What's Up with Tech?

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AI is everywhere in IT operations right now, but most sysadmins don’t need more buzzwords. We need fewer tickets, cleaner patching, faster deployments, and a clear view of what’s happening across every device. That’s why we sat down with Jaren Nichols, President and COO of PDQ to talk about modern enterprise device management the way admins actually live it: too many endpoints, too many apps, constant updates, and zero tolerance for security gaps.

We get into the real pressure point behind “software sprawl” as every department adopts new tools, including AI-driven apps, and IT inherits the responsibility for uptime, support, and security. Jaron breaks down three practical places AI can help right now: faster how-to research, smarter reporting that surfaces outdated versions and risks, and higher-level support for creating policies and workflows. We also dig into the part that matters most when automation gets powerful: transparency. If you can’t see permissions, execution order, and outcomes, you’re building a black box that will fail at the worst time.

From there, we zoom out to the bigger trends shaping endpoint management and AIOps: the shift toward a single pane of glass, the consolidation of roles across Windows, Mac, networking, DevOps, and security, and why legacy tools won’t disappear as fast as people claim. We close with what the next generation of sysadmins looks like when things go right: more visibility, policy-driven objectives, and faster execution without sacrificing control.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with the admin who owns patch Tuesday, and leave a review if it helped. What’s the biggest “this shouldn’t be that hard” moment in your IT environment right now?
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The martech stack used to feel complicated. Then generative AI showed up and turned “complicated” into “constantly changing.” We sit down with Scott Brinker, the analyst behind ChiefMartec, to unpack what’s really happening as marketing teams move from a familiar martech stack to a broader AI ecosystem filled with new tools, copilots, and early stage agents layered on top of the systems we already depend on.

We get concrete about what still anchors modern marketing technology: a system of record for customer data (CRM in many B2B orgs and often a CDP in B2C), a platform for orchestration through marketing automation and messaging, and a web layer like a CMS or DXP. From there, the stack diversifies fast based on industry, maturity, and team bandwidth, which explains why some organizations can experiment aggressively while smaller teams are still holding marketing ops together with sheer willpower.

From a leadership angle, Scott makes a blunt point: you can’t automate what you can’t define. If you want AI automation that protects authentic brand voice, you need clear guardrails, documented standards, and real ownership, not vague “it’s in our culture” assumptions. We also look ahead to a shift that may surprise a lot of marketers, AI used by customers, including AI search behavior and the possibility of inbox agents that reshape email marketing and customer engagement.

If you care about AI strategy, marketing operations, martech governance, and what skills the next generation of marketing leaders will need, this conversation will sharpen how you think. Subscribe, share this with a marketing leader who’s drowning in tools, and leave a review with the biggest AI change you’re navigating right now.
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Manual SOC work is collapsing under its own weight. After RSAC, we sit down with Dave Mcginnis, who leads IBM Consulting’s threat management practice, to get brutally practical about what “autonomous security operations” really means when you strip away the marketing. The headline is simple: humans can’t be the bottleneck in threat monitoring anymore, and “AI-assisted” alert triage won’t cut it when machines can generate more detections than teams can ever click through.

We talk through the hard parts that decide whether autonomous SOC automation helps or harms: investigation depth, evidence, and accountability. Dave explains why the new problem isn’t finding a needle in a haystack, it’s finding a needle in a stack of needles and why autonomous investigation has to examine every IP, domain, email, and hash, then document the reasoning for forensics. From there, we explore how response can move past traditional SOAR runbooks toward agents that can connect directly to identity systems, cloud controls, and application platforms.

The conversation also turns to people and risk. What happens to SOC roles when tier-one work fades, where domain expertise still matters, and why tuning, threat intelligence, and integration become the real jobs. Finally, we look at the uncomfortable truth: adversaries use generative AI too, lowering the barrier to sophisticated attacks. If you’re building a modern cybersecurity program, this is a roadmap for thinking end to end, not tool by tool.

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Trade businesses keep our world running, but most of them operate on painfully thin margins. We talk with Fred Voccola CEO from Simpro Group about what happens when you bring practical AI to the job site and the back office, not as hype, but as an operating platform for the trades that helps contractors finish more work right the first time.

We get specific about where the ROI shows up fast: cutting “retreads” (repeat visits) by improving job prep, making sure the right technician arrives with the right materials, and optimizing routes and scheduling. Fred breaks down how AI agents can act like affordable digital staff, doing the kind of job-prep, collections follow-up, documentation, and optimization work that only huge companies can normally afford. The payoff is better job profitability, fewer wasted truck rolls, and a real chance to move from 5% to 7% profit margins toward something closer to 20%+.

We also dig into customer experience and why service expectations are rising. With ambient listening and automated documentation, the system can capture the “little” details that matter, then prep the next technician with the right context. Finally, we look at the next generation of skilled trades workers, including real-time training support via wearables, plus a preview of Simpro Lightning and its new AI brain and agents.

If you care about AI in construction, field service management, job site productivity, and the future of skilled trades, listen, share this with a contractor friend, and leave a review with your biggest question about AI on the job.
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Pressing zero to reach a human should not be the default plan. We talk with Fred Fontes CEO from Acclaim about what’s finally making enterprise voice-first AI work in the real world, especially inside regulated industries like banking and financial services where compliance, auditability, and data security are not negotiable. For teams burned by old IVR trees and brittle chatbots, the conversation gets practical fast: what has changed in the underlying models, and what has to change in how we deploy and control them.

We dig into the idea of sovereignty and why many CIOs and CTOs feel trapped between the need to innovate and the risk of sending sensitive customer data through multiple third-party clouds. Fred explains how controllable voice AI agents, strong guardrails, and enterprise-grade orchestration can turn “cool demos” into dependable contact center automation. We also get into domain-specific benchmarking, because a universal speech-to-text score does not matter if you cannot accurately transcribe a noisy telephony call about banking topics.

Then we go beneath the hood on outcomes: banking collections use cases showing six to eight percentage points higher recovery rates, the ability to A/B test messaging quickly, and why interaction costs can drop dramatically when conversations are faster, more accurate, and handled in parallel. We also talk about the human side, shifting agents toward higher-value customer experience work, and the hardest obstacle left: integration with systems of record and enterprise workflows.

If you’re building or buying conversational AI, listen closely, share this with a teammate who owns CX or security, and subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what your biggest blocker is to deploying voice AI at scale.
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