means to Digitize Decisions[18:42] How Aera Actually Works[22:42] Trust, Governance, and the Waymo Analogy[27:51] Deterministic vs Agentic AI[29:13] The Cloud Capacity Wake-Up Call[30:15] Where Aera Fits in the Enterprise Stack[31:54] Fast ROI and the “4-4-4” Framework[32:55] Why the Software Stack Is Collapsing[36:21] Delayering Organizations and New AI Roles[39:02] Born-Digital Companies and Micro-Decisions[43:57] Explainability, Governance, and Feedback LoopsAbout Fred: Fred Laluyaux is Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Aera Technology, the leader in decision intelligence and creator of Aera, the first decision intelligence agent. An entrepreneur and Silicon Valley veteran, Fred brings an impressive track record building successful startups and driving technology innovation. Prior to launching Aera, Fred was the CEO of Anaplan, which he grew to a $1 billion valuation. He has held several executive positions at SAP, Business Objects, and ALG Software. As a thought leader on the future of work and host of the Decision Intelligence podcast, Fred frequently shares his vision with influencers through media interviews and speaking engagements at industry conferences. His views have been published in business and trade publications. A technology and startup advisor, Fred is an investor and active board member of several startups in the U.S. and Europe.Guest Highlights:"We're in 2026, and the reality is that our models have not changed for 100 years. We're still relying on people to decide how to forecast, how to allocate inventory, how to change a plan.""We've got enough data, I mentioned the 50 million decisions, to demonstrate that whenever the humans are touching the system and are messing with the recommendation, they actually degrade the performance.""The autonomy is not another version or better version of my planning tool or my replenishment tool. It replaces the need to have a human touch with that software, and therefore I don't need that software anymore."Get Connected:Ian Faison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaisonFred Laluyaux: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flaluyaux/Our Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Aera Technology.Enterprise AI has hit its stride. Across industries, companies are moving beyond pilots and proofs of concept, and into real, enterprise-wide results: better decisions, faster execution, and meaningful bottom-line impact. Aera's agentic decision intelligence is built to help you seize the opportunity.Aera dynamically composes decision flows using unified decision data and multi-engine orchestration to drive action at scale. It continuously senses what's happening across your enterprise, recommends and executes the best course of action within your transaction systems, and learns from every outcome to keep improving.Leading global companies are already using Aera across supply chain, inventory, logistics, and finance, delivering rapid ROI through reduced costs, lower working capital, and better customer outcomes.This is the self-driving enterprise. And it's here now.Visit AeraTechnology.com to book a demo Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nik Seetharaman has watched the offensive side of cybersecurity adopt AI tools at a pace defenders can't match. So, he built a company to close that gap. Before founding Wraithwatch, he was the first CIO of Anduril, a defense tech company he joined when it was 100 people and helped scale through hypergrowth. His path (Palantir to SpaceX to building AI-native cyber defense platforms for over a dozen federal agencies) gives him a view most CIOs and CISOs don't have.In this episode, Nik makes the case that AI has created a forcing function for CIOs and CISOs to finally work together, plus, shares how to run a pilot that actually moves the needle, why blocking AI tools backfires, and what the OpenClaw security drama gets right and wrong.3 Takeaways:The CIO-CISO turf war is now a competitive disadvantage. Whoever figures out AI collaboration first wins.Treat every internal AI rollout like a startup: small cohort, parallel security review, measure the outcome in revenue.The best investment a new CIO can make isn't a security stack—it's coffee with people.Chapters:[00:00] Introduction[01:46] What Wraithwatch Builds[05:25] AI Forces CIO / CISO Alignment[07:55] OpenClaw Security Tradeoffs[09:21] SecOps at Developer Speed[12:49] Rolling Out Risky Tools[14:44] Why Leaders Must Use AI[19:01] How to Reorg for the AI Era[22:30] Vendor Hunting for Grand Slams[25:49] $30M Contract and What's NextAbout Nik: Nik Seetharaman is the Founder and CEO of Wraithwatch, a next-generation cyber defense company building AI-native command-and-control platforms for the United States and its allies. He co-founded the company alongside fellow SpaceX alumni Grace Clemente and Carlos Moss. Before starting Wraithwatch, Nik served as the first CIO of Anduril, a defense technology company he joined when it was approximately 100 people, where he built the cybersecurity function