Tech Talks Daily

If every company is now a tech company and digital transformation is a journey rather than a destination, how do you keep up with the relentless pace of technological change? Every day, Tech Talks Daily brings you insights from the brightest minds in tech, business, and innovation, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways. Hosted by Neil C. Hughes, Tech Talks Daily explores how emerging technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, fintech, quantum computing, Web3, and more are shaping industries and solving real-world challenges in modern businesses. Through candid conversations with industry leaders, CEOs, Fortune 500 executives, startup founders, and even the occasional celebrity, Tech Talks Daily uncovers the trends driving digital transformation and the strategies behind successful tech adoption. But this isn't just about buzzwords. We go beyond the hype to demystify the biggest tech trends and determine their real-world impact. From cybersecurity and blockchain to AI sovereignty, robotics, and post-quantum cryptography, we explore the measurable difference these innovations can make. Whether improving security, enhancing customer experiences, or driving business growth, we also investigate the ROI of cutting-edge tech projects, asking the tough questions about what works, what doesn't, and how businesses can maximize their investments. Whether you're a business leader, IT professional, or simply curious about technology's role in our lives, you'll find engaging discussions that challenge perspectives, share diverse viewpoints, and spark new ideas. New episodes are released daily, 365 days a year, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways around technology and the future of business.

  1. 7시간 전

    The Case for Digital IDs in Recruitment, Renting, and Beyond

    What if proving your right to work, rent, or even open a bank account didn’t require digging out your passport or waiting weeks for manual verification? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I’m joined by Hamraj Gulamali, Head of Legal and Compliance at Zinc, to talk about how digital identities are changing the way we think about employment, data ownership, and trust. Hamraj brings a unique perspective to the conversation. A barrister-turned-startup leader, he now sits at the centre of one of the UK’s most forward-thinking background check platforms. Zinc’s mission is simple but ambitious: to make employment identity verification faster, safer, and fairer. But as Hamraj points out, this shift isn’t just about convenience. It’s about control. We discuss how digital IDs are already helping automate background checks, reduce onboarding delays, and improve accuracy in high-volume hiring environments. Hamraj explains why placing ownership of work identity back in the hands of individuals has the potential to unlock wider applications—from renting a home to streamlining banking processes. But there’s also friction. Some industries face structural and cultural resistance. Others fear the cost of digital transformation or worry about public trust. Hamraj unpacks why regulators have both helped and hindered progress. He shares his view on the UK’s Trust Framework, the Online Safety Act, and why transparency, retention policies, and robust cybersecurity are essential for building public confidence. As we look ahead, Hamraj offers a clear vision for how verified digital IDs could simplify everyday tasks, slash manual admin, and reduce the compliance burden across multiple sectors. This episode cuts through the noise to offer a calm, informed, and practical take on one of the most overlooked shifts in how we live and work. Whether you’re in HR, tech, compliance, or just tired of carrying your passport across town on your first day of work, this conversation will get you thinking about what needs to happen next.

    48분
  2. 22시간 전

    How Tableau’s Srinivas Chippagiri Thinks About Responsible AI and Cloud Systems

    What does it take to build intelligent systems that are not only AI-powered but also secure, scalable, and grounded in real-world needs? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Srinivas Chippagiri, a senior technology leader and author of Building Intelligent Systems with AI and Cloud Technologies. With over a decade of experience spanning Wipro, GE Healthcare, Siemens, and now Tableau at Salesforce, Srinivas offers a practical view into how AI and cloud infrastructure are evolving together. We explore how AI is changing cloud-native development through predictive maintenance, automated DevOps pipelines, and developer co-pilots. But this is not just about technology. Srinivas highlights why responsible AI needs to be part of every system design, sharing examples from his own research into anomaly detection, fuzzy logic, and explainable models that support trust in regulated industries. The conversation also covers the rise of hybrid and edge computing, the real challenges of data fragmentation and compute costs, and how teams are adapting with new skills like prompt engineering and model observability. Srinivas gives a thoughtful view on what ethical AI deployment looks like in practice, from bias audits to AI governance boards. For those looking to break into this space, his advice is refreshingly clear. Start with small, end-to-end projects. Learn by doing. Contribute to open-source communities. And stay curious. Whether you're scaling AI systems, building a career in cloud tech, or just trying to keep pace with fast-moving trends, this episode offers a grounded and insightful guide to where things are heading next. Srinivas's book is available on Amazon under Building Intelligent Systems with AI and Cloud Technologies, and you can connect with him on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

