Category: TWIET

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TWIET 49 – Feb. 12, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Episode 49, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO Office:

  1. Good News:  Ransomware Down 35%!
  2. AWS S3 Bucket Registrations: A Sneaky Backdoor Threat
  3. Zoho Day and the Race to Agentic AI
  4. Fei Fei Li: “It Takes 50 Dollars to Distill A Reasoning Model”
  5. Will Semiconductor Tariffs Force CIOs to Close the Deal?
  6. Is the CIO a Policy Strategist or Rubber Stamp?
  7. Will the Windows 10 Sunset Force AI PCs into the Workplace?
  8. CIOs Bullish on AI, IT Employees Not So Much
  9. Where Salesforce AI’s Super Bowl Ad Missed the Mark

Good News: Ransomware Down 35%!

Some good news from 2024: Ransomware payments were down 35% last year, as no new large cartels got into the business and law enforcement was better at tracing down threats. Are we safe now, or is this the calm before the storm? Charles and Hyoun put on their strategy hats and explore the future of Ransomware. 

Chainalysis: https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-crime-ransomware-victim-extortion-2025/ 

AWS S3 Bucket Registrations: a Sneaky Backdoor Threat

Watchtowr Labs found a lot of examples of software update and binary requests associated with abandoned S3 buckets that could have been replaced with malware or backdoor access. Hyoun and Charles discuss how challenging it has become to manage cloud infrastructure.  

Watchtowr: https://labs.watchtowr.com/8-million-requests-later-we-made-the-solarwinds-supply-chain-attack-look-amateur/ 

Zoho Day and the Race to Agentic AI

Zoho has introduced Zia AI Agents to automate tasks across its products, while Sridhar Vembu has stepped down as CEO. As long-time observers, Hyoun and Charles discuss what this makes for Zoho’s 900,000 global customers. 


CX Today: https://www.cxtoday.com/crm/zoho-previews-ai-agents-commits-to-low-pricing-shares-more-on-its-ceo-transition/ 

Fei-Fei Li: “It Takes 50 Dollars to Distill A Reasoning Model”

Researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington developed an AI reasoning model for under $50, training the s1 model with Gemini and Alibaba Qwen 2.5. Charles and Hyoun raise questions about the future of AI innovation, as smaller teams can cheaply replicate advanced models. 

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/05/researchers-created-an-open-rival-to-openais-o1-reasoning-model-for-under-50/ 

Will Semiconductor Tariffs Force CIOs to Close the Deal?

Tariffs are now a strategic concern for the CIO. Get your timing wrong and your data center costs could spike unexpectedly. With potential tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductor chips on the horizon, Charles and Hyoun debate the strategy and timing for purchasing new compute or just outsourcing to the cloud.

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/04/nvidia_trump_tariffs/ 

Is the CIO a Policy Strategist or a Rubber Stamp?

The Trump administration wants to change the CIO position from a “career-reserved” or merit-based position to a political appointment with the logic that the CIO ends up defining how policy is deployed. Charles and Hyoun consider how important the CIO should be considered as a strategic executive for deploying policy, or if the CIO should be considered a rubber stamp for the CEO’s work.

CHCOC.gov: https://tinyurl.com/OPMCIOMemo  

Will the Windows 10 Sunset Force AI PCs into the Workplace?

Now that Microsoft has announced a sunset date for Windows 10, CIOs need to figure out their next PC refresh. Of course Microsoft will push for AI-ready Windows 11 devices, with room for small or distilled models in the OS. Charles and Hyoun discuss the Microsoft AI PC strategy for the enterprise.

Paula Rooney on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3812887/will-the-end-of-windows-10-accelerate-cio-interest-in-ai-pcs.html 

CIOs Bullish on AI, IT Employees Not So Much

IT employees are not excited about AI, but CIOs and CTOs believe they will soon be essential in businesses. However, many IT professionals are skeptical due to concerns about deployment challenges and past AI project failures. Charles and Hyoun debate the real time frames for realistic AI success. 

