What's Up with Tech?

40 Episodes
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By: Evan Kirstel

Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like...

How To Cut Costs And Errors With A Single Source Of Medical Truth
Last Friday at 2:00 PM

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Healthcare keeps getting more expensive, yet most of us feel like we’re doing more work just to get the same care: more portals, more forms, more phone calls, and more confusing lab results. We sit down with Greg Brady the founder and CEO of Connect4Patients to dig into the root cause he’s spent decades solving in other industries: fragmented data. His claim is direct and a little startling. If we can’t assemble a complete, real-time medical record, we can’t reliably reduce errors...


From Data Quality To Autonomous Networks In Telecom
Last Thursday at 1:00 PM

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AI is finally forcing a scoreboard moment in telecom: some organizations are seeing massive productivity gains, while others are stuck between fear of missing out and fear of getting it wrong. From the floor at IBM Think in Boston, we sit down with IBM’s global CTO for telecom, media, and entertainment Eoin Coughlan to get practical about what separates “AI pilots” from AI that actually lands in production and earns trust.

We start with the hard truth that hasn’t changed for decades: data is...


AI Security Only Works When It Matches Business Goals
Last Wednesday at 12:00 PM

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AI didn’t just change how enterprises innovate, it changed how they get breached. One month you’re racing to deploy new copilots and agentic workflows; the next you’re asking a harder question: did we build any of this to match our risk posture?

We talk with Chris Bonavita, Vice President of Strategy and Technology Adoption at GTT, about what he’s hearing from enterprise security leaders right now and why the mood has shifted from excitement to panic. We dig into the real-wor...


Why The Browser Became The Modern Office And How To Secure It
Last Tuesday at 3:00 PM

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Your browser is no longer a passive window to the internet. It’s becoming a worker with autonomy and that single shift changes everything about cybersecurity, identity, and data protection.

We sit down with Anupam Upadhyaya SVP, Products, SASE and Network Security, Palo Alto Networks to unpack what “agentic browsing” really means: the jump from an AI copilot that helps you to an agent that works for you by clicking, filling forms, and moving across tabs with your permissions. When the browser becomes the office...


Smart Pool Robots
04/27/2026

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Pool season is back and so is the annual question: why does keeping water clean still feel so manual? We sit down with Patrick from Beatbot to talk about what changes when a robotic pool cleaner stops being a “dumb” tethered machine and becomes a cordless AI pool robot that can map your pool, plan an efficient route, and adapt when it hits real-world obstacles like ladders and tight corners.

We dig into what modern smart pool cleaning actually looks like: cleaning the floor, clim...


How A Modern CMO Connects Brand To Revenue
04/27/2026

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Marketing isn’t “soft” when you can tie it to the numbers that run the business. Evan sits down with Meghan Keough, a modern, business-first CMO with decades in enterprise tech, to unpack how marketing leaders can operate at the intersection of brand, revenue, and transformation without losing the plot. We get specific about the metrics that matter most in B2B go-to-market strategy: pipeline by source, cost per pipeline, win rates, sales velocity, and the margin impact behind the dashboard.

From there, we zoom o...


6G Beyond The Pipe
04/27/2026

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6G is closer than most people think, and the biggest surprise is that the headline might not be “faster.” We sit down with Mats Karlsson from Ericsson to talk about the move toward physical AI, where networks help systems sense and act in the real world. When robots, vehicles, and digital twins depend on connectivity for safety and performance, “more bandwidth” stops being the product and guaranteed outcomes become the real promise.

We unpack what outcome based services actually mean in practice: collision...


rApps for Mobile Networks Autonomy
04/22/2026

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Autonomy in telecom sounds like a pure technology race until you look at where operators actually get stuck. It turns out the models aren't the bottleneck. The humans around them are.

We're joined by @Ibrahim Eldeftar, who leads Cognitive Software and Services at Ericsson, to unpack the real path from partial automation to Level 4 autonomous networks, and why the hardest part is often the human system around the tools.

Ibrahim walks us through the two hurdle categories...


Identity Security After RSAC 2026
04/10/2026

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Identity is where the fight is moving fastest, and RSAC 2026 proved it. Fresh off the show floor, we sit down with Jim Taylor, President, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at RSA Security, to break down what’s truly changing in identity security as AI reshapes both the threat landscape and the defenses enterprises rely on.

