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. 2d ago

    How To Store And Serve AI Data At Scale

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Everyone is obsessed with bigger models and faster GPUs, but the part that decides whether AI actually works in the real world is the data behind it. We talk with Paul Speciale CMO at Scality, about what happens when enterprises try to store, protect, and serve AI data at petabyte and exabyte scale, and why the rise of huge context windows turns “just a chat” into a massive storage and latency problem. We walk through the full enterprise AI pipeline, from data collection and cleansing to inference and the long archive tail most teams never plan for. Paul breaks down which AI phases truly need the fastest storage, why inference can demand microsecond access, and how tiered designs (hot, warm, cool) align to modern GPU stacks. We also dig into what’s changing in the market right now: flash price spikes, constrained supply, and the reality that power per rack often matters more than raw capacity. From there, we get practical about operations and risk. We explore autonomous infrastructure as “tell the system what you want, not how to do it,” including human-in-the-loop recommendations that can move data to cheaper tiers and cut power bills. We also cover cyber resilient storage, immutability for ransomware defense, and the growing pressure around data sovereignty and even code transparency. If you’re building an AI infrastructure plan, this is the blueprint mindset that keeps GPUs busy and data trustworthy. Subscribe, share this with your infrastructure team, and leave a review with the biggest AI data challenge you’re facing. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  2. Jul 31

    How Pega Blueprint Changes Who Builds Software

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com AI is cranking out more code than ever, but that doesn’t mean teams are shipping the right outcomes. From PegaWorld, I sat down with Steph Lewis, Senior Director of Community Developer Programs at Pega Systems, to unpack what’s actually changing for developers, architects, and business stakeholders as AI, agents, and LLMs reshape enterprise delivery.  We get specific about the Solution Designer role Steph helped build and why it’s showing up now. We talk about Pega Blueprint as a practical way to turn business ideas into a live application earlier, and how that changes the skills teams need across low-code development, workflow automation, and digital transformation. Steph explains why the goal never changes (delivering value), but the day-to-day work does, especially as “hands-on keyboard” tasks shrink and the need to challenge AI outputs grows.  A big thread is the human edge: judgment, creativity, and the discipline to align what you build with what stakeholders truly need. We dig into the skills gap Steph sees most often, why workshops and real conversations beat passive training, and what sits behind eye-catching outcomes like 80% of projects going live in 90 days. We also zoom out to what Steph wants for the developer community over the next year: guiding architecture decisions, placing Pega in the right spots, and incorporating other agents only when it makes sense.  If you care about modern software delivery, developer enablement, and the real-world impact of AI on building systems, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with your take: what “human skill” will matter most as AI becomes default? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  3. Jul 24

    Why CRM Still Fails Sellers And How AI Fixes It

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Your CRM knows a lot about your customers, so why does it still feel like a place you go to do homework? We talk with SugarAI CEO David Roberts about the hard truth many sellers live every week: CRM has mostly evolved into a management tool, not a system that makes reps better in the moment that matters, right before a call, a meeting, or a critical follow-up. We dig into why the “360-degree view of the customer” often backfires. More dashboards and more reports can create more overwhelm, especially when a rep is managing hundreds of accounts, dozens of deals, and a product catalog with thousands of SKUs. David lays out a more practical promise for AI in CRM: move from data straight to action. Instead of forcing sellers through a rigid process, AI can interpret unstructured sales work like emails and meetings, spot gaps like missing executive sponsors, and recommend the next best step that improves retention, expansion, or new business. We also explore contextual intelligence and “precision selling” and why generic AI advice is easy to ignore. The best guidance comes from combining customer data with the real selling context: sales methodology, pitch decks, competitive battle cards, and objection handling. For manufacturing and distribution teams, connecting front-office CRM with back-office ERP data like inventory and shipping can surface reorder opportunities without sending reps into endless spreadsheets. If you care about sales productivity, revenue team performance, AI CRM, and faster sales onboarding, you’ll get a lot from this conversation. Subscribe, share this with a sales leader or RevOps partner, and leave a review with the biggest “next step” you wish your CRM would tell you. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  4. Jul 23

    When AI Learns Your Workflow Who Wins The Market

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Your AI demo is easy. Shipping AI inside a regulated insurance workflow is the hard part and that’s where the real advantage gets built. We sit down with Doug Marquis, CTO at ZyWave, to get specific about what’s changing in insurance technology and why “agentic AI” only matters when it reliably drives growth outcomes for agencies and brokers. We dig into ZyWave’s front office focus from lead identification and marketing to quoting, service, and renewals and why that matters as the insurance workforce ages and capacity tightens. Doug breaks down the two inputs that separate winners from copycats: access to high-quality insurance data and the discipline to encode domain knowledge and real producer workflows into artifacts that AI agents can actually use. We also talk through how automation can cut the administrative load so producers spend more time being consultative with customers. Then we get practical about enterprise AI: compliance and security up front, licensing and data access controls, and the “AI harness” you need around agents, including observability, testing, cost management, and explainability. Doug also explains ZyWave’s insurance MCP server and how plugging insurance-specific data into LLM tools turns generic answers into specialized, contextual guidance. If you’re a CIO, CTO, or product leader trying to move from pilots to production, this is a clear look at what to prioritize next. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a teammate building enterprise AI, and leave a review with the biggest challenge you’re facing right now. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  5. Jul 20

