The CTO Advisor

Hosted by Keith Townsend

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Latest episode

Jul 2026

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EN-US

About the show

A conversation geared toward the CTO or Infrastructure Architect. Shows topics focus on future technologies and keeping today's infrastructure in-line with business requirements.

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51 recent

August 24, 202612 min

Layer2C Labs 001: Borrow the Vendor’s Plumbing, Not Its Judgment

A replay of Layer2C Labs episode 001 on The CTO Advisor feed. The managed data plane is cheap and fast; the cost it hides is the chunking judgment it takes from you. Keith Townsend built a retrieval pipeline over thirteen years of Tech Field Day transcripts, about 237,000 segments, split between Amazon S3 Vectors and an NVIDIA DGX Spark on his desk, and traced where the decisions actually landed. Written by Keith Townsend and narrated by AI — the voice isn’t his and isn’t pretending to be. The full lab, with every number: https://labs.layer2c.com/labs/spark-s3vectors

July 29, 2026

Deterministic AI Isn’t the Goal. Deterministic Systems Are.

AI agents are good at producing outcomes. The harder question is whether they can produce the same outcome twice, through a process you can inspect, test, and trust. In this episode, Keith Townsend talks with Adam Jacobs, CEO of Swamp Club and founder of Chef, about deterministic automation in the age of AI agents. The [...]

April 29, 2026

From Network Engineer to Applied AI: Ryan Booth on the Career Path Nobody Maps Out

Description: Keith sits down with Ryan Booth — former network automation specialist, Apstra alum, and now principal consultant at Blue Ridge Consulting — to trace the real career arc from infrastructure engineer to applied AI practitioner. They dig into the transferable skills that actually matter (hint: it's not the coding), why curiosity-driven entry points like [...]

April 23, 2026

Clumio Data Protection for Google Cloud –

At Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, Keith sits down with returning guest Woon Jung, CTO of Clumio, to break down their new GCS backup launch — and why "replication" and "backup" are not the same thing. They dig into the real failure domains that catch GCP-native organizations off guard, the operational reality of multi-cloud [...]

February 18, 2026

Your Data Is Getting Dirtier While We Talk — UnicornIQ’s Answer to AI’s Unsolvable Problem

Everyone says clean your data before you invest in AI. The problem is, your data is getting dirty faster than you can clean it. In this episode, Keith sits down with Joe Onisick, founder of UnicornIQ, to dig into why data hygiene is AI's most underestimated failure point — and why throwing more GPU power [...]

February 4, 2026

AI in the Data Center: When Faster Isn’t Better

AI is changing the data center—but not always in the ways enterprises expect. In this episode, Keith Townsend is joined by Intel’s Lynn Comp for Part Two of their conversation, shifting the focus squarely to AI infrastructure realities. They explore why many AI workloads never justify GPUs, how CPU-based deployments often exceed real [...]

January 14, 2026

Right-Sizing AI, Rationalizing Virtualization, and Becoming an Infrastructure Arbiter — with Melissa Palmer

Episode Summary Enterprise leaders are facing two equally hard problems at the same time: deciding what to do next with virtualization in the post-VMware era, and figuring out how—or whether—to deploy AI infrastructure responsibly. In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with long-time industry peer and infrastructure expert [...]

December 17, 2025

The VMware Reckoning: Broadcom, AI, and the Future of Enterprise Infrastructure

Enterprise IT didn’t plan for this problem—but now it has to solve it. In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with Lynn Comp, Head of Data Center Market Readiness at Intel, for a candid, unsugarcoated conversation about how Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has fundamentally disrupted the enterprise infrastructure status quo. [...]

September 17, 2025

Outrunning Ageism and Building a Second Career

In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with Betsy Tong, founder of Authority Architect, to explore how seasoned professionals can transform decades of experience into thriving consulting businesses. Betsy shares her personal story of being laid off at 56 and realizing the traditional job market—dominated by keyword filters and age [...]

September 3, 2025

VMware Explore 2025: VCF 9, Developer Tribes, and the Future of Private Cloud – with Steven Dickens

In this episode, Keith Townsend welcomes back Steven Dickens, founder of Hyperframe Research, for a candid conversation following VMware Explore 2025. The duo dives deep into the latest developments from VMware, focusing on the launch of VCF 9 and what it means for developers, customers, and the broader ecosystem. Key topics include: Steven’s impressions of [...]