We dig into why “sovereign” and “deploy anywhere” identity deployments are suddenly mission critical. Cloud convenience can quietly trade away resiliency and control, and recent disruptions show how quickly authentica...


Building An Agentic Operating System For Cybersecurity And Beyond
04/09/2026

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Agentic AI is no longer a side experiment running in a lab. It’s starting to look like the next operating layer inside the enterprise, and that raises a hard question: do you want a scattered collection of point tools, or a standardized agentic operating system that your teams can actually run?

I sit down with Anurag Gurtu Chief Executive Officer @ AIRRIVED to unpack what “agentic OS” means in practical terms. We get specific about the three pillars that make agentic AI useful at scale...


Device Management Without The Drama
04/08/2026

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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...


From Martech Stacks To AI Ecosystems For Modern Marketing
04/06/2026

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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 man...


From Manual Alert Triage To Autonomous Security Operations
04/03/2026

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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 autono...


AI For The Trades
04/02/2026

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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 arri...


Enterprise Voice AI That Actually Works
04/01/2026

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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.


How The We Love Tech Awards Spot Real Innovation
03/31/2026

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AI is making a weird problem even worse: it’s getting harder to tell what’s authentic. That’s why we sat down with Russ from Business Intelligence Group to talk about the We Love Tech Awards ( https://welovetechawards.com/) and what real, transparent judging looks like when trust is on the line. We get specific about how awards can be more than marketing, especially when real people review nominations, score the work, and give feedback that founders and product teams can actually use.

We als...


Autonomous Networks Now
03/27/2026

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AI hype is everywhere at Mobile World Congress, so we went looking for something rarer: real operational proof. From the Ericsson booth in Barcelona, we sit down with Ibrahim Eldeftar, who leads Cognitive Network Solutions product and portfolio for telco AI software, and Claudia Muñiz Garcia, Global Head of Sales for the same unit, to talk about what it actually takes to run autonomous networks.

We break down the autonomy journey in plain language: moving from manual ways of working to systems that c...


How Brevo Builds Customer Loyalty With Conversational CRM
03/20/2026

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CRM is about to feel less like a database and more like a conversation. We sit down with Brevo to unpack how a fast-growing customer engagement platform thinks about the next era of CRM, where large language models change the “entry point” for customer data and where the old battle over slick UI starts to disappear.

We walk through Brevo’s evolution from an agency to an email automation tool (many will remember the Sendinblue days) and then into a broader customer engagement and CRM pl...


How Samsung SDS Makes Mobile Devices Work For Hospitals;
03/19/2026

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A check-in tablet passes from one patient to the next, and a single leftover photo of an ID or an auto-filled keyboard suggestion becomes a PHI nightmare. From the Samsung booth at HIMSS, we sit down with Ray to unpack how Samsung SDS approaches healthcare IT with a simple goal: make devices and workflows safer, easier, and more useful for the people on the front line.

We get specific about what Samsung SDS does beyond distribution, including helping health systems get the right Samsung...


Agentic Voice AI For Business
03/19/2026

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The fastest way to understand agentic AI is to stop thinking about chatbots and start thinking about outcomes. From Enterprise Connect, we sit down with RingCentral’s John Finch to talk about agentic voice AI that can handle real customer work end to end: answering the call, connecting to back-end systems, completing a transaction, confirming the result, and closing the loop without bouncing the customer between departments.

We also get specific about what makes this hard and why it matters. Voice is still the mo...


Agentic AI For Customer Service
03/19/2026

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Agentic AI sounds like magic until you have to ship it inside a real enterprise contact center where every mistake becomes a compliance problem and every bad interaction hits customer trust. From Enterprise Connect, we sit down with Dialpad to unpack how they’re building agentic customer service on top of an end-to-end UCaaS and CCaaS platform, and why having AI deeply integrated into the communications stack matters more than flashy demos.

We dig into the hardest first step: figuring out what to automate. Di...


How Verified Caller Identity Gets Answered
03/19/2026

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Your phone rings. The screen shows an unknown number or “spam likely.” Do you pick up, or do you protect yourself and ignore it? That split-second decision has become the default for millions of people, and it’s crushing legitimate communication from banks, healthcare providers, insurers, and service teams that genuinely need to reach customers.

From the Enterprise Connect show floor, we talk with Nick Moss from TransUnion’s communications product team about how the voice channel lost trust and how to earn it back. We...