Grant Gross on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3815935/cios-are-bullish-on-ai-agents-it-employees-not-so-much.html  

Where Salesforce AI’s Super Bowl Ad Missed the Mark

Salesforce’s ad featuring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson highlights the confusing role of AI in everyday life. Instead of solving real problems, the ad portrays a bizarre scenario where AI is needed for basic tasks like dining and making reservations. Hyoun and Charles ponder why AI ads are spending so much just to miss the mark. 

Defector: https://defector.com/salesforce-is-using-a-hallucination-to-sell-ai 

Salesforce AI Super Bowl Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4JNLL7U8H8

Google Gemini Super Bowl Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7e6g11BJc0

ServiceNow AI Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IqR735mAo4

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TWIET 48 – Feb. 5, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Episode 48, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO Office:

  1. Earnings: IBM, SAP, ServiceNow
  2. ServiceNow’s AI Orchestrator Automates Complex Workflows
  3. IT Service Automator Atomicwork Secures $25M
  4. EU AI Act In Effect: Now What?
  5. Musk’s Government Actions Stoke CIO Concerns
  6. DeepSeek’s Disruption: Lower AI Costs, More Efficient Models
  7. New US CIO Barbachi’s Background Brings Up Big Questions

Earnings: IBM, SAP, ServiceNow

Hyoun and Charles examined last week’s earnings announcements from IBM, SAP, and ServiceNow. IBM is embracing AI and cloud consulting under CEO Arvind Krishna, while SAP is shifting towards cloud adoption despite its legacy challenges. ServiceNow impressed with growth and CRM expansion, despite stock market reactions.

CNBC on IBM: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/30/ibm-rallies-heads-for-best-day-ever-on-strong-earnings.html

SAP: https://news.sap.com/2025/01/sap-announces-q4-and-fy-2024-results/ 

ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/company/media/press-room/fourth-quarter-full-year-2024-financial-results.html 

ServiceNow’s AI Orchestrator Automates Complex Workflows

ServiceNow is making bold moves into CRM and agentic AI, positioning itself directly against Salesforce. Despite strong announcements, Charles feels ServiceNow’s pitch seems forced, signaling their desire to catch up. The challenge lies in entering an established CRM space while aiming to improve sales-service automation through AI.

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/agentic-ai-needs-orchestration-how-servicenows-ai-orchestrator-automates-complex-enterprise-workflows/ 

IT Service Automator Atomicwork Secures $25M

Atomicwork raises $25 million in Series A funding, surprising many due to their strong market presence despite limited initial capital. Focusing on IT service automation, they join other companies like Symphony in revolutionizing processes. Charles and Hyoun highlight the advancements in employee support technology.


Atomicwork: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/01/28/3016541/0/en/Atomicwork-Secures-25M-in-Series-A-Funding-to-Transform-Enterprise-IT-with-Agentic-AI.html

EU AI Act In Effect: Now What?

The EU AI Act came into effect February 2, imposing strict regulations on AI systems, especially those interacting with European customers. CIOs must be mindful of potential risks and ensure compliance, as penalties could reach up to 7% of revenue. With guardrails in place to protect data, there’s also the risk of overprotection that could hinder legitimate business. The evolving regulatory landscape demands careful attention from tech leaders, say Charles and Hyoun.

Official EU AI Act Website: https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/high-level-summary/ 

Littler: https://www.littler.com/publication-press/publication/first-requirements-eu-ai-act-come-force-february-2025

NCC Group: https://www.nccgroup.com/us/the-eu-ai-act-pioneering-the-future-of-ai-regulation/?utm_source=perplexity

Musk’s Government Actions Stoke CIO Concerns

Elon Musk’s self-insertion into the U.S. government’s treasury and Social Security data has raised alarms, particularly regarding security clearances and potential compliance risks. Hyoun and Charles agree that CIOs must consider the resulting uncertainty and volatility, as well as the need for a more deliberate strategy in handling government data.

