Artificial Intelligence has risen from a plain technical challenge to become the leading geopolitical issue in 2025. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, recorded in advance of AI Field Day, features Dr. Bob Sutor, Mitch Ashley, and Jim Czuprynski discussing the balkanization of AI globally. We have previously talked about data sovereignty, but AI is a technology seen to have international importance. From raw materials to chipmaking to systems design to model training, every nation wants to control AI. The United States recently introduced the AI Diffusion Framework to control not just access to chips but also sovereignty of the AI models themselves. We are really just starting to develop AI systems with large language models and yet companies and researchers are already recognizing that we need to move beyond words to spatial, temporal, and true understanding of the world. We are on the cusp of the next space race as regions and nations compete to be the center of the AI universe.
Private Clouds are Coming Back
The public cloud is real; are private clouds real? Will we see more private clouds in 2025? Private cloud technology is far from the early days when on-premises virtualization was cloud-washed. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Jon Myer, Allyson Klein, and Justin Warren join Alastair Cooke to examine why businesses deploy private clouds. The cloud operating model makes the private cloud more relevant in 2025 than ever.
IoT Is Going to Make Things More Difficult
IoT devices are growing by the thousands every day. Networks are gaining millions of devices every year and the total number is expected to top 31 billion by the end of 2025. Each of these devices are going to create complexity issues for networking administrators and engineers the world over. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by networking legends Peter Welcher and Denise Donohue as they discuss the challenges that IoT is imposing on us all. This discuss the skills gap as well as security concerns as well as how to stay ahead of the deployment process.
Wi-Fi Marketing Numbers are Lies
All marketing is aspirational. Quoted throughput and user counts are hopeful at best. All IT professionals know this. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Kerry Kulp, Scott McDermott, and Mark Houtz as they discuss the inflated claims of marketing teams and how they factor into buying decisions. They also discuss how Wi-Fi compares to other technologies and why the enterprise experience is vastly different from the consumer perspective. Lastly, they provide some ideas for keeping a grasp on reality when it comes to working with Wi-Fi numbers.
Technology Silos Are a Thing of the Past
Enterprise IT has long been divided into silos. This is because of scarce resources and specialized knowledge required to perform some IT operations tasks. The world of today is much more focused on outcomes and the need for silos is waning. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Stephen Foskett, Alastair Cooke, and Tom Hollingsworth discuss how enterprise IT has moved away from silos due to increased resource availability and cross training. They also look ahead to new challenges from advances like AI and quantum computing.
Company Acquisitions are a Necessary Evil in Enterprise Tech
The IT industry’s reliance on acquisitions is a necessary driver of innovation, though they often seem to get in the way of competition and progress. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, recorded during Cloud Field Day 21, features Ray Lucchesi, Jon Hildebrand, Ken Nalbone, and Stephen Foskett considering whether acquisitions in the IT industry are a necessary evil or a detriment to innovation. Acquisitions are often seen as a double-edged sword, with both positive and negative implications. On one hand, acquisitions can fuel innovation by providing smaller companies with the resources and market access they need to scale their ideas. On the other hand, they can stifle competition, lead to cultural clashes, and sometimes result in the disappearance of promising technologies or products.
There’s a Gulf Between Storage and AI
There is a significant gap between storage companies and their ability to effectively support AI infrastructure. In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, recorded during the AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 in Santa Clara, host Stephen Foskett and guests Kurtis Kemple, Brian Booden, and Rohan Puri explore the evolving relationship between storage and AI. The discussion highlights a significant gap between storage companies’ current capabilities and the demands of AI applications. While storage vendors are pivoting to support AI, many lack deep AI expertise, often focusing on cost and efficiency rather than offering integrated, AI-specific solutions. The panel emphasizes the need for storage companies to move beyond being mere data repositories and instead develop end-to-end solutions that address AI workflows, data preparation, and metadata management. They also stress the importance of education, partnerships, and hiring AI specialists to bridge the knowledge gap and drive innovation. The conversation underscores the early stage of this convergence, with a call for clearer strategies, open standards, and more cohesive integration between storage and AI to meet the growing demands of data-driven applications.