What Does It Mean To Trust A Machine Anywhere
03/19/2026

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RSAC Season Is Here. Your Certificates Expired Last Month.


RSAC is coming, and I'll be there — so expect more conversations like this one dropping in the weeks ahead.


But here's the thing: the most important security story this season isn't happening on the conference floor. It's already inside your network, running on devices most organizations barely think about.


In this episode, I sit down with OmniTrust co-founders David Sequino and Bill Lattin to unpack what "trust" actually me...


Global Talent Without The Guesswork
03/19/2026

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Talent gaps don’t feel strategic when they hit, they feel personal: missed deadlines, burned-out managers, and the slow bleed of “we can’t grow because we can’t hire.” From the floor at Enterprise Connect, we sit down with Brett and Sebastian from Gr8 Global to talk about a practical answer: building global capability center (GCC) teams that give companies real access to experienced remote talent.

We dig into Gr8 Global’s origin story as a GCC provider created during COVID for eight Top 100 acco...


CRM-Agnostic AI For Customer Calls
03/18/2026

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Missed calls cost more than you think, especially when leads come in after hours or demand spikes without warning. From the Enterprise Connect show floor, we sit down with https://www.girikon.com and their product and innovation leaders to unpack how AI-first customer engagement is changing the way contact centers and sales teams respond in real time.

We talk through Girikon’s path from a decade of CRM onboarding and consulting into Girikon AI, including Girik Connect, a unified customer engagement platform that br...


Zoom’s Shift From Meetings To Work Products
03/18/2026

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Meetings create the most valuable raw material in a company: the ideas people say out loud. The problem is that those ideas usually evaporate into scattered notes, half-remembered decisions, and action items no one can trace. From the floor of Enterprise Connect, we sit down with Zoom Chief Product Officer Jeff Smith to unpack how Zoom is trying to close that gap by turning conversation into completed work.

Jeff explains why transcription is only the starting point and how “My Notes” is designed to capt...


Cloud Native Without The Chaos
03/18/2026

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Cloud native doesn’t mean what it used to. What started as a self-service way to buy compute fast has turned into a full application platform transformation where Kubernetes, desired state, and automation decide how software scales, heals, and lands on compute, storage, and networking.

From Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we sit down with Dilpreet from Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) organization to talk about what’s actually changing on the ground. We get into why Kubernetes has moved from a niche tool t...


How AI Turns Contact Center Calls Into CX And Revenue Wins
03/18/2026

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A single customer call can reveal why people churn, what drives complaints, and where sales get stuck, but only if you can actually see the patterns. On the Enterprise Connect show floor, we sit down with John from MiaRec to unpack how AI-powered conversation analytics turns everyday contact center recordings into clear actions you can take the same day.

We get specific about the biggest wins: automated QA that replaces slow manual scoring, customer experience intelligence that infers CSAT and NPS without relying on...


Contextual Intelligence For Contact Centers
03/18/2026

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Your contact center already tells you what’s happening. The harder question is why and what you should do next. From the Enterprise Connect floor, we sit down with Ray Bohoac CEO of Spearfish.ai to unpack a practical approach to contextual intelligence that connects customer conversations to the back-office data that actually explains outcomes.

We get specific about how Spearfish moves teams beyond classic contact center KPIs like service level, QA, and CSAT, using a “signals” architecture that learns from calls and correlates them w...


How To Prove Customer Experience With End-To-End Assurance
03/16/2026

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If your contact center only finds problems after customers complain, you are operating blind. We sit down with Klearcom at Enterprise Connect to unpack what “CX end-to-end assurance” really looks like when you have voice, IVR, chat, SMS, and now AI-driven journeys all stitched together across multiple regions and vendors.

We get specific about the pain points teams keep running into: manual testing that is slow and subjective, migrations from legacy platforms to CCaaS that introduce silent failures, and the growing need to validate expe...


How GTT Builds Networking And Security As A Service For The AI Era
03/16/2026

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AI is everywhere right now, but the hard part is turning dozens of pilots into durable systems that actually run a business. We sit down with Tom, SVP of Product Management at GTT, to unpack what changes when enterprises move from “testing AI” to deploying agentic AI at scale across thousands of sites, users, and applications.

We start with how GTT thinks about networking and security as a service, and why the promise is not just bandwidth or a product SKU but a simpler expe...


