Salesforce

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
--&nbsp;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 Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools.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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Spotlight: Automating A Bad Process With AI Is Still A Bad Process

Welcome to IT Visionaries, your #1 source for actionable insights, lessons learned, and exclusive interviews with trailblazing IT leaders.

When you subscribe to IT Visionaries, you’ll get two weekly episodes.

Each is packed with value, stories, and trends - all directly from leaders on the frontlines of technological innovation.

IT Visionaries

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
--&nbsp;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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The End of Handwritten Network Configs?

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
 
--&nbsp;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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Agentic Search Means for Normal Humans

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
--&nbsp;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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Companies Are Already Abandoning LLMs

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
--&nbsp;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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI Is Reshaping Your Entire Stack, Not Just Applications

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
--&nbsp;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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why 5G Isn't About Faster Phones (And What It's Really For)

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 
--&nbsp;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 <a href="meter.com/itv">meter.com/itv</a> 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 <a href="https://mission.org/">mission.org.</a> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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