    32분
  3. 1일 전

    Kinsta on Why 93% of Customers Still Prefer Human Support

    AI is finding its way into almost every corner of customer service, but is it really what customers want? According to Kinsta’s recent survey, the answer is overwhelmingly no. An incredible 93 percent of respondents said they would rather speak to a human than an AI chatbot when they need support. Nearly half even said they would cancel a service if it relied solely on AI-driven support. In this episode, Roger Williams, Community Manager at Kinsta, breaks down the story behind those numbers and explains why his team continues to invest heavily in human-first support. Kinsta has built its reputation on 24/7 access to real engineers who understand the complexities of WordPress hosting, resulting in a 98 percent customer satisfaction score and consistently high ratings on platforms like G2 and Trustpilot. Roger shares how Kinsta blends human expertise with AI tools in a way that enhances, rather than replaces, the customer experience. He talks about the role empathy plays in building trust, the importance of empowering support staff to own conversations, and why support should be viewed as an opportunity to strengthen relationships rather than just a cost to be reduced. We also discuss the growing perception that AI in support is more about saving money than improving service, how business leaders can avoid falling into that trap, and what the future of open web hosting could look like as AI capabilities mature. Whether you are in tech leadership, run a customer-facing team, or simply value a good support experience, this conversation offers insights that go beyond the AI hype and focus on what truly matters to customers.

    26분
  4. 1일 전

    How Vasion Balances Short-Term Wins with Long-Term Vision

    In a business climate shaped by rapid technological disruption, shifting geopolitical landscapes, and evolving customer expectations, strategy cannot remain static. JD Carter, Chief Strategy Officer at Vasion, believes the key to success lies in constantly aligning vision with execution while adapting to market realities in real time. In this conversation, JD shares how his role involves continuously monitoring external signals such as technology shifts, regulatory changes, and economic pressures, then translating those insights into operational action. We explore his approach to looking beyond the company vision by breaking it down into achievable missions that link long-term goals with day-to-day work across cross-functional teams. A major focus of the discussion is AI readiness and how organisations can move beyond hype to real impact. JD outlines a five-stage process for becoming AI-ready, starting with digitising and centralising documents and data, followed by cleaning and structuring information for use with large language models. He explains how automating repetitive workflows, modernising infrastructure, and ensuring interoperability across systems such as ERP and HR platforms create the foundation for orchestrated automation at scale. Governance and access controls complete the picture, ensuring that AI deployment meets both internal and regulatory standards. We also look at how Vasion balances short-term market needs with a long-term platform vision. JD describes how leveraging the company’s market-leading print infrastructure products supports current growth, while investing in R&D drives the development of a multi-product SaaS platform designed to integrate AI across the enterprise. A customer-first mindset shapes every decision, from pricing to product development, with continuous engagement through advisory boards, surveys, and direct conversations ensuring that partner strategies align with customer priorities. To illustrate these principles in action, JD shares how Vasion responded to market demand for system-generated print job support by developing a SaaS-based output automation product. This pivot addressed a gap created by ERP and EMR vendors moving customers to the cloud and positioned Vasion at the start of its multi-product journey. We discuss the signals leaders should watch to keep strategy relevant, including shifts in customer behaviour, the pace of technology adoption, and internal friction that may indicate misalignment. JD likens strategy to a GPS system, with vision as the destination and constant recalibration required to navigate roadblocks and changing conditions. The conversation closes with a focus on embedding strategic agility into company culture. JD explains Vasion’s Missions of Aspirational Performance system, which connects corporate values directly to execution by breaking down strategic goals into work that individuals can see contributing to the bigger picture. He also shares his personal three-pronged approach to continuous learning, combining formal education, informal learning, and mentor-driven guidance. This episode offers practical insight for leaders navigating uncertainty, balancing present-day demands with future opportunity, and embedding adaptability into the DNA of their organisations.