Fortune: https://fortune.com/2025/02/02/musk-doge-treasury-payments-system-halt-us-govenment-contractors-lutheran-charity/

Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/01/elon-musk-treasury-payments-system/

MSNBC: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rcna190222

DeepSeek’s Disruption: Lower AI Costs, More Efficient Models

While the costs of model development and inference are expected to continue dropping, the big takeaway for CIOs from DeepSeek is the increasing feasibility of AI integration into systems without relying on massive compute power. Charles and Hyoun discuss how AI development can become more efficient, with advancements in model distillation and using lower-level languages like PTX. The shift toward model independence creates opportunities for more tailored solutions.

Ben Thompson’s DeepSeek FAQ at Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/2025/deepseek-faq/ 

Dario Amodei on DeepSeek: https://darioamodei.com/on-deepseek-and-export-controls 

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/deepseek-r1s-bold-bet-on-reinforcement-learning-how-it-outpaced-openai-at-3-of-the-cost/

Prateek Kathpal on DeepSeek: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/deepseeks-bold-ai-move-ditching-cuda-ptx-high-stakes-play-kathpal-b1yyc/ 

New US CIO Barbachi’s Background Brings Up Big Questions

The United States has a new CIO. And his background seems pretty solid from a security perspective, but he doesn’t seem to have much experience actually managing IT departments. Will that matter? Hyoun and Charles discuss the expectations for Greg Barbachi.

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/28/the_us_governments_new_cio/

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TWIET 47 – Jan. 28, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO Office:

  1. DeepSeek Simplifies AI, Big Tech Freaks Out
  2. Project Stargate: Sam Altman Strikes Back
  3. OpenAI Wants Operator to Control Your Computer
  4. Microsoft AutoGen and the New Event Driven Architecture
  5. Gartner Forecasts 9.8% IT Growth: Too Much or Not Enough?
  6. Can AI Replace Humans in the Gig Economy?

DeepSeek Simplifies AI, Big Tech Freaks Out

Little-known Chinese startup DeepSeek has shaken the tech world with an AI model, R1, that seems to work similarly to OpenAI’s finest, but with a $6 million development price tag and at 1/20th the token cost. And now US tech is freaking out at this breakthrough. How much should you believe and is the panic warranted?

Wired Coverage by Zeyi Yang https://www.wired.com/story/deepseek-china-model-ai/

DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/

Project Stargate: Sam Altman Strikes Back

The United States announced a $500 billion commitment to AI with President Donald Trump introducing SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Charles and Hyoun both discuss who was and wasn’t in the room as well as how much this actually means for enterprise AI. 

CIODive https://www.ciodive.com/news/trump-stargate-openAI-nvidia-oracle/738060/ 

OpenAI Wants Operator to Control Your Computer

OpenAI announced its keystroke and mouse-clicking agent Operator, which goes directly against Anthropic Claude’s Computer Use. Hyoun and Charles discuss the ramifications of having device interaction agents that act more like humans and have to deal with inefficient human UX factors. 


OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/introducing-operator/ 

Microsoft AutoGen and the New Event-Driven Architecture

Microsoft provides an interesting enterprise AI update with its AutoGen 0.4 by taking on LangChain and CrewAI with concurrent and asynchronous agent orchestration. To get chains of agents working together, an enterprise agent architecture needs to be in place.  Charles and Hyoun discuss how this announcement helps demonstrates how Microsoft is the only vendor truly taking on every piece of the AI stack. 

Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/autogen-v0-4-reimagining-the-foundation-of-agentic-ai-for-scale-extensibility-and-robustness/  

Venturebeat  https://venturebeat.com/ai/microsoft-autogen-v0-4-a-turning-point-toward-more-intelligent-ai-agents-for-enterprise-developers 

Gartner Forecasts 9.8% IT Growth: Too Much or Not Enough?