from the ground up and saw the company through hypergrowth. His career spans cybersecurity leadership roles at Palantir, SpaceX, and Andel, giving him a rare vantage point across the offense-defense asymmetry that defines today's threat landscape. Guest Highlights:"You can't have the attackers operating at the speed of a machine out here, and the defenders operating at the speed of a human in here.""Any business that's able to figure out this equation and execute it successfully is going to just crush their competition—because they're gonna move at warp speed and their competition will still be moving at human speed.""If I could rewind my first days at Andel, it's not to deploy more controls, it's not to learn about some new security stack or software—I would've just had more coffee with people. The human capital you build doing that pays off in spades. Because that's the thing that's rare in an age where the machines are taking over."Get Connected:Ian Faison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison Nik Seetharaman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikseetharaman/ Resources:OpenClaw: https://openclaw.aiLangChain: https://www.langchain.comCursor: https://cursor.comOur Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When Ellora Sengupta joined EverCommerce as CIO, she inherited the IT of over 50 acquisitions — multiple operating models, fragmented tech stacks, and business units that had zero reason to trust a central IT function. Most CIOs would have reached for a consolidation roadmap. Ellora reached for something better: earning the right to be plugged into, instead of just mandating it. In this episode, Ellora shares how she's drawn the line between what actually needs to be standardized and what should be left alone so acquired businesses keep their edge. Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(01:00) What EverCommerce Does & Why 50+ Acquisitions Is Unusual(03:00) The CIO's Real Job: Standardize Some Things, Protect Others(04:30) Multi-Acquisition IT vs. Organic Growth(05:00) Building Trust With Business Units That Didn't Ask for IT(07:30) High-Growth SaaS DNA: Speed, Discipline & AI(09:30) Why AI Doesn't Get Its Own Budget(11:00) Starting Over as an Immigrant With Zero Network(15:30) How Her Leadership Philosophy Evolved(17:30) Giving Back: The SVASE CIO Educational Fund(21:00) The Skills That Actually Matter for Future IT Leaders(22:00) Lightning RoundAbout Ellora: Ellora Sengupta is the CIO of EverCommerce, where she oversees enterprise applications, data and analytics, security, corporate IT, infrastructure, and enterprise PMO across a portfolio built through 50+ acquisitions. She brings a "General Manager" mindset to IT leadership, having scaled technology functions at high-growth pre-IPO companies and $50B+ enterprises alike — including stints at Procore, Samsara, Cisco, and Workday. Ellora was named Bay Area CIO of the Year in the 2022 ORBIE Awards (Large Corporate category). She currently serves as president of the SVASE CIO Educational Fund, raising scholarships and providing mentorship for underprivileged students pursuing careers in technology.Guest Highlights:"My success is not how fast can I standardize or make things consistent. My success is — are those vertical businesses ready to plug into the shared services that my team is creating because it makes them better.""Your team is not your family. In a family, it's unconditional. But in a team you need everybody to perform. It doesn't help anyone if you are carrying along a non-performer — the rest of the team has to carry that slack.""I don't have a separate budget for AI. I have a budget and I need to make sure that my tools are AI enabled."Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Two words that make most engineers shudder: code refactoring. Now raise the stakes — refactoring decades of legacy systems inside a large enterprise.A tech debt-heavy project of this scale needs a leader who has driven complex digital transformations, like Gayatri Narayan (formerly PepsiCo, Microsoft, Amazon). Now, as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, Gayatri Narayan is achieving a 3–4x increase in engineering velocity since joining less than a year ago. Gayatri joins host Yousuf Khan to unpack the strategy behind those results, including how to deploy AI across the SDLC, how to rigorously evaluate ROI on AI investments, and how to lead change across complex enterprise tech stacks.Visit ciopod.com for more episodes. Check out our new YouTube channel and subscribe to never miss an episode.Key Moments:00:00 – Introduction01:30 – Why Construction Technology Is Ready for Transformation04:05 – AI Strategy: Elevating UX and Customer Experience08:20 – Evaluating AI Investments: ROI, NPV, and Operating Costs12:45 – Achieving 3–4x Engineering Velocity16:05 – Humans in the Loop: Craft, Code Review, and AI Amplification18:35 – Where the Industry Gets AI Adoption Wrong20:30 – Leadership Advice: Start with the CustomerAbout Gayatri: Gayatri Narayan is a general management executive with more than 15 years of experience leading product, engineering, data science, and operations across global enterprises, with full P&L responsibility and a track record of driving profitable growth through digital transformation. She currently serves as President of Technology at Builders FirstSource, where she leads enterprise technology strategy, modernizes legacy systems, and embeds AI into the software development lifecycle to accelerate innovation across the residential construction value chain. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of Digital Products and Services at PepsiCo and held multiple general management roles at Microsoft, including leading Product and Engineering for Intelligent Communications across Teams and Skype as well as Enterprise PaaS and SaaS businesses; she also held leadership roles at Amazon spanning Marketplace Transportation and Logistics and several major retail categories.Guest Highlights:“We’ve seen a three to four times increase in engineering velocity — especially in refactoring legacy systems where historically there was very little knowledge of how the system actually worked.”“With generative AI, companies that have existed for 20 or 30 years don’t have to get bogged down by legacy stacks. They can embrace emerging technologies without spending 18 to 24 months just refactoring.”“It really comes down to efficiency of time. The developer’s surface area of impact expands dramatically — it’s not just about writing code anymore, it’s about delivering business value faster.”Our Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases. While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency. With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days. It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of CIO Classified, host Yousuf Khan sits down with Ravi Thadani, Global Head of IT at Enphase Energy, a company powering over 5 million homes across 160 countries with clean, solar-driven energy. With 85 million microinverters producing 30 gigawatts of power, Ravi’s team is at the epicenter of a massive, real-time data operation—and every IT decision directly impacts the customer experience.About Ravi: Ravi Thadani is a seasoned IT executive with extensive experience leading large-scale digital transformations across Fortune 500 companies. He has driven strategic initiatives across ERP, CRM, PLM, HCM, SCM, analytics, AI/ML, network architecture, cloud infrastructure, and M&A integration. With oversight of multi-$10M budgets and teams of over 300, Ravi has supported business units ranging from $2B to $70B in revenue.Known for his strategic vision and execution, Ravi is recognized for fostering cross-functional alignment, driving agile transformation, and cultivating high-performing teams. His leadership approach is grounded in strong business partnerships, stakeholder governance, innovation, and a relentless focus on outcomes.Chapters:00:00 – Introduction01:50 – Enphase Energy's Global Operations03:40 – Ravi's Role and Responsibilities06:00 – Managing Customer Data and CRM16:45 – Driving Change as a CIO19:50 – The Role of Data in AI20:55 – The Importance of Data Cleaning21:20 – Effective Data Governance Strategies23:45 – Architecting for Scalability27:30 – Challenges in Hardware and Software IntegrationGuest Highlights:"AI isn’t replacing you—people using AI are. The adoption curve is about enabling people to do more, not just reducing headcount.""The biggest failure point in IT projects? Treating them like IT projects. Every transformation has to be owned by the business.""Your architecture should always assume 10x growth. Even if you’re not scaling today, you need a conscious plan for when you do."Get Connected:Yousuf Khan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yousufakhan/ Ravi Thadani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravithadani/ Hungry for more tech talk? Check out latest episodes at ciopod.com: Learn more about Caspian Studios: caspianstudios.comOur Sponsor: Want to accelerate software development by 500%? Meet Blitzy, the only autonomous code generation platform with infinite code context, purpose-built for large, complex enterprise-scale codebases.While other AI coding tools provide snippets of code and struggle with context, Blitzy ingests millions of lines of code and orchestrates thousands of agents that reason for hours to map every line-level dependency.With a complete contextual understanding of your codebase, Blitzy is ready to be deployed at the beginning of every sprint. Blitzy handles the heavy lifting, delivering over 80% of the work autonomously. The platform plans, builds, and validates premium-quality code at the speed of compute, turning months of engineering into a matter of days.It’s the secret weapon for Fortune 500 companies globally. To hear how engineering leaders are transforming the way they deliver software, visit blitzy.com. Schedule a meeting with their consultants to enable an AI-Native SDLC in your organization today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.