    21분
  5. 2일 전

    MariaDB’s Roadmap for Cloud, AI, and Performance Leadership

    MariaDB is a name with deep roots in the open-source database world, but in 2025 it is showing the energy and ambition of a company on the rise. Taken private in 2022 and backed by K1 Investment Management, MariaDB is doubling down on innovation while positioning itself as a strong alternative to MySQL and Oracle. At a time when many organisations are frustrated with Oracle’s pricing and MySQL’s cloud-first pivot, MariaDB is finding new opportunities by combining open-source freedom with enterprise-grade reliability. In this conversation, I sit down with Vikas Mathur, Chief Product Officer at MariaDB, to explore how the company is capitalising on these market shifts. Vikas shares the thinking behind MariaDB’s renewed focus, explains how the platform delivers similar features to Oracle at up to 80 percent lower total cost of ownership, and details how recent innovations are opening the door to new workloads and use cases. One of the most significant developments is the launch of Vector Search in January 2023. This feature is built directly into InnoDB, eliminating the need for separate vector databases and delivering two to three times the performance of PG Vector. With hardware acceleration on both x86 and IBM Power architectures, and native connectors for leading AI frameworks such as LlamaIndex, LangChain and Spring AI, MariaDB is making it easier for developers to integrate AI capabilities without complex custom work. Vikas explains how MariaDB’s pluggable storage engine architecture allows users to match the right engine to the right workload. InnoDB handles balanced transactional workloads, MyRocks is optimised for heavy writes, ColumnStore supports analytical queries, and Moroonga enables text search. With native JSON support and more than forty functions for manipulating semi-structured data, MariaDB can also remove the need for separate document databases. This flexibility underpins the company’s vision of one database for infinite possibilities. The discussion also examines how MariaDB manages the balance between its open-source community and enterprise customers. Community adoption provides early feedback on new features and helps drive rapid improvement, while enterprise customers benefit from production support, advanced security, high availability and disaster recovery capabilities such as Galera-based synchronous replication and the MacScale proxy. We look ahead to how MariaDB plans to expand its managed cloud services, including DBaaS and serverless options, and how the company is working on a “RAG in a box” approach to simplify retrieval-augmented generation for DBAs. Vikas also shares his perspective on market trends, from the shift away from embedded AI and traditional machine learning features toward LLM-powered applications, to the growing number of companies moving from NoSQL back to SQL for scalability and long-term maintainability. This is a deep dive into the strategy, technology and market forces shaping MariaDB’s next chapter. It will be of interest to database architects, AI engineers, and technology leaders looking for insight into how an open-source veteran is reinventing itself for the AI era while challenging the biggest names in the industry.

    27분
  6. 3일 전

    Denodo Technologies on Balancing AI Innovation with Data Integrity

    In this episode, I am joined by Charles Southwood, Regional Vice President, Denodo Technologies, a company recognised globally for its leadership in data management. With revenues of $288M and a customer base that includes Hitachi, Informa, Engie, and Walmart, Denodo sits at the heart of how enterprises access, trust, and act on their data. Charles brings over 35 years of experience in the tech industry, offering both a long-term view of how the data landscape has evolved and sharp insights into the challenges businesses face today. Our conversation begins with a pressing issue for any organisation exploring generative AI: data reliability. With many AI models trained on vast amounts of internet content, there is a real risk of false information creeping into business outputs. Charles explains why mitigating hallucinations and inaccuracies is essential not just for technical quality, but for protecting brand reputation and avoiding costly missteps. We explore alternative approaches that allow enterprises to benefit from AI innovation while maintaining data integrity and control. We also examine the broader enterprise pressures AI has created. The promise of reduced IT costs and improved agility is enticing, but how much of this is achievable today and how much is inflated by hype? Charles shares why he believes 2025 is a tipping point for achieving true business agility through data virtualisation, and what a virtualised data layer can deliver for teams across IT, marketing, and beyond. Along the way, Charles reflects on the industry shifts that caught him most by surprise, the decisions he would make differently with the benefit of hindsight, and the one golden rule he would share with younger tech professionals starting their careers now. This is a conversation for anyone who wants to understand how to harness AI and advanced data integration without falling into the traps of poor data quality, overblown expectations, or short-term thinking.

