What's Up with Tech?

Evan Kirstel
  • 5.0 (1)
  • TECHNOLOGY

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. 12H AGO

    CRM-Agnostic AI For Customer Calls

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 brings telephony, two-way messaging, and chat under one roof. The big promise is practical: stay CRM-agnostic so teams can keep Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics, or ServiceNow as the system of record while still connecting every conversation across channels. We explore what it looks like to deploy AI voice agents, AI message agents, and AI chat agents as the first touchpoint, so inbound callers get help fast and sales gets qualified opportunities instead of a messy backlog. Then we get specific about enterprise realities: legacy integrations, multiple platforms, and the need to map conversation history back into the CRM with actionable insights. Think call takeaways, meeting notes, next steps, lead scoring signals, and case trends that reveal the true root cause behind hundreds of support tickets. We also dig into rollout timelines, native integrations, and open APIs, plus the hard parts of making LLMs work on real calls with noise, accents, multilingual speakers, and the risk of hallucinations. If you care about AI customer experience, contact center automation, CRM integration, and faster speed-to-lead, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review with the AI use case you want to automate next. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    12 min

  2. 12H AGO

    Zoom’s Shift From Meetings To Work Products

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 capture interactions across platforms, building a durable repository that feels like perfect recall. We get into the less-hyped but crucial AI work that makes outputs reliable, like noise reduction, voice understanding, and meeting-room identity so tasks go to people instead of “Conference Room One.” Then we zoom out to the big product bet: AI canvases. With Zoom Docs as a text surface and new AI Slides and AI Sheets, AI Companion can translate what you discussed into a project plan, a deck, or a spreadsheet without the blank-page grind. We also explore how customer obsession shapes the AI roadmap, how a unified data layer connects customer experience, revenue, and support insights, and why healthcare could be a breakout use case for AI workflow automation, better clinician preparation, and more focused patient conversations. If you care about AI productivity, meeting intelligence, knowledge management, and practical enterprise AI, this is a clear look at where collaboration software is going next. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share this with a teammate who lives in meetings, and leave a review with your take: what should AI automate first in your daily workflow? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    10 min

  3. 17H AGO

    Cloud Native Without The Chaos

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 to a mainstream standard, and why that success brings a new set of problems: operational complexity, painful upgrades, lifecycle management, and the skills required to keep clusters stable over time. If your cloud native journey feels slower than the slide decks promised, this is the part you’ve been running into. We also unpack VCF’s product strategy for simplifying the cloud consumption experience by bringing key capabilities together, including automation and multi-tenant cloud operations. Dilpreet explains how combining ARIA Automation with vCloud Director can create a more unified interface for enterprises and cloud service providers, then tying that experience more deeply to the underlying Kubernetes and infrastructure fabric. The aim is a Kubernetes-like workflow where you declare what you want and the platform does the heavy lifting. Finally, we talk about a big shift we’re hearing from customers: they want that cloud experience on-prem. We connect that to telco modernization as networks move from VNFs to CNFs and the push toward modern telco cloud platforms announced at MWC. If you care about cloud native, Kubernetes operations, VMware Cloud Foundation, platform engineering, and what AI-era apps will demand next, this one is for you. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a teammate, and leave a review so more builders can find it. What’s been the hardest part of your Kubernetes or cloud native journey? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    7 min

  4. 17H AGO

    Contextual Intelligence For Contact Centers

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 with systems like ERP, sales, and operational data. Ray shares a standout customer story: an apparel brand hears repeated complaints about a shoe wearing out, then traces those calls to the exact product and lot number, tracks the issue into the supply chain, and gets proactive with customers before the problem snowballs. That’s root cause analysis built for speed, not a report you read a month later. We also talk about reality: multi-vendor environments, legacy tech, and a market crowded with agentic AI companies. The big takeaway is the feedback loop. When AI and humans do more work automatically, you still need a way to measure what changed, what worked, and what needs adjusting in real time across support, operations, training, and marketing. Ray also highlights expansion into non-traditional “contact center” settings like 211 organizations, proving the same foundation can drive mission-critical outcomes. Subscribe for more conversations on contact center innovation, customer experience analytics, and applied AI, then share this episode and leave a review. What back-office data would you connect to customer calls first? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    6 min

