The InformationWeek Podcast

How Do Companies Know if They Overspend on AI and Then Recover?

In this early stage of the AI era, it can be easy to think a blank check to develop the technology will deliver success. At what point should the ROI be measured for AI? What happens if a company overspends on AI? Can the project be recovered or should the company cut its losses and move on? This episode of DOS Won’t Hunt featured Manish Goyal, vice president and senior partner for AI and analytics for IBM Consulting; Richard Buractaon, head of AI for Andesite; Carter Busse, CIO for Workato; and Ashok Reddy, CEO and KX.They discussed such matters as whether a barometer exists that companies can compare their AI expenses against and what might be a “reasonable” percentage of budget that can be spent on AI.

Who Should Lead the AI Conversation in the C-Suite?

Before an enterprise can set any strategy in motion for AI, leadership at the top must decide what the plan of action will be. The question is, who should guide the conversation? The CEO, the overall executive leader? A more tech-oriented executive such as the CTO or CIO? How much say should other, operations-driven divisions have?This episode brought together Adam Caplan, president of digital business and AI for Altimetrik; Bradon Rogers, chief customer officer for Island; Max Chan, CIO for Avnet; Ben Waber, PhD, visiting scientist at MIT; and Cliff Jurkiewicz, vice president of global strategy for Phenom.They discussed such questions as how does C-suite leadership tend to regard AI, key considerations when exploring how to leverage new technology, and if managers who are not part of the C-suite should be part of the conversation?

Y2K and Infrastructure Resilience 25 Years Later

In 1999, under the digital gleam of Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix,” IT teams either sat confidently with the changes they made to resolve the Y2K bug or waited with bated breath to see if the fixes held.The arrival of the year 2000 did not bring about the feared digital apocalypse thanks to fixes to make software and hardware to understand what seemed like a simple, yet crucial change to date formats.This episode saw Greg Rivera, vice president of product at CAST; Paul Davis, field CISO at JFrog; and Theresa Lanowitz, chief evangelist at LevelBlue, discuss how computer infrastructure evolved in the 25 years since worries about Y2K launched IT teams into action.

Facing the Specter of Cyber Threats During the Holidays

This episode of DOS Won’t Hunt saw a panel comprised of David Richardson, vice president of endpoint and threat intelligence for Lookout; Kris Lovejoy, senior vice president for security with Kyndryl; Jake King, head of threat and security intelligence with Elastic; Mikhail Ishkhanov, senior director, product strategy and sales enablement with SOTI; Stephanie ”Snow” Carruthers, IBM’s global head of cyber range and chief people hacker with IBM X-Force; and John Paul Cunningham, CISO for Silverfort.They discussed what is at stake during the holidays, security risks that can arise with undertrained seasonal staff, and why it is not a good idea to have someone caught up in holiday festivities tasked with cyber forensic audits. Mind the champagne.

The Cloud You Want vs the Cloud You Need

This episode gathered Marcus Merrell, principal tech Advisor at Sauce Labs; Anuj Kapur, CEO of CloudBees; Bina Khimani, chief product officer and chief revenue officer with Kinesis Network; and Richard Munro, business value lead for the VMware Cloud Foundation Division.They spoke to questions that included whether enterprises are now able to tailor cloud resources to fit their actual operational needs, if cloud costs have become more manageable, how cloud usage has scaled in recent years, and whether or not more organizations are going cloud-first.

What Enterprise IT Predictions Actually Mattered in 2024?

Did any forecasts for 2024 hold water? Are organizations better served by not chasing predictive trends or does that mean giving up a competitive edge?This episode brought together Rocky Cole, co-founder and COO of iVerify; Bogdan Raduta, head of AI with FlowX.AI; Bryan Wood, machine learning solutions engineer at Snorkel AI; Dave Merkel, CEO and co-founder of Expel; Alvaro Oliveira, chief talent officer with Andela; and John Peluso, Chief Technology Officer at AvePoint.

Have We Gone Too Far With AI in Software Development?

This episode saw Matt Bishop, principal architect at Bitwarden; Artem Kroupenev, vice president of strategy at Augury; Matias Madou, Secure Code Warrior’s CTO and co-founder; and Joel Carusone, senior vice president of data and AI at NinjaOne come together. They discussed the use of AI in software development, its benefits and risks, and how developers want AI to be implemented in the cycle.

Beyond Washington, DC: The State of State-Based Data Privacy Laws

This episode, DOS Won’t Hunt brought together Andy Lunsford, a former privacy attorney and current co-founder and CEO of BreachRx; Krysten Jenci, Cisco’s data privacy policy lead; Sean Costigan, managing director of resilience strategy at Red Sift; and Ravi Srinivasan, CEO of Votiro. They discussed such matters as how state-level policies compare with international data privacy laws, whether a national consensus on data privacy law seems to be on the horizon, and whether current data privacy laws stifle how companies operate.

How Will AI Shape the Future of Cloud and Vice Versa?

What role does AI have in the current state of cloud? What types of cloud systems and resources stand to benefit from, or need to adapt to, AI? In this episode, Sundaram Lakshmanan, CTO with Lookout, and Amrit Jassal, co-founder and CTO of Egnyte, share their insights on how this space has shaped in the AI era and the potential road ahead.

Next Steps to Secure Open Banking Beyond Regulatory Compliance

Final rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau further the march towards open banking -- what will it take to keep such data sharing secure? In this episode, Ben Shorten, Accenture’s finance, risk and compliance lead for banking and capital markets in North America; Adam Preis, director of product and solution marketing with Ping Identity; and Fernando Luege, CTO with Fresh Consulting, came together to discuss security hurdles and the way ahead for open banking