What's Up with Tech?

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

  1. 23 HR AGO

    Broadcom’s Telco Cloud Playbook

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 to choose best-of-breed network functions. We also dive into AI where talk meets traction. Broadcom is rolling out integrated management for NVIDIA GPUs directly in the platform, making it practical to offer GPU-as-a-service and manage accelerator resources with the same tooling operators already trust. That creates a clean path for enterprise AI workloads and sets the stage for the next leap: virtualization of GPUs. By bringing their virtualization heritage to accelerators, Broadcom is targeting higher utilization, better isolation, and elastic scaling for inference and training across the network and at the edge. Vendor lock-in has long slowed telco transformation, so we explore how a true horizontal platform changes the equation. CSPs can run virtualized and containerized network functions from multiple suppliers on the same infrastructure, swap vendors as needs evolve, and rely on a rigorous ecosystem program for pre-qualification and certification. That means less integration risk, fewer surprises in deployment, and faster routes to revenue. We round out the conversation with Europe’s rising demand for sovereign cloud—country-level compliance, data privacy, and security—and how recent national certifications prove the model is working in practice. If you care about open ecosystems, sovereign-ready architectures, and an AI-enabled telco cloud that actually reduces time to market, this conversation is for you. Follow the show, share it with a colleague who’s building next-gen networks, and leave a quick review to tell us what you want covered next. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    11 min

  2. 23 HR AGO

    Global IoT, Anywhere You Need It

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com What happens when connectivity grows from a niche tool into the backbone of modern industry? We sit with Erik Brenneis CEO of Vodafone IoT, to explore how a team that started in the M2M era now supports 230 million connections across 180 countries and 760 networks. From connected cars that update themselves over the air to smart meters reshaping utilities, we trace the systems, standards, and strategy that turned scattered pilots into dependable, planet-scale services. Eric breaks down where the demand is strongest—automotive, energy, industrial equipment, payments—and why connected health is surging with pacemakers, sleep apnea devices, and dialysis machines that need authenticated, encrypted, and reliable links. We go inside the operating model: embedded technical teams near customer R&D centers, direct access to experts, and local solutions for complex markets like Turkey, Brazil, and the UAE to meet data residency and regulatory needs without redesigning products per country. Security takes center stage as we contrast consumer SIM behavior with a closed IoT system that authenticates all traffic and blocks unauthorized access. Then we zoom out to the unexpected: conservation stories from tracking seals, rhinos, and whales, and environmental protection through early forest fire detection. Finally, we look ahead to a major shift—evolving from mobile-only to a hybrid mobile plus satellite network through partnerships with Iridium and Skylo, delivering ubiquitous coverage without new hardware. That leap doesn’t just connect more places; it feeds industrial AI with the steady, trustworthy data it needs to drive real outcomes. If you enjoy conversations that blend real-world deployments with what’s next in connectivity, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend who loves tech that actually ships. What would you connect first? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    9 min

  3. 23 HR AGO

    Inside Amdocs AOS: How Unified AI Reinvents Telecom

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com What if a telecom could think with one brain? We sit down at MWC with Gil Rosen CMO from Amdocs to unpack how the company is shifting from building point solutions to delivering AOS, an agentic operating system that orchestrates many AI agents as a single, contextual layer across the business. Instead of bolt-on automations, AOS connects decisions end to end—governed, explainable, and secure—so outcomes are consistent and measurable. We walk through why domain expertise matters: telecom-specific ontologies, prebuilt process libraries, and open integration with non-Amdocs BSS, financial, and logistics systems. Gil explains how trust becomes non-negotiable when AI touches money and identity, outlining controls for repeatability, policy adherence, auditability, and scale. Then we go practical. With Market One data across tens of millions of subscriptions, operators can see which OTT bundles trend, how device cycles forecast upgrades, and where local behavior shapes winning offers. The result is smarter pricing, higher ARPU, and faster testing without rip and replace. The conversation takes a human turn with “waiting is gone.” Voice-first agents shift service from taps to talk, powered by two new layers: personality engineering to encode brand tone, and a customer digital twin that aggregates thousands of signals to tailor language, depth, and empathy. A techie hears throughput and latency; a casual user gets plain guidance and reassurance. Early results are striking, with personalized agents showing up to 3x NPS gains versus generic interactions. Beyond speed, customers feel understood—and that feeling moves retention, referrals, and revenue. Change is urgent. Three years ago the story was 5G; now it’s outcomes customers can feel. AOS offers a collaborative path forward, coordinating multi-vendor agents and existing stacks while upgrading the experience layer. If you’re ready to reimagine service, unlock new bundles, and replace hold music with helpful conversation, tune in—and then share your take. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what part of the customer journey AI should transform next. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    12 min