Snowflake Networks are Built to Break
Network engineers are notorious for doing whatever it takes to keep their customers and users happy. No reference architecture is safe from modification. However, these unique designs, commonly referred to as “snowflakes”, create challenges when unforeseen consequences occur. In this episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Dakota Snow, Steve Puluka, and Bob McCouch as they discuss the challenges behind snowflake design and operations. They talk about the best way to build better systems and prevent the challenges caused by uniqueness.
WiFi isn’t Always the Best Solution
Wi-Fi is the most dominant client connectivity option on the market today. The growth of ubiquitous computing has only happened because of the mass deployment of Wi-Fi. However, Wi-Fi isn’t the only wireless solution and isn’t always the best way to connect devices. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Lee Badman, Troy Martin, and Ron Westfall as they discuss what other options exist and what workflows they can improve.
AI Doesn’t Make App Dev Any Better
Generative AI is transforming many industries where people create content. Software development is no different; AI agents are in almost every development platform. But is AI improving application development and software quality? This episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast looks at some of the issues revolving around AI and App Dev with Alastair Cooke, Guy Currier, Jack Poller, and Stephen Foskett. The ultimate objective of a software development team is to deliver an application that fulfills a business need and helps the organization be more successful. An AI that can recommend basic code snippets doesn’t move that needle far. More sophistication is needed to get value from AI in the development process. The objective should be to have AI handle the repetitive tasks and allow humans to focus on innovative tasks where generative AI is less capable. AI agents must handle building tests and reviewing code for security and correctness to enable developers to concentrate on building better applications that help organizations.
AI is the Enabler of Network Innovation
Artificial Intelligence is creating the kind of paradigm shifts not seen since the cloud revolution. Everyone is changing the way their IT infrastructure operates in order to make AI work better. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by John Freeman, Scott Robohn, and Ron Westfall as they discuss how AI is driving innovation in the networking market. They talk about how the toolsets are changing to incorporate AI features as well as how the need to push massive amounts of data into LLMs and generative AI constructs is creating opportunities for companies to show innovation. They also talk about how Ethernet is becoming ascendant in the AI market.
Edge Computing is a Melting Pot of Technology
Edge computing is one of the areas where we see startup vendors offering innovative solutions, enabling applications to operate where the business operates rather than where the IT team sit. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast focuses on the melting pot of edge computing and features Guy Currier, John Osmon, Ivan McPhee, and host Alastair Cooke, all of whom attended the recent Edge Field Day in September. To accommodate the unique nature of the diverse and unusual locations where businesses operate, many different technologies are brought together to form the melting pot of edge computing. Containers and AI applications are coming from the massive public cloud data centres to a range of embedded computers on factory floors, industrial sites, and farm equipment. ARM CPUs, sensors, and low-power hardware accelerators are coming from mobile phones to power applications in new locations. Enterprise organizations must still control and manage data and applications across these locations and platforms. Security must be built into the edge from the beginning; edge computing often happens in an unsecured location and often with no human oversight. This melting pot of technology and innovation makes edge computing an innovative part of IT.
There are Too Many Clouds
Public Cloud computing is a large part of enterprise IT alongside on-premises computing. Many organizations that had a cloud-first approach and are now gaining value from on-premises private clouds and seeing their changing business needs leading to changing cloud use. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast delves into the complexity of multiple cloud providers and features Maciej Lelusz, Jack Poller, Justin Warren, and host Alastair Cooke, all attendees at Cloud Field Day. The awareness of changing business needs is causing some re-thinking of how businesses use cloud platforms, possibly moving away from using cloud vendor specific services to bare VMs. VMs are far simpler to move from one cloud to another, or between public cloud and private cloud platforms. Over time, the market will speak and if there are too many cloud providers, we will see mergers, acquisitions or failures of smaller specialized cloud providers. In the meantime, choosing where to put which application for the best outcome can be a challenge for businesses.
You Don’t Need Post-Quantum Crypto Yet
With the advent of quantum computers, the likelihood that modern encryption is going to be invalidated is a possibility. New standards from NIST have arrived that have ushered in the post-quantum era. You don’t need to implement them yet but you need to be familiar with them. Tom Hollingsworth is joined by JJ MInella, Drew-Conry Murray, and Alastair Cooke in this episode to discuss why post-quantum algorithms are needed, why you should be readying your enterprise to use them, and how best to plan your implementation strategy.