Graph Databases For Enterprise AI
03/13/2026

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Most AI teams are learning the hard way that dumping more text into a prompt does not guarantee better answers. We sit down with Philip Rathle 
Chief Technology Officer from Neo4j to talk about the missing ingredient: relationships. When your data is inherently connected, a graph database can turn scattered facts into usable context, so LLMs and agentic AI systems can respond with more precision and less noise.

We walk through why graph technology is showing up as a “quiet power layer” behin...


From Coverage Fix To Smart Buildings
03/11/2026

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What if one install could fix coverage and unlock an entire layer of building intelligence? We sit down with Michiel Lotter of Nextivity at Mobile World Congress to explore how modern enterprise DAS has evolved from “make the bars appear” to a multi-use platform that delivers public cellular, plug‑in private 5G, and sensor-driven insights across the same footprint.

We break down the Do More with DAS philosophy and why it changes the ROI math for facilities that once viewed in-building coverage as a reluct...


Healing The Sick Care System
03/10/2026

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What if the fastest way to fix American healthcare is the simplest: put people back at the center. Sitting down with Gil Bashe—chair of Health and Purpose at Finn Partners, editor of Medical Life, and author of Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter—we unpack the paradox of a nation that spends more, trains the best, and still delivers poorer outcomes than its peers. Gil brings hard numbers, lived stories, and a clear blueprint for moving from fragmented “sick care” to coordinated care grounded...


Telcos Take Charge On AI
03/09/2026

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The energy on the MWC floor said it all: AI for telecom has moved past “someday” and into “show me how fast.” We sit down with Broadcom’s Anupama Mahabhashyam to unpack what sovereignty really means for carriers, why local control and continuous compliance matter, and how operators can turn regulated infrastructure and rich datasets into a durable AI advantage.

We trace the shift from AI hype to execution, highlighting the operational realities telcos face as they build private and sovereign AI clouds. That includes t...


Storage Becomes The AI Bottleneck
03/09/2026

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AI feels fast until memory and storage slow everything down. We sit with Michael Wu to unpack a blunt truth: inference is where value happens, and storage now sits on the critical path. Instead of treating SSDs as cold capacity, Phison’s adaptive middleware turns them into a live cache that expands usable memory and keeps models, embeddings, and long context windows close to compute. The payoff is practical and immediate—lean AIPCs and mini workstations run bigger workloads with steadier latency, and teams can scale infe...


Winning The Wi‑Fi Experience War
03/05/2026

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Ever wonder why your 4K stream freezes even though your plan boasts blazing speeds? We sat down at MWC with Metin from AirTies to unpack the real reason people switch broadband providers—and it’s not the price tag. Drawing on fresh survey data from the US, UK, and Japan, we dig into churn rates, intent to switch, and the number one culprit behind dissatisfaction: inconsistent user experience. From video stutter to choppy video calls, the pain points are surprisingly common, and they point straight at Wi‑F...


AI And Telcos: From Hype To Revenue
03/05/2026

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AI is loud at MWC, but we wanted signal, not noise. We sat down with Angus CEO from BeyondNow to unpack how telcos can turn hype into real revenue by building an “AI factory” for SMBs, digitizing the front office, and orchestrating partner ecosystems that deliver complete, easy-to-buy solutions. The conversation gets practical fast: what it takes to package connectivity with AI-driven services, why data readiness still gates everything, and how to replace price wars with a disciplined upsell motion that deepens relationships and boosts stickiness.
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Trust, Autonomy, And The New Rules Of AI-Driven NetOps
03/03/2026

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What if your network could sense a problem, explain it, and fix it before anyone files a ticket? We sit down with Cisco’s to unpack the leap from AIOps and GenAI to true agentic operations—systems that detect, diagnose, and remediate across complex, multi-domain environments where the internet is your backbone and SaaS is your front door.

We trace the journey from ThousandEyes’ “Google Maps for the internet” to today’s AI-driven NetOps. You’ll hear how teams move from a find-and-fix mindset to evidence an...


Broadcom’s Telco Cloud Playbook
03/03/2026

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The hallways at MWC were buzzing, but our conversation cut straight to what matters for operators right now: shipping new services faster without getting boxed in. We sat down with Broadcom to unpack VMware Telco Cloud Platform 9 and how it blends cloud-native speed with the reliability telco networks demand. This release pulls previously separate components into a single, horizontal stack, pairing one automation engine for both virtual machines and containers with an embedded Kubernetes runtime. The payoff is simpler operations, shorter launch cycles, and real freedom...