Gartner releases an update on predicted IT budget spend for 2025. Hyoun points out how Gartner’s estimates tend to be conservative and reactionary while Charles points out some of the areas where Gartner’s may underestimate spend trends. 

Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-01-21-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-9-point-8-percent-in-2025 

CIO.com coverage by Paula Rooney: https://www.cio.com/article/3808191/cost-concerns-put-cios-ai-strategies-on-edge.html

Can AI Replace Humans in the Gig Economy? 

Henry Shi, co-founder of Super.com, tried to replace 1000 jobs with AI on UpWork and Freelancer.com. AI ended up being able to complete about 15% of those jobs, but is this a sign of the upcoming economic emergence of Artificial General Intelligence?

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/henrythe9th_we-tried-replacing-1000-human-jobs-with-ai-activity-7288235299191603201-mH4H 

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TWIET 46 – Jan. 21, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO Office:

  1. DOGE is Not a Department. It’s a Service. 
  2. Can OpenAI Influence America’s AI Policy?
  3. Google Gemini Wants 500 Million Users
  4. Microsoft Restructures to Support Agents
  5. ServiceNow Acquires CueIn for Conversation Analysis
  6. ContextualAI Launches for Custom RAG

DOGE is Not a Department. It’s a Service. 

For months, we have heard about DOGE, an effort to reduce government spending. But the current version of DOGE is a rebranding of the United States Digital Service, an existing organization focused on data audit and software modernization. Is this an effort to get closer to the data or a gentle offloading of Elon Musk from the campaign?

The White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/establishing-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency/ 

OpenAI Influence America’s AI Policy?

OpenAI is seeking to influence U.S. A.I. policy with an “AI in America” blueprint to encourage investment and minimize regulations. CEO Sam Altman recently donated to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund to gain favor with the new administration. Can OpenAI push the US to accept more Middle Eastern investments for A.I. technology?

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/technology/openai-economic-blueprint.html

Google Gemini Wants 500 Million Users

Google CEO Sundar Pichai wants 500 million users on Gemini before the end of the year. Remember the good old days when it was remarkable to have 100 million users? Hyoun and Charles discuss if the race to gain users is coming at the expense of actually building products that people might want to use. 


Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-gemini-2025-chatgpt-openai-b6eb595d  

Microsoft Restructures to Emphasize Agents

Microsoft is restructuring to support its agentic approach. This may be a sign that CIOs may need to start potentially transforming the IT department to also take a more agentic approach. 

Microsoft also seeks to increase the uptake of Copilot. Microsoft has relaunched its free AI chat tool, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, to encourage businesses to adopt AI in the workplace. Microsoft hopes that by using Copilot Chat, businesses will see its value and be tempted to subscribe to the full Microsoft 365 Copilot service for $30 per month. But the value proposition still seems confusing as Charles and Hyoun discuss. 

Microsoft: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/01/13/introducing-core-ai-platform-and-tools/ 

The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/15/24344214/microsoft-365-copilot-chat-agents-pricing-availability 

ServiceNow Acquires CueIn for Conversation Analysis

ServiceNow accelerates its agentic AI roadmap with acquisition of conversation analysis platform Cuein. Charles and Hyoun are interested in seeing how this signals a bigger step for ServiceNow into customer-facing use cases and speculate how this is the start of a broader goal of developing a set of intelligent, integrated customer facing systems and expanding beyond the internal workflow. 

ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/company/media/press-room/servicenow-to-acquire-cuein.html?ref=runtime.news 

ContextualAI Launches for Custom RAG 

Contextual AI launches its custom Retrieval Augmented Generation capabilities for general availability. This is interesting because it speaks to the evolution of agentic AI and the need for enterprises to support RAG at scale to manage true enterprise-grade agentic AI.