    Stop Drowning In Security Alerts

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com AI isn’t just changing cybersecurity tools, it’s changing the pace of the entire fight. When attackers can scale campaigns with automation and operate at machine speed, the old rhythm of annual pen tests and quarterly reviews stops making sense. We sit down with Hom Bahmanyar Global Enablement Officer at Ridge Security, to talk about what security teams are up against right now and how continuous security validation can turn an endless backlog of findings into a short list of exposures that truly matter. We dig into the problem every enterprise security team feels: information overload. Vulnerability scanners generate massive reports, but severity scores don’t reliably predict what gets exploited in the wild. Our focus shifts to a more practical approach to vulnerability management and exposure management, prioritizing issues based on exploitability in your specific environment and whether the weakness is actually visible to a threat actor. That perspective helps reduce alert fatigue and aligns remediation work with real-world risk. From there, we explore how agentic AI and autonomous security testing change the workflow. Hom explains why being model agnostic matters, especially for organizations that must run in air-gapped environments and rely on open source or open weight models. We also talk about why remediation is the bottleneck, how compensating controls like firewalls can buy time while patching catches up, and what early results can look like when teams start validating continuously, including uncovering previously missed SQL injection. If you care about continuous security validation, AI-powered penetration testing, and keeping pace with modern cyber threats, subscribe, share this episode with a teammate, and leave a review. What part of vulnerability triage or remediation slows your team down the most? 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   Spotify Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  6. Jul 17

    HIPAA-Ready AI Health Tech

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com AI is rewriting the rules of healthcare software development, but building a secure scalable healthcare platform still comes down to fundamentals: clear requirements, strong ownership, and serious engineering discipline around HIPAA compliance and PHI protection. We sit down with Ghazenfer Mansoor, founder and CEO of TechnologyRivers, to talk through what’s working right now as digital health teams race from prototype to production. We get practical about how AI fits into the real build process, including rapid POCs, code generation, and stronger testing through AI-assisted unit tests and code coverage. Then we dig into the part most teams learn the hard way: you can’t treat AI like a simple Google search when the data is sensitive and the scale is real. We talk about why “upload your company docs” breaks down, and how patterns like RAG architecture and vector databases can support safer internal search and analysis without losing control of private data. We also cover the repeat mistakes that sink health tech MVPs, especially unclear requirements and fuzzy decision-making. From there, we talk UX and UI in healthcare, focusing on designing for patients, clinicians, and admins based on what they actually need to do. Finally, we look at low-code and no-code in healthcare, how to turn white-coded prototypes into production-ready HIPAA compliant software, and what interoperability and emerging ideas like MCP could mean for the next wave of EHR-connected apps. Subscribe for more conversations on digital health, healthcare IT, and AI in clinical workflows, then share this with a builder on your team and leave a review. What’s the hardest part of shipping healthcare software in your world right now? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  7. Jul 17

    Why AI Era Security Needs Hardware Keys

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com Phishing used to be a numbers game. With AI, it’s becoming a personalization game and that’s exactly why “good enough” login security is quietly turning into a liability. We sit down with Dawn Manley, PhD, SVP, Product Management of Yubico to talk about why phishing-resistant authentication is now a must-have for anyone protecting high-value accounts, especially as AI tools become central to daily work and decision-making.  We get specific about OpenAI’s Advanced Account Security and why YubiKeys are part of the story. AI accounts can hold an incredible amount of sensitive context: drafts, strategies, internal notes, customer data, and the breadcrumbs of how you think. That makes ChatGPT account security and account takeover prevention far more than a technical checkbox. Dawn explains how hardware-backed security keys work in real life, why they’re considered phishing resistant, and how they avoid the weak points of SMS codes, intercepted OTPs, and push-notification tricks.  Then we zoom out to the next wave: AI agents and agentic commerce. When software can act on your behalf, the question shifts from “who logged in?” to “who approved this action?” We talk about proving human intent for high-risk moments, using strong cryptography as a trust anchor, and what it looks like to deploy hardware-backed passkeys across an entire organization without relying on users to spot every scam.  If you care about identity and access management, FIDO2 passkeys, enterprise security, or protecting AI workflows, you’ll walk away with a clearer model for what “strong authentication” really means now. Subscribe, share this with someone still relying on codes, and leave a review with your biggest question about phishing-resistant security. Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

  8. Jul 14

    Real Leadership Development Starts With A Deep Inventory Of Self

    Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com The leadership playbook a lot of us grew up with is starting to fail in the moments that matter most: high pressure decisions, fast growth, founder stress, and team conflict that can’t be solved with a new script. We sit down with Peter Carnochan , an executive coach who is also a psychologist and trained psychoanalyst, to talk about a simple idea with big consequences: the next frontier of leadership development is within, not without. We unpack why “good enough” emotional skills stop working when you’re building at the highest levels, and why surface changes can feel impressive until stress hits and the veneer cracks. Peter introduces what he calls “radiant change” and explains how real, durable growth starts at the center of the self and spreads outward into communication, decision-making, and culture. Along the way, we talk about why a therapeutic approach to executive coaching is less generic, why not everyone should try to lead like the loudest celebrity CEO, and why the future belongs to a plurality of leadership styles that fit the person, not the stereotype. The conversation gets personal through the story behind the documentary “Andre Is An Idiot,” a comedy about dying made after a stage four cancer diagnosis. It becomes a lens for meaning, mortality, and purpose and a reminder that people want leaders who care about the whole organization and community, not only the bottom line at all costs. If you’re a founder, CEO, or operator looking for sustainable high performance, emotional resilience, and deeper leadership presence, this one will challenge you in the best way. Subscribe, share this with a leader who’s under pressure, and leave a review if it helps you lead with more clarity. What inner pattern do you think most limits great leadership? Support the show More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel

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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
    669
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 TechInfluencer
  • Show Website
    What's Up with Tech?