  4. 23 HR AGO

    Trust, Autonomy, And The New Rules Of AI-Driven NetOps

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 and escalate, using shared telemetry to pinpoint where issues live—whether that’s an ISP interface, a cloud region, or a misconfigured DHCP pool. Joe shares a live example showcased at Cisco Live where a days-long incident class, like DHCP pool exhaustion, is now identified in real time and resolved with guided workflows, shrinking resolution from days to minutes. Then we look ahead. As AI agents proliferate, networks must support machine-to-machine traffic that never sleeps and often surges in bursts. We break down the essentials: identity for agents, least-privilege access, and microsegmentation that aligns with intent. We also explore how an AI canvas brings networking, security, and observability into a multiplayer workspace, replacing giant war rooms with a precise, shared picture and deterministic actions. Trust is the final mile to autonomy, and we detail how deep network models—trained on decades of TAC knowledge—can make automated actions explainable, auditable, and safe for mission-critical environments. By the end, you’ll have a clear playbook: use cross-domain evidence to localize issues, standardize incident response, automate the repeatable, and measure success by tickets avoided rather than just MTTR. If you’re preparing for AI-to-AI traffic, aligning security with agent behavior, and aiming to prevent problems before users ever notice, this conversation is your roadmap. If this resonates, follow, share with your team, and leave a quick review to help more builders find it. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    20 min

  5. 3 DAYS AGO

    HCLTech’s AI-Native Playbook For Telecom, Media, And Platforms

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Ready to move from AI pilots to P&L? We sit down with HCLTech’s Anil Ganjoo to unpack how telecom, media, and technology are converging into an AI-native future where outcomes rule, stacks unify, and partners co-create at speed. The conversation starts with HCLTech’s engineering roots and tracks a bold evolution into an IP-led, platform-driven strategy that spans networks, cloud, edge, data, and silicon—giving operators and media leaders the tools to turn infrastructure into monetizable products. We dig into the realities of 5G monetization, where enterprise use cases like private 5G, network slicing, fixed wireless access, and edge AI are generating measurable ROI, while consumer ARPU remains a longer play. On the media front, Gen AI is transforming vast content libraries into searchable, reusable, and hyper-personalized experiences that raise engagement and cut churn. Anil explains why AI must be embedded across the entire stack—think AI as the brain, with cloud, networks, edge, and data as the nervous system—to unlock dynamic pricing, predictive maintenance, churn prevention, and planet-scale personalization. The shift from telco to techco takes center stage as we explore network APIs, platform ecosystems, and product-aligned operating models. We get practical on commercial innovation too: outcome-based engagements, gain-share structures, and transparent KPIs tied to revenue growth, cost-to-serve reduction, billing accuracy, and NPS. Partnerships power the journey, from co-built AI factories with Nvidia to agentic solutions with Microsoft and Google Cloud, all industrialized into OSS/BSS and modern network architectures to scale beyond proofs of concept. We close with sharp predictions for what will accelerate next: agentic AI in core operations, autonomous and AI-native networks, edge AI plus enterprise 5G crossing the chasm, custom silicon for real-time inference, and services-as-software powered by AI agents. Headed to MWC Barcelona? Come see the demos and strategy sessions at Hall 2.  The Path to ExitFounders—thinking of selling or raising capital? Here's what you should know... Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    28 min

  6. 4 DAYS AGO

    From HIPAA To AI Agents: How To Scale Secure Digital Health Products

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Building great health tech isn’t about stacking features. It’s about clarity, secure architecture, and the courage to automate the real bottlenecks. We sit down with Technology Rivers founder and CEO to unpack how AI is changing the way we design, build, and scale HIPAA-compliant digital health products without cutting corners on privacy or performance. We talk through the full development lifecycle and where AI actually pulls its weight: rapid proofs of concept, code generation that respects standards, unit testing and coverage, and fast UX prototyping that gets teams aligned. Then we draw a hard line around risk. If you’re uploading sensitive docs to generic endpoints or treating PHI like search fuel, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. We break down practical strategies like retrieval-augmented generation, clean vector design, strict access control, audit logging, and the human-in-the-loop practices that keep systems safe as they scale. From there, we tackle the real reasons projects fail: blurry requirements and no single owner. You’ll hear a playbook for defining outcomes, narrowing scope to a lovable version one, and building for specific users—clinicians, patients, and admins—with interfaces that are simple, informed, and fast. We also explore how to graduate low-code MVPs into production systems without tossing your work: evolve schemas, enforce coding standards, add encryption and RBAC, and ship with CI and observability. On interoperability, we go beyond EHR APIs and highlight model context protocol—the next step in connecting AI agents to your data and workflows in a controlled, auditable way. If you’re planning for VIVE or HIMSS, or you’re mapping your next quarter, this conversation gives you a sharp lens: build automation where it matters, protect data by design, and use AI to amplify well-defined processes. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review with the one build challenge you want us to unpack next. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    22 min

