Spotlight: The Safest First Use of AI in Networking

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 Networks are deterministic, but the problems can be difficult to spot - especially when outdated documentation, configuration drift, and human error pile up over time.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 Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools.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.

AI is forcing enterprises to rethink everything from hardware to governance, and most organizations are attacking it in silos. Mano Bhattacharyya (CTO, Nutanix) breaks down why AI isn't just an application layer problem, but an end-to-end transformation that spans compute (GPUs, ARM, DPUs), data management (unclean enterprise data, knowledge graphs), security (agent gateways, MCP server risks), and economics (token costs vs. usage explosion). He explains why CIOs need cross-functional AI committees, not isolated strategies, and why use case driven AI beats exploratory projects that burn budgets in months. The solution is to form AI committees where CIO, CTO, and CDO work together, not in silos. Focus on use case driven AI by learning from peers, rather than exploratory AI that becomes a budget trap. Start with small prototypes with dedicated use cases, not a free-for-all where every team tries something.   Chapters: 0:00 AI as an End-to-End Infrastructure Challenge 2:16 Networking, Storage, and Bare Metal VM Performance 4:43 Agent Security, Gateways, and Enterprise Governance 6:33 Use Case Driven AI and Learning from Peers -- 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 5G is about faster phones? That's what telecom companies want consumers to believe. The truth is far more interesting. In this episode, Elena Fersman (VP and Head of AI Innovation at Ericsson) reveals what 5G networks are really built for: industries, not consumers. Through network slicing, edge computing, and cognitive systems, 5G creates the infrastructure that makes AI applications possible at scale—from remote surgery where milliseconds matter, to AR/VR without wearing a backpack of GPUs, to factory floors with autonomous heavy machinery. Elena also shares surprising stories: how establishing a simple communication link led to 20% fuel savings for a shipping company, why autonomous networks are safer than human operators (the elevator operator analogy is perfect), and why Ericsson's trustworthy AI research has been running for 15 years. If you're an IT leader trying to understand where networks and AI intersect, or you're struggling with AI deployment and don't know where to start, this conversation cuts through the hype with practical frameworks and real-world examples from someone who's been in the trenches for two decades.   Chapters: 00:00 - The Risk of Not Deploying AI 03:05 - The AI RAN Alliance: AI and Networks as Symbiotic Partners 10:03 - Why 5G Is Built for Industries, Not Consumers 13:54 - How AI Optimizes Networks (Energy, Predictions, Handoffs) 21:06 - Cognitive Networks and Self-Organization 29:02 - Real-World Impact: 20% Fuel Savings for Shipping 30:52 - What Makes AI Projects Scale vs Fail 41:11 - The Critical First Step: Data Management Over Algorithms 57:25 - Confessions of an AI Brain: The Positive Future 1:01:02 - Why Autonomous Systems Are Safer Than Humans -- 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.

Compliance and regulatory reporting used to mean endless spreadsheets, fragmented data sources, and teams drowning in manual work. Today, AI is transforming how the world's largest companies manage financial reporting, sustainability disclosures, and audit workflows—not by replacing humans, but by giving them time back to do strategic work. In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Kim Huffman, CIO of Workiva, the platform used by 85% of the Fortune 100 for critical financial and compliance reporting. Kim shares her unique perspective as both a former Workiva customer and now the CIO steering the company into an AI-powered future. They explore how the office of the CFO is evolving under pressure from new sustainability regulations, how AI governance actually works in practice, and why collaboration between IT, finance, sustainability, and risk teams has become essential. Kim also discusses the changing role of the CIO, the coming wave of autonomous agents in the workplace, and why having more data doesn't always mean making better decisions.   Key Moments: 00:58 – The State of Compliance Today 02:18 – Why Standards and Regulations Matter 05:48 – The Complexity of Global Compliance 07:36 – Data Collection Across Teams 08:36 – Single Source of Truth 10:20 – The Sustainability Data Challenge 13:36 – The Endless Spreadsheet Problem 16:12 – What's Driving the CFO Office 19:46 – AI's Strategic Role at Workiva 23:02 – Beyond Repetitive Tasks 25:20 – Transforming How Teams Work 27:03 – Will AI Replace Jobs or Create Capacity? 30:00 – Measuring AI's Business Impact 33:06 – Speed vs. Data Overload 36:25 – The Evolving Role of the CIO 40:00 – Technology Leadership in Transition 43:09 – The Next Five Years for CIOs 46:14 – Managing the Coming Wave of AI Agents 50:02 – AI Will Create Its Own Security Industry 52:26 – The Sustainability Reporting Reality 55:31 – Resource Constraints and AI Consumption 57:34 – Why ESG Data Is Now Critical Business Intelligence 59:23 – Keeping NPS High While Innovating   -- 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.

Most companies don’t realize it yet, but the way they built their technology foundations is quietly becoming a liability.Cloud costs are rising. Platforms change underneath you. AI is reshaping infrastructure from hardware to data to governance. And the strategies that once felt “safe” are now the ones creating the most risk.In this episode of IT Visionaries, host Chris Brandt sits down with Mano Bhattacharya, CTO of Nutanix, to unpack what’s really happening inside enterprise technology right now. This isn’t a conversation about chasing the newest tools or betting on a single future. It’s about why adaptability has become the most important design principle in modern tech.Mano explains why many organizations are rethinking long-held assumptions about virtualization, cloud, and containers, and why the smartest teams are building infrastructure that gives them options over the next three to five years. They explore how AI changes the entire stack, not just applications, why data has become the real bottleneck, and why moving fast without a coherent plan can be more dangerous than moving slowly. Chapters:00:00 - The VMware Exodus Wave is Coming03:34 - VMware Broadcom Acquisition: What Changed and Why It Matters05:56 - Three Migration Paths: Stay, Move to Cloud, or Modernize09:59 - Why Containers on VMs Make Sense for Most Enterprises15:40 - The Five Stages of VMware Migration Grief21:20 - VMware Admin to Nutanix Admin: Closing the Skills Gap24:14 - The Cloud-in-a-Box Philosophy: From Boxes to Software32:30 - Opening Up the Platform: Pure Storage and Third-Party Integrations40:54 - AI Infrastructure: The End-to-End Challenge48:01 - Enterprise AI Strategy: Use Cases, Economics, and Governance56:44 - What's Next: Building the Invisible Platform for 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.