Best of LinkedIn: ICT & Tech Insights CW 49/ 50

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about ICT and tech insights in CW-Forty-Nine and Fifty.

00:00:08: Frennis supports ICT enterprises with market and competitive intelligence decoding emerging technologies, customer insights, regulatory shifts, and competitor strategies, so product teams and strategy leaders don't just react, but shape the future.

00:00:23: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:25: Today, we're really digging into the biggest signals from calendar weeks, Forty-Nine and Fifty.

00:00:30: Yeah, and a lot of this is coming out of major events like the Gartner IOCS and the ITTAGE conferences.

00:00:36: What really stood out to me in the sources this time was this collective shift in tone.

00:00:41: Oh, absolutely.

00:00:41: The conversation seems to be moving away from all the theoretical hype.

00:00:45: Right.

00:00:45: It's less new normal and more, you know, disciplined practical execution.

00:00:50: Feels like the industry is finally getting down to business.

00:00:52: That's a good way to put it.

00:00:54: So our mission here is to cut through that noise for you and focus on the themes where things are changing the fastest.

00:00:59: Exactly.

00:01:00: We're talking a genetic AI, the really sharp financial focus of ANOX, and surprisingly, the new urgency around quantum computing policy.

00:01:09: We've basically clustered it into five main areas.

00:01:12: Let's start with the one that feels the most profound, which is the rise of a genetic AI.

00:01:17: It's being framed as more than just a new workload, isn't it?

00:01:20: Saguna Ramos called it the new gravity.

00:01:22: that's reshaping the entire digital infrastructure.

00:01:25: That's a perfect term for it.

00:01:26: It's a force you can't ignore.

00:01:27: And Karthik's SJ's point was that we're in the never normal now.

00:01:30: The never normal.

00:01:31: I like that.

00:01:32: Yeah, and that kind of environment, it just... It immediately exposes all the cracks in these, you know, twenty-year-old operational models.

00:01:40: You mean things like the classic war room, the constant firefighting?

00:01:42: Exactly.

00:01:43: The three AM pages.

00:01:44: All those are signs that the old ITOP systems are fundamentally broken.

00:01:48: And it forces a complete rethink of the human's role in all of this.

00:01:52: I saw Mark Ruff shared a Gardner prediction.

00:01:54: The one about twenty-thirty.

00:01:55: Yeah.

00:01:56: That by twenty-thirty, a full twenty-five percent of IT tasks will be autonomous.

00:02:00: And the other, seventy-five percent becomes this constant collaboration between humans and AI.

00:02:06: It's much more about augmentation than just automation.

00:02:09: And we're already seeing this deliver some serious ROI.

00:02:15: talked about their unified platform and this super agent strategy.

00:02:19: right the developer agent we be I think it was called.

00:02:22: that's the one.

00:02:22: it's embedded right into developer workflows and is apparently saving them millions of hours just a huge productivity boost.

00:02:30: that's incredible but if you're handing over decision-making authority to these agents.

00:02:34: there has to be some operational friction

00:02:36: right?

00:02:36: it seems like a massive leap Moving from human in the loop to, well, AI in charge.

00:02:41: It is.

00:02:42: And I think the vendors are really focused on smoothing that leap out.

00:02:45: The messaging from BMC Helix, which Jan and Gerona shared, was all about how Agentec AI transforms service ops with faster resolution times.

00:02:54: And

00:02:54: Anusha Call at HCL BigFix was hitting a similar note.

00:02:57: Yeah, linking that unified visibility with automation and continuous control, all powered by AI.

00:03:03: So the end goal, if you synthesize the message from Logic Monitor and Catchpoint.

00:03:07: is pretty clear.

00:03:08: It's about that self-healing autonomy.

00:03:10: Exactly.

00:03:11: Get the tech teams out of the weeds, out of the grunt work, and let them focus on actual strategy.

00:03:17: But of course, that kind of advanced self-healing infrastructure, well, it isn't free.

00:03:22: And that leads us perfectly into our second theme, that inescapable financial question.

00:03:28: How do you actually afford to invest in all this?

00:03:30: which is why FineOps has become so critical.

00:03:33: It's moved from just being a good idea to a genuine board level imperative.

00:03:40: Kevin Cochran put it really bluntly.

00:03:42: He basically said mastering cloud cost reduction is directly linked to freeing up capital for AI.