    34분
  7. 4일 전

    Akamai CTO on Why Real AI Assistants Are Still Far from Iron Man’s JARVIS

    In the movies, Tony Stark’s JARVIS is the ultimate AI assistant, managing schedules, running simulations, controlling environments, and anticipating needs before they are voiced. In reality, today’s AI agents are still far from that vision. Despite 2025 being heralded as the year of agentic AI, the first offerings from major players have been underwhelming. They can perform tasks, but they remain a long way from the seamless, hyper-intelligent assistants we imagined. In this episode, Dr. Robert “Bobby” Blumofe, CTO at Akamai Technologies, joins me to explore what is really holding AI assistants back and what it will take to build one as capable as a top human executive assistant. Bobby argues that the leap forward will not come from chasing ever-larger models but from optimization, efficiency, and integrating AI with the right tools, infrastructure, and processes. He believes that breakthroughs in model efficiency, like those seen in DeepSeek, could make capable agents affordable and viable for everyday use. We break down the spectrum of AI agents from simple, task-specific helpers to the fully autonomous, general-purpose vision of JARVIS. Bobby shares why many of the most valuable enterprise applications will come from the middle ground, where agents are semi-autonomous, task-focused, and integrated with other systems for reliability. He also explains why smaller, specialized models often outperform “ask me anything” LLMs for specific business use cases, reducing cost, latency, and security risks. The conversation covers Akamai’s role in enabling low-latency, scalable AI at the edge, the importance of combining neural and symbolic AI to achieve reliable reasoning and planning, and a realistic five-to-seven-year timeline for assistants that can rival the best human EAs. We also look at the technical, social, and business challenges ahead, from over-reliance on LLMs to the ethics of deploying highly capable agents at scale. This is a grounded, forward-looking discussion on the future of AI assistants, where they are today, why they have fallen short, and the practical steps needed to turn fiction into reality.

    36분
  8. 5일 전

    Cognizant AI CTO on Open Source, AI Trust, and the Road Ahead

    Multi-agent AI systems are moving from theory to enterprise reality, and in this episode, Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant, explains why he believes they represent the future of business. Speaking from his AI R&D lab in San Francisco, Babak outlines how his team is both deploying these systems inside Cognizant and helping clients build their own, breaking down organisational silos, coordinating processes, and improving decision-making. We discuss how the arrival of optimized, open-source models like DeepSeek is accelerating AI democratization, making it viable to run capable agents on far smaller infrastructure. Babak explains why this is not a “Sputnik moment” for AI, but a powerful industry correction that opens the door for more granular, cost-effective agents. This shift is enabling richer, more scalable multi-agent networks, with agents that can not only perform autonomous tasks but also communicate and collaborate with each other. Babak also introduces Cognizant’s open-sourced Neuro-AI Network platform, designed to be model and cloud agnostic while supporting large-scale coordination between agents. By separating the opaque AI model from the fully controllable code layer, the platform builds in safeguards for trust, data handling, and access control, addressing one of the most pressing challenges in AI adoption. Looking ahead, Babak predicts rapid growth in multi-agent ecosystems, including inter-company agent communication and even self-evolving agent networks. He also stresses the importance of open-source collaboration in AI’s next chapter, warning that closed, proprietary approaches risk slowing innovation and eroding trust. This is a deep yet accessible conversation for anyone curious about how enterprise AI is evolving from single, monolithic models to flexible, distributed systems that can adapt and scale. You can learn more about Cognizant’s AI work at cognizant.com and follow Babak’s insights on LinkedIn.

    33분

호스트 및 게스트

5
최고 5점
197개의 평가

소개

If every company is now a tech company and digital transformation is a journey rather than a destination, how do you keep up with the relentless pace of technological change? Every day, Tech Talks Daily brings you insights from the brightest minds in tech, business, and innovation, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways. Hosted by Neil C. Hughes, Tech Talks Daily explores how emerging technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, fintech, quantum computing, Web3, and more are shaping industries and solving real-world challenges in modern businesses. Through candid conversations with industry leaders, CEOs, Fortune 500 executives, startup founders, and even the occasional celebrity, Tech Talks Daily uncovers the trends driving digital transformation and the strategies behind successful tech adoption. But this isn't just about buzzwords. We go beyond the hype to demystify the biggest tech trends and determine their real-world impact. From cybersecurity and blockchain to AI sovereignty, robotics, and post-quantum cryptography, we explore the measurable difference these innovations can make. Whether improving security, enhancing customer experiences, or driving business growth, we also investigate the ROI of cutting-edge tech projects, asking the tough questions about what works, what doesn't, and how businesses can maximize their investments. Whether you're a business leader, IT professional, or simply curious about technology's role in our lives, you'll find engaging discussions that challenge perspectives, share diverse viewpoints, and spark new ideas. New episodes are released daily, 365 days a year, breaking down complex ideas into clear, actionable takeaways around technology and the future of business.

Tech Talks Network의 콘텐츠 더 보기

좋아할 만한 다른 항목