What's Up with Tech?

Hosted by Evan Kirstel

Technology BusinessInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

656

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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 Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!

Listen to episodes

60 recent

June 15, 202621 min

When AI Agents Go Off The Rails

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comA two-week simulation was all it took for “autonomous AI agents with rules” to reveal how fragile our current guardrails really are. We sit down with Satya Nitta from Emergence AI, an autonomous AI lab working at the intersection of neural networks and symbolic AI, to unpack the Emergence World Experiment: five virtual cities, ten agents per city, and different frontier language models powering each world, including a mixed-model society where agents influence each other.What we saw is the kind of long horizon autonomy story most benchmarks can’t capture. One world collapses into fighting and resource failure in days. Another becomes eerily stable through near-total conformity. And the most important signal for enterprise AI shows up in the mixed world: agents that look “well behaved” alone can be pulled into unsafe behavior when they interact with other models. If your company is rolling out agentic systems across a messy stack of vendors, tools, and models, that is not an edge case, it is the default reality.We also dig into a concrete safety direction: neuroformal AI, proof-carrying code, and formally enforced constraints using mathematical methods like dependent type theory. The argument is simple and provocative: before an AI agent takes actions that touch production code, sensitive data, or critical operations, it should be able to prove it is staying within constraints, not just promise it in natural language. If you care about AI safety, autonomous agents, multi-agent systems, and real-world deployment risk, this conversation will sharpen how you think about what comes next.Subscribe for more deep dives, share this with a friend building with AI agents, and leave a review with your biggest question about long-horizon autonomy.Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 12, 202618 min

The Real Cost Of Enterprise AI

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comAI isn’t magic, and it definitely isn’t free. We sit down with Ken from Pega Systems to get brutally practical about the economics of enterprise AI: why token costs are a symptom, why infrastructure spend is so high, and how “murky ROI” happens when companies deploy AI for novelty instead of measurable business value.From Ken’s perspective as a former CFO and current COO, the best mental model is surprisingly simple: treat AI like a utility. If electricity has taught us anything, it’s that the winners don’t just consume more, they manage consumption better. We talk about how to reduce waste, how to avoid paying for frontier-model overkill, and why boards and finance teams are starting to demand tokenomics tied to outcomes. We also dig into a provocative corner of the market: incentives that can turn the AI ecosystem into a circular hype machine unless leaders insist on real examples and hard metrics.We then shift to what this means inside large organizations. Agentic AI can accelerate judgment-heavy work in finance, legal, HR, and marketing, while deterministic workflows still anchor reliability in core operations. Finally, Ken shares career advice for the next generation: as execution gets automated, the premium rises on strategy, product management, and validation skills, plus the curiosity to keep learning as roles evolve.If you care about enterprise AI ROI, workflow automation, and the real operating model behind digital transformation, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the metric you think will prove AI is paying off.Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 11, 202621 min

Hybrid Communications That Actually Work

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comHybrid communications is easy to praise and hard to pull off, especially when your reality includes on-prem systems, private cloud requirements, public cloud apps, and a growing buy-in committee that can hit dozens of stakeholders. We talk with Jonathan Buckle, VP of the Americas at Mitel, about what hybrid unified communications actually looks like when you refuse to force customers into a single model and instead design around how organizations really operate. We get concrete about the process: why discovery matters more than demos, how vertical expertise in healthcare, education, hospitality, retail, and the public sector speeds up decision-making, and why workflow integration is often the quickest route to real outcomes. Jonathan shares what he’s seeing in the market as vendors consolidate or exit categories and why that shift is pushing more organizations to rethink voice, UC, and the day-to-day systems their teams rely on. Frontline workers are a major focus, from nurses and operators to school staff and hotel teams. We dig into what changes when you sit next to the people doing the work, how simplicity beats feature creep, and why Mitel’s WX UC client is built to make training easier while surfacing workflow triggers directly in the user experience. If you’re modernizing business communications and you’re tired of “either cloud or on-prem” debates, this conversation will help you pressure-test your plan. Subscribe, share this with your IT team, and leave a review, then tell us: what would “no compromise” need to mean for your organization to believe it?Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 5, 202630 min