  5. 17H AGO

    How AI Turns Contact Center Calls Into CX And Revenue Wins

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 biased surveys, and churn-risk detection that can alert a retention team the moment a caller is truly unhappy. John explains how this “visibility first” approach helps teams protect revenue by catching problems early, while also improving coaching and consistency across agents. Then we move into revenue intelligence for sales conversations: spotting buying intent, understanding how reps handle objections, and finding missed opportunities that quietly drain conversions. We also talk deployment realities in complex environments, including cloud integrations with popular CCaaS and UCaaS platforms like RingCentral and Twilio, plus what onboarding and configuration can look like. The most exciting part is what’s new: Ask AI, a chat-style way to query large datasets and uncover trends across negative calls in seconds, and Zapier-powered workflows that can summarize a call, draft a personalized follow-up email, and automate next steps to improve CX and revenue outcomes. If you care about contact center AI, speech analytics, and practical automation, this one is built for you. Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    7 min

  6. 2D AGO

    How To Prove Customer Experience With End-To-End Assurance

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 experiences before changes hit production. Klearcom explains a non-intrusive approach to contact center testing and service assurance so you can spot routing issues, latency, and broken paths early, then measure performance like a repeatable confidence metric instead of a gut feeling. AI is the turning point. Everyone talks about what chatbots and conversational AI can improve, but far fewer talk about how to test them. We dig into chatbot testing that checks accuracy, brand guardrails, structured and unstructured conversations, and the moment that matters most: when a customer asks for an agent, how quickly do they actually get there, and does it meet your SLA? You will also hear how SaaS on AWS supports global teams while handling data residency needs, and why industries with high downtime costs test on a tight cadence. If you care about customer experience, contact center reliability, and testing AI before it tests your reputation, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with a teammate who owns CX or CCaaS migration, and leave a review, then tell us: what would you automate and test first in your customer journey? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    11 min

  7. 2D AGO

    How GTT Builds Networking And Security As A Service For The AI Era

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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 experience that helps customers connect, secure, and simplify. Tom explains the Envision platform and how it spans the edge, the core IP backbone, and public cloud so teams can deliver consistent connectivity, SD-WAN, and security outcomes while preparing for new AI workloads that increasingly want compute closer to the premises. Then we get practical about what agentic AI requires: data readiness, trustworthy context, and APIs that let agents act safely without constant human validation. We talk frameworks versus one-time deployments, why vendor lock-in is riskier in a fast-changing AI cycle, and how an “AI factory” mindset brings manufacturing discipline to data pipelines, orchestration, validation, deployment, and continuous improvement. We also share real internal examples, including a cash application agent that helps match remittances to invoices across messy real-world variations, plus how GPU infrastructure supports operational intelligence and proactive network issue detection. If you care about enterprise AI, SASE and SSE, edge computing, and building a scalable agentic architecture, this conversation is built for you. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review, what part of your AI foundation needs the most work right now? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    23 min

  8. 5D AGO

    Graph Databases For Enterprise AI

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com 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” behind enterprise AI, from knowledge graphs and digital twins to metadata, lineage, and even relationships between vector chunks for graph RAG. Philip explains the practical difference between raw data and knowledge, why multi-hop reasoning matters in domains like financial services and supply chain, and how an AI system can delegate deterministic parts of a problem to a graph while the model focuses on language and judgment. We also get specific about engineering tradeoffs: why relational databases struggle with constant schema changes, what index-free adjacency means for performance, and how graph queries can run 100x to 2000x faster with less hardware for deeply connected questions. Then we look ahead at where the category is going, including why “graph as a bolt-on feature” often misses the real benefits, plus a roadmap update on Infinigraph for scaling graphs into the 100+ terabyte range. Finally, we cover how AI is making graph adoption easier by inferring graph models from relational sources and helping teams write Cypher queries quickly. If you’re building enterprise AI, graph RAG, or agentic workflows and you care about accuracy, context, and causality, this conversation will sharpen your architecture instincts. Subscribe, share this with a builder on your team, and leave a review. What’s the hardest connected-data problem you want AI to solve? The Fresh Patch Podcast - Where Good Pets Get It. Welcome to the Fresh Patch Podcast where we talk about everything, from dog...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

    26 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
    616
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 TechInfluencer
  • Show Website
    What's Up with Tech?