Contextual.ai: https://contextual.ai/blog/contextual-ai-platform-generally-available/ 

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TWIET 45 – Jan. 14, 2025

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week’s biggest tech news:

  1. NVIDIA Makes AI More Accessible with Project Digits
  2. NVIDIA Nemotron: Advantage or Market Tension?
  3. NVIDIA, Google, and the Future of AI-Powered Robotics
  4. KPMG: 2025 is the Year of AI Deployment
  5. Open AI’s Pro Pricing Dilemma: How We’d Fix It
  6. Half of CIOs Struggle to Own Enterprise AI Responsibilities 
  7. Nékojita FuFu Revolutionizes Coffee Ecosystems

NVIDIA Makes AI More Accessible with Project DIGITS

Project DIGITS provides the Blackwell GPU chip to developers starting at the relatively low cost of $3,000. Given the promise of AI and the need to understand AI, it’s hard to ignore the appeal for developers to develop and tune AI models on their own desktops without dependence on cloud-based costs. Charles and Hyoun ask if this is too good to be true. 

NVIDIA Project DIGITS Press Release: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/project-digits/   

NVIDIA Nemotron: Advantage or Market Tension?

NVIDIA announces a new family of models based on Meta Llama with a focus on agentic tasks and designed to support models from edge devices to data centers.  Hyoun and Charles discuss their use as reference technologies and their importance in supporting NVIDIA’s leadership AI role. 

Emilia David’s coverage on VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/nvidias-ai-agent-play-is-here-with-new-models-orchestration-blueprints/?utm_source=AmalgamInsights 

NVIDIA Nemotron Blog: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nemotron-model-families/ 

NVIDIA, Google, and the Future of AI-Powered Robotics

Google seeks to simulate the physical world with a new set of world models, a hot area in the startup world, but also an area where Charles and Hyoun believe Google has some unfair advantages that could lead to relatively quick success in creating interactive media and realistic simulations to support contextualized digital twin use cases. 


Jess Weatherbed on The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338053/google-deepmind-world-modeling-ai-team-gaming-robot-training 

KPMG: 2025 is the Year of AI Deployment

KPMG’s latest AI Quarterly Pulse Survey provided an interesting snapshot of enterprise activity associated with AI. Perhaps the most interesting data point here, which got Charles’ attention, was about the expectation of investing between $50 million and $250 million on generative AI next year. Hyoun was more interested in the adoption intentions. But all roads lead to the increasingly obvious conclusion that 2025 will be an important year for AI deployments.

Gyana Swain on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3778320/enterprises-willing-to-spend-up-to-250-million-on-gen-ai-but-roi-remains-elusive.html?utm_source=AmalgamInsights 

KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey: https://kpmg.com/us/en/media/news/kpmg-ai-quarterly-pulse-survey.html 

Open AI’s Pro Pricing Dilemma: How We’d Fix It

Kyle Wiggers from TechCrunch covers how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reveals that the ChatGPT Pro plan at $200 per month is not profitable. Hyoun and Charles identify several reasons why this should be expected and discuss whether OpenAI should care about having profitable products, given their inability to accurately price and structure their technologies as products.

Kyle Wiggers on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/05/openai-is-losing-money-on-its-pricey-chatgpt-pro-plan-ceo-sam-altman-says/ 

Half of CIOs Struggle to Own Enterprise AI Responsibilities 

Based on a study of 125 Chief Data and AI officers, Randy Bean and Tom Davenport find that the majority of Fortune 1000 companies surveyed are not putting technology leaders in charge of AI, preferring to have this in the hands of the business or with a transformation team. Charles and Hyoun discuss the dangers of CIOs being out of the loop when it comes to leading AI efforts, both for the CIO and for the company’s AI goals

Paul Barker at CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3800869/study-probes-trends-around-ai-in-the-enterprise.html 

Nékojita FuFu Revolutionizes Coffee Ecosystems

Perhaps one of the most transformational technologies of our generation, Nékojita FuFu revolutionizes the world of coffee by providing multiple modes of blowing on hot food and drink. At $25, Hyoun is sold on the notion