Trustworthy AI For Real Telco Impact

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comAI in telecom is finally graduating from slide decks to real operational impact, but the jump from pilot to production is where most teams get stuck. I sit down with Guy Lupo from the TM Forum, who leads the trustworthy AI and data mission, to talk about what it actually takes to become an AI native telco and why the industry’s next gains depend less on flashy demos and more on operational proof.We break down where operators are seeing traction right now, like network fault management, faster mean time to resolve, fewer tickets, and churn reduction, and why those wins correlate directly with clean, structured signals. Then we dig into the uncomfortable middle ground: AI that augments people feels manageable, but AI embedded into tools and workflows raises hard questions about governance, monitoring, and accountability. Guy’s point lands hard: trust cannot be claimed, it must be demonstrated continuously, especially as autonomy increases.From there, we connect the dots to risk-based regulation and sovereignty. Frameworks like the EU AI Act signal a shift away from checklist compliance toward auditable evidence over time, with telecom increasingly treated as high risk critical infrastructure. We also explore emerging concepts like agent passports, plus why the industry is asking for a shared “agent factory” reference architecture and practical, no regret patterns such as Model as a Service for consistent, governable model access. We close by looking ahead to physical AI and robotics and the surprising telecom advantage: the operational workforce that can install, maintain, and safely support devices at scale.If you care about AI governance, autonomous networks, agentic AI, and the real-world path to production in telecom, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the one trust gap you want the industry to solve first.Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AICan't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 4, 202616 min

Architectural Invisibility For Modern Cybersecurity

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comThe easiest system to hack is the one that’s always there to be found. We sit down with Steve Visconti, CEO and co-founder of XIID, to talk about a different cybersecurity mindset: architectural invisibility, where the goal isn’t to build a bigger wall, it’s to make the target unreachable in the first place.We dig into what “no inbound communication” really means, including removing public IP dependence, reducing DNS exposure, and enforcing process-to-process connectivity so only the exact executable you approve can talk to the exact service it needs. Steve explains how outbound-only tunnels can be established on both sides, and why strong encryption and post-quantum secure tunneling matter when you’re protecting high-value systems in an increasingly autonomous, machine-to-machine world.We also get practical about where this fits in today’s security stack. Because it operates at the application layer, it can complement existing tools without a rip-and-replace overhaul, and it can roll out one app at a time while still scaling through orchestration. Along the way, we connect the dots to real risks in modern software delivery, like AI-generated code and CI/CD pipelines that accidentally leave behind discoverable test endpoints.Finally, we zoom out to critical infrastructure, including EV charging networks and the growing connection between vehicles, cloud billing systems, and the electrical grid. If you care about reducing attack surface, protecting OT environments, and building zero trust security that survives automation at scale, this is for you. Subscribe, share this with a security-minded friend, and leave a review with your biggest question about making systems “unreachable by design.”Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 3, 202626 min

A 2005 Malware Find That Rewrites Cyber Warfare History

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comA 2005 malware sample sounds like ancient history, until it looks like cyber sabotage that may predate Stuxnet. We sit down with Jags from SentinelOne’s Sentinel Labs to unpack Fast 16, a rare framework that doesn’t just break computers, it quietly corrupts high precision calculations. If you’ve ever treated simulation results, engineering models, or AI outputs as “the answer,” this conversation will make you pause.We walk through the unexpected discovery path: a curious reference tied to the Shadow Brokers leak, years of researchers staring at a strange sample that “felt important” but refused to give up its secrets, and the moment an internal project using AI for reverse engineering helped unlock what Fast 16 was built to do. Along the way, we connect the dots to the Stuxnet era, cyber threat intelligence “paleontology,” and why truly high end nation state toolkits look like platforms, not one off scripts.Then we get uncomfortably current. Sabotaging calculations is an integrity attack, and integrity is the foundation of modern scientific computing, cloud workloads, and frontier AI model training. We talk about how subtle degradation can waste millions, derail decision making, and even turn teams against their own experts. We close with practical lessons for CISOs and enterprise leaders: invest in visibility, telemetry, and log retention before the crisis, and start treating output verification as a core security problem.Subscribe for more deep dives on cyber sabotage, APT tradecraft, and AI security, and if this made you rethink what “trust” means in computing, share it and leave a review. What system in your world would be hardest to verify?Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AICan't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 1, 202622 min

When Messaging Apps Become Enterprise Infrastructure

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comYour phone rings, you hesitate, and you let it go to voicemail because it might be a scam. Meanwhile your team is juggling Microsoft Teams, Webex, mobile calling, messaging apps and a growing stack of AI tools that promise better customer experience but often add complexity. We sit down with William Rubio to unpack what’s actually changing in cloud communications and what a managed service provider needs to deliver in 2026: not just licenses, but outcomes across UCaaS, CCaaS and AI.We talk through Call Tower’s evolution and the recent strategic investment from Court Square Capital Partners, including how growth, global expansion and M&A fit into a fast-moving market. Then we get practical about mobile identity and eSIM for Teams and Webex: why “clicking the app” is friction, how caller ID consistency affects trust, and why compliance, recording and analytics become more important when work follows you from car to laptop to office to home.On the CX side, we zoom in on conversational AI and agentic AI in the contact center: what major platforms are shipping, where specialized AI vendors can add real value, and why industry-specific AI for healthcare, finance and manufacturing is likely to define the next wave. We also cover WhatsApp integration with Microsoft Teams and what it signals about enterprise communications finally adopting consumer-like channels without giving up security.If you care about cloud calling, AI contact centers, mobile-first collaboration and stopping spam calls from poisoning business communications, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the one communications headache you most want fixed next.Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