  7. 5 DAYS AGO

    From 5G Hangover To AI Monetization: Broadcom’s Telco Playbook

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Telco's growth model is broken. Here's the blueprint to fix it. 5G returns are under pressure. Hardware costs keep climbing. And operators are drowning in complexity they can't monetize. We sat down with VMware by Broadcom leaders to cut through the noise and what emerged is a sharp, actionable roadmap for what comes next. Three big shifts every telco leader needs to understand: **1. The mobile core is your highest-leverage asset right now.** Not the edge. Not the RAN. The core — and the operators who productize it with disciplined lifecycle management will outpace those still treating software as an afterthought on hardware. **2. AI monetization is real — but only if you architect for it.** The team walks through VMware Cloud Foundation as the engine for GPU-as-a-service and AI-as-a-service: model stores, runtimes, vector databases, compliance baked in, data isolation from day one. Not someday. Now. **3. Sovereign cloud isn't a checkbox anymore — it's a revenue line.** Especially in Europe. Jurisdiction and residency are becoming competitive differentiators, not legal formalities. The operators moving fast here will own the enterprise stack. We also go deep on: → Co-innovation with Nokia, Ericsson, Mavenir, and Oracle — and why full-stack ecosystem orchestration is replacing the old "software on hardware" mindset → How consolidated dashboards, certification, observability, and license governance cut change risk and accelerate upgrades — and why this matters *more* as Kubernetes complexity stacks up → Intelligent operations: embedded AI that reads signals across storage, network, compute, and Kubernetes — and recommends next actions while keeping humans in the loop → Agentic AI traffic: bursty, hard to cache, and arriving fast. Telcos sit at the crossroads of inter-DC connectivity, edge placement, and quality guarantees — and that's a strategic position worth owning The bold takeaway: stop selling raw connectivity. Start selling trusted AI capacity and outcomes. If you're lowering TCO, launching AI services, or charting a pragmatic path toward autonomous networks — this conversation will help you act with confidence, not just follow the hype. 🎧 Listen now. Subscribe for more candid strategy talks. 📤 Share with your team if you're rethinking your telco roadmap. 💬 Drop a comment: **What's the one business outcome you're chasing in 2025?** Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    19 min

  8. 23 FEB

    Designing Trust: How Age Verification Protects Kids And Platforms

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com How do you protect teenagers online without turning every app into an ID checkpoint? That's the question governments, platforms, and parents are all wrestling with right now — and most of the answers so far have been blunt, binary, and broken. We sat down with our guest from TELUS Digital to go beyond the headlines and into the actual design challenge: what age verification gets right, what it gets dangerously wrong, and how to build systems that protect young people without making privacy feel like a casualty. Here's what we unpacked: The smartest approach isn't one-size-fits-all. It's layered and proportionate: → **Low-risk spaces** (forums, general content) can rely on self-declaration and behavioral signals → **Medium-risk spaces** use facial age estimation — a quick confidence range, image deleted immediately, no data stored → **High-risk spaces** (adult content, dating, gambling) justify stronger verification with human-in-the-loop review The architecture matters as much as the intent. Poor design is how safety becomes surveillance. Transparency is the trust engine.Us ers need to know *why* their data is requested, *how* it's processed, and *what* they can do when the system gets it wrong. Appeals aren't a nice-to-have — they're the difference between a system people accept and one they route around. We also got into the real trade-offs nobody talks about enough: accuracy, privacy, inclusion, and the very real risk that blanket bans — like those emerging in Australia, Spain, and across the EU — backfire without safer defaults, stronger parental tools, and genuine digital literacy investment. Our guest walks through how TELUS Digital supports clients across the full stack: content moderation, fraud prevention, bias testing, account security, age estimation models, and verification systems built to correct mistakes at scale. And we close on where this is all heading — zero-knowledge proofs, privacy-preserving credentials, and portable age attestations that raise protections while *reducing* data exposure. The technology is ahead of the policy. The question is whether platforms will lead or wait to be forced. If you're building products that touch teenagers, this conversation is for you. The Path to ExitFounders—thinking of selling or raising capital? Here's what you should know... Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    25 min
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About

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!

Information

  • Creator
    Evan Kirstel
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    602
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 TechInfluencer
  • Show Website
    What's Up with Tech?