Network Automation Is More Than Just Tooling
The modern enterprise network automation strategy is failing. This is due in part to a collection of tools masquerading as an automation solution. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Scott Robohn, Bruno Wollmann, and special guest Mike Bushong of Nokia to discuss the current state of automation in the data center. They discuss how tools are often improperly incorporated as well as why organizations shouldn’t rely on just a single person or team to affect change. They also explore ideas around Nokia Event-Driven Automation (EDA), a new operations platform dedicated to solving these issues.
Data Infrastructure Is A Lot More Than Storage
The rise of AI and the importance of data to modern businesses has driven us too recognize that data matters, not storage. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast focuses on AI data infrastructure and features Camberley Bates, Andy Banta, David Klee, and host Stephen Foskett, all of whom will be attending our AI Data Infrastructure Field Day this week. We’ve known for decades that storage solutions must provide the right access method for applications, not just performance, capacity, and reliability. Today’s enterprise storage solutions have specialized data services and interfaces to enable AI workloads, even as capacity has been driven beyond what we’ve seen in the past. Power and cooling is another critical element, since AI systems are optimized to make the most of expensive GPUs and accelerators. AI also requires extensive preparation and organization of data as well as traceability and records of metadata for compliance and reproducibility. Another question is interfaces, with modern storage turning to object stores or even vector database interfaces rather than traditional block and file. AI is driving a profound transformation of storage and data.
AI and Cloud Demand a New Approach to Cyber Resilience featuring Commvault
As companies are exposed to more and more attackers, they’re realizing that cyber resilience is increasingly important. On this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, presented by Commvault, Senior Director of Product and Ecosystem Strategy Michael Stempf joins Justin Warren, Karen Lopez, and Stephen Foskett to discuss the growing challenges companies face in today’s cybersecurity landscape. As more organizations transition to a cloud-first operation, they’re recognizing the heightened exposure of their data protection strategies to global compliance mandates like DORA and SCI. Adding to this complexity is the emerging threat of AI, raising important questions about how businesses can adapt and maintain resilience in the face of these evolving risks.
Hardware Still Matters at the Edge
Hardware innovation at the edge is driven by diverse and challenging environments found outside traditional data centers. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast features Jack Poller, Stephen Foskett, and Alastair Cooke considering the special requirements of hardware in edge computing prior to Edge Field Day this week. Edge locations, including energy, military, retail, and more, demand robust, tamper-resistant hardware that can endure harsh conditions like extreme temperatures and vibrations. This shift is fostering new hardware designs, drawing inspiration from industries like mobile technology, to support real-time data processing and AI applications. As edge computing grows, the interplay between durable hardware and adaptive software, including containerized platforms, will be crucial for maximizing efficiency and unlocking new capabilities in these dynamic environments.
AI Solves All Our Problems
Although AI can be quite useful, it seems that the promise of generative AI has lead to irrational exuberance on the topic. This episode of the Tech Field Day podcast, recorded ahead of AI Field Day, features Justin Warren, Alastair Cooke, Frederic van Haren, and Stephen Foskett considering the promises made about AI. Generative AI was so impressive that it escaped from the lab, being pushed into production before it was ready for use. We are still living with the repercussions of this decision on a daily basis, with AI assistants appearing everywhere. Many customers are already frustrated by these systems, leading to a rapid push-back against the universal use of LLM chatbots. One problem the widespread mis-use of AI has solved already is the search for a driver of computer hardware and software sales, though this already seems to be wearing off. But once we take stock of the huge variety of tools being created, it is likely that we will have many useful new technologies to apply.
Ethernet is not Ready to Replace InfiniBand Yet
AI networking is making huge strides toward standardization but Ethernet isn’t ready to displace the leading incumbent InfiniBand yet. In this episode of the Tech Field Day Podcast, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Scott Robohn and Ray Lucchesi to discuss the state of Ethernet today and how it is continuing to improve. The guests discuss topics such as the dominance of InfiniBand, why basic Ethernet isn’t suited to latency-sensitive workloads, and how the future will improve the technology.