June 1, 202615 min

How Data Brokers Fuel AI-Driven Social Engineering

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comPersonalized phishing is no longer “spray and pray.” It’s targeted, multi-channel, and increasingly powered by exposed employee data that’s sitting in plain sight. We sit down with Paul Mander, Chief Commercial Officer at Optery for Business, to unpack what’s driving the next wave of AI-driven social engineering and why so many security teams are rethinking where the real attack surface begins.Paul walks us through eye-opening survey findings from more than 400 cybersecurity leaders: social engineering attempts are rising sharply, most attacks are moderately or highly personalized, and a large share of those successful attempts lead to credential compromise. We also dig into why there’s no single channel to defend anymore. Email still matters, but attackers are mixing phone calls, SMS, social media, and impersonation to make their stories feel “verified” from multiple angles.The biggest shift is where attackers get their homework done. Data brokers and people search sites compile dossiers that include phone numbers, home addresses, relatives, employment history, and even org chart details that help threat actors pick high-leverage targets. We talk about why IT, HR, and finance often take more heat than executives, and what practical teams can do today: strengthen MFA and training, then get proactive by finding and removing exposed PII through opt-out and deletion workflows at scale.If you’re a CISO, IT leader, or security practitioner trying to reduce phishing risk, social engineering risk, and account takeover risk, this is the playbook for treating privacy exposure as a core cybersecurity control. Subscribe, share this with your team, and leave a review with the one data source you think attackers rely on most.Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

May 28, 202621 min

How Spark Microsystems Makes Short-Range Wireless Deterministic

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comYour product can have a world-class cloud stack and a blazing-fast 5G link, then lose the whole experience in the last half meter. That’s the “last meter” problem, and it’s why we sat down with Dr. Frederic Nabki Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Spark Microsystems, to talk about ultra-wideband wireless that targets wirelike responsiveness instead of “good enough” latency.We dig into where Bluetooth and Wi‑Fi still shine and where they hit real limitations for deterministic wireless, ultra-low latency, and interference-heavy environments. Frederick explains why Spark’s approach uses impulse radio UWB, how sub-nanosecond-scale pulses change the game for multipath and coexistence, and how wide UWB spectrum enables frequency agility when the airwaves get crowded. If you’ve ever been in a trade show hall where microphones and earbuds fall apart, you’ll recognize why interference robustness is no longer optional for industrial IoT, medical devices, wearables, and robotics.The examples get concrete: a gaming mouse that targets about 150 microseconds end-to-end latency, robots that need fast control loops to avoid collisions, and brain-computer interface systems where cables create infection risk and power budgets are unforgiving. We also cover Spark’s go-to-market details, including transceiver silicon, an SDK, reference designs, antenna guidance for FR4 PCBs, and why modules can simplify certification.If you care about ultra-wideband, UWB data communication, ultra-low power wireless, and real-time connectivity, hit play, then subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review so more builders can find it.Support the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

May 27, 202625 min

AI’s Real Payoff In Telecom

Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.comYour carrier has more data than almost any company you interact with, yet most telcos still struggle to turn that advantage into growth. We sit down with Miguel Carames, the Chief Product Officer at Mobileum to sort out what’s real, what’s next, and what’s pure hype when it comes to AI in telecom, 5G monetization, and the future of operators as intelligence-driven businesses. Along the way, we get honest about why “we invested billions” doesn’t automatically translate to new revenue and why regulation and privacy expectations reshape every AI roadmap.We also challenge the idea that AI only arrived with generative tools. Telecom has used machine learning for years in automation, anomaly detection, and capacity planning, but the story hasn’t been told well. Miguel shares concrete, production-minded examples: using LLM-style interfaces to make deeply technical testing platforms usable for roaming managers and analysts, moving toward automated root cause analysis, and deploying agent workflows in fraud and revenue assurance so cases arrive pre-analyzed with evidence and a human still making the final call.From there we go into customer experience, where proactive network intelligence can prevent tickets before customers ever feel the pain, and into churn reduction, where the opportunity is huge but the privacy line is delicate. We wrap with fraud and security, the whack-a-mole reality of bad actors, and what it takes to escape pilot purgatory so telecom can move at AI speed. If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a telecom leader, and leave a review. What’s the best AI use case you’ve seen a telco actually scale?Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AICan't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the showMore at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

Is this your show?

Claim this listing to keep it up to date, reach guests who want to pitch you, and manage bookings with Guestify.

Claim this listing

More Technology podcasts

SowGrow Marketing Council

sgmc

BusinessMarketing

Toldjya Finance Podcast

Zac Huish, Cameron Cooke, and Paul Lamb

BusinessInvesting

What&#39;s Up with Tech?