00:03:47: One enables the other.

00:03:49: And the talks at ITTage were full of these really practical examples of where companies are going wrong.

00:03:54: I saw Alicia Pore pointed out that it's often not about the tools.

00:03:58: Right.

00:03:58: It's a lack of a clear strategy or no management commitment or just, you know, not understanding the real financial impact of what they're using in the cloud.

00:04:06: It's about finding the hidden fat, not just the biggest line item on the bill.

00:04:10: Kirolo Kovalevsky shared the Edeco Group's whole journey with that.

00:04:13: Tackling what they call shadow waste.

00:04:15: which is such a great term for it.

00:04:17: It's like paying for misconfigured Pied Ass or hidden Azure features that just quietly drive up your costs.

00:04:24: It really is the cloud equivalent of a gym membership you totally forgot you had.

00:04:27: A perfect analogy.

00:04:29: And Jordy Bax had this great insight on FineOps maturity.

00:04:32: He said the most mature organizations, they fully integrate cost right into product thinking.

00:04:39: So when you talk about a new feature, you're discussing value, risk, performance and cost.

00:04:44: all at the same time.

00:04:45: Which totally changes the game.

00:04:47: FineOps stops being a chore you do every quarter and becomes a core design principle from the start.

00:04:51: We even saw Chandra Mukyala laying out a playbook for continuous storage optimization, moving way beyond that old cleanup model.

00:04:59: Okay, let's pivot a bit.

00:05:00: Let's talk about quantum computing.

00:05:01: This is a topic that always felt like, you know, abstract future hype.

00:05:05: For

00:05:05: sure.

00:05:05: But now it feels like it's solidifying into a real engineering and security and policy discussion.

00:05:11: It feels more tangible.

00:05:13: Even

00:05:13: if widespread adoption is still ways off.

00:05:15: Exactly.

00:05:16: The engineering reality was right there at ITTage.

00:05:19: Mathias Troyer mentioned that even the most advanced quantum systems still lean heavily on classical HBC techniques to get scalable results.

00:05:27: And we're seeing the hardware.

00:05:28: FISA's technologies was showcasing a sixty-four kibbit superconducting model.

00:05:33: It's real.

00:05:33: It's visible.

00:05:34: And it's being integrated with the HPC we already have.

00:05:37: that makes the implications strategic, not just academic.

00:05:40: Cecile Perot framed it as a global strategic priority.

00:05:44: demanding focused investment.

00:05:46: And Dr.

00:05:46: Benjamin Delsal pointed to Canada as a country that's really excelling here, building these focused IP niches.

00:05:53: But this has immediate security implications for everyone listening right now.

00:05:57: It really does.

00:05:58: Fabian Aurohwani mentioned that the EU is setting very clear hard deadlines for a mandatory transition to quantum safe systems.

00:06:06: And

00:06:06: you can't wait.

00:06:07: Hamigomez Garcia and Pablo Martinez from Telefonica were really clear on this.

00:06:11: A date on the calendar is not a strategy.

00:06:14: No, proactive post-quantum cryptography or PQC roadmaps are the only way to make sure your data is survivable in the long run.

00:06:21: And beyond just security, we're seeing this architectural convergence.

00:06:26: Jovator borrows to Silva, noted AI and quantum are starting to merge.

00:06:31: And Charles Marais was talking about Quantum's role with blockchain in building the foundations for what he called Web Four.

00:06:37: Alright, so speaking of foundations, that brings us to resilience.

00:06:40: Parvezali made a point that really stuck with me.

00:06:42: What

00:06:43: was that?

00:06:43: That resilience can't be a feature you just bolt on at the end.

00:06:46: It has to be engineered into the architecture from day one.

00:06:49: That is a huge challenge, especially when, as Stella Udovicic highlighted, INO leaders are also trying to manage this massive AI transformation at the same time.

00:06:59: You have to build fast, but you also have to build safe.

00:07:02: And security is where that balance gets tested.

00:07:04: Marcel Velika had a pretty sobering take on this.

00:07:06: That by twenty twenty five, cybersecurity won't be failing because we lack tools.

00:07:10: But because of the sheer speed and complexity of AI-enabled threats, they're just faster and smarter than ever.

00:07:16: Lisa Froelich's presentation on D-Dow's attacks at ITTage was fascinating.

00:07:20: She said over half of all traffic now comes from bots that perfectly mimic humans.

00:07:25: Which means your detection has to be incredibly sophisticated to handle these hybrid attacks across layers three, four, and seven.

00:07:32: And

00:07:32: that speed demands a totally new defense posture.

00:07:35: John Keyan argued that consistent security across hybrid and multi-cloud is still the hardest problem we have.

00:07:41: So what's the solution?

00:07:42: He suggests zero trust has to move to a network-based workload-centric model.

00:07:47: It's about keeping pace with threats like the scatter spider attacks without adding all the operational friction of managing agents everywhere.

00:07:55: This all leads directly to digital sovereignty, which was a huge theme at ITTage.

00:08:00: Absolutely.

00:08:01: Judah Horseman's keynote was all about the need for a national digital strategy, specifically mentioning an open-source Germany stack.

00:08:09: And this isn't just government talk.

00:08:11: Kara O'Carroll said the consensus is that digital sovereignty is now a non-negotiable design principle for any business.

00:08:17: We even saw real-world examples.

00:08:19: Erika Dubach-Spiegler shared that Switzerland's federal administration is adopting new guidelines to actively enhance their digital sovereignty.

00:08:27: It's about reducing external dependencies.

00:08:30: Okay, so for our final theme, let's tie this all together.

00:08:33: All these things we've discussed, AI, phenops, quantum sovereignty, they all demand one common thing.

00:08:40: a mature, intentional operating model.

00:08:42: Exactly.

00:08:43: William Collard put it well.

00:08:45: We have

00:08:45: to move past just one-off improvements and focus on creating environments that deliver real business value, not just, you know, keep the lights on.

00:08:53: A point Merle K. Gogren also reinforced.

00:08:56: And getting that foundation right means getting your observability architecture right.

00:09:01: Side to deep, Ashwaf Narayana really underscored the need for high-fidelity per second telemetry data.

00:09:07: To feed those agentic AI systems we talked about earlier.

00:09:10: But that level of detail gets expensive fast.

00:09:12: Kasasawoos has warned that what, eighty percent of organizations risk overspending on observability by twenty twenty six, if they're not careful.

00:09:19: You need a clean architecture to feed the AI beast without breaking the bank.

00:09:23: And basic infrastructure modernization is still so relevant here.

00:09:26: Dr.

00:09:26: Lofi Diwando talked about the value of moving from monoliths to microservices using the tow framework to guide it.

00:09:33: Technology, organization, and environment.

00:09:35: Exactly.

00:09:36: And finally, sustainability.

00:09:38: It's moving from just being a goal to being an applied engineering discipline.

00:09:43: I saw Anita Schittler detailed the whole process of getting the Blue Angel eco label for software.

00:09:49: That's a serious engineering and compliance effort.

00:09:51: And Colin Fry's showed a proof of concept for carbon aware computing.

00:09:55: that was just brilliant.

00:09:56: The

00:09:56: one with the Home Assistant extension.

00:09:58: Yeah.

00:09:58: postponing a non-critical task, like a washing machine, until the grid has a lower CO-tubex available.

00:10:05: And he showed how that same logic scales right up from your house to a massive data center.

00:10:10: That's applied green IT.

00:10:12: And it ties directly into what's happening at the edge.

00:10:14: Sameer Sharma highlighted how IoT is shifting from just connectivity to full autonomy.

00:10:19: Which is so critical in fields like agriculture, as Tom Andrews pointed out, where latency in remote environments are just non-negotiable.

00:10:27: Wow.

00:10:27: OK.

00:10:28: That is a comprehensive picture.

00:10:29: It really is.

00:10:30: The sources from these two weeks show a really clear inflection point.

00:10:34: We're moving toward an AI-first energy-driven, sovereignty-shaped world.

00:10:38: And that's going to require fundamental changes in both our tech and our leadership.

00:10:42: You know, we've seen that agentic AI is moving toward autonomous operations.

00:10:46: So I think the challenge for leaders is no longer if you should adopt AI.

00:10:50: The question now is how do you master the skill of leading a team where decision-making authority is increasingly shared between humans and AI agents?

00:10:58: If you enjoyed this deep dive, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:11:02: Also check out our other editions on cloud.

00:11:04: Defense Tech, Digital Products and Services, Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability and Green ICT, Defense Tech and Health Tech.

00:11:11: Thank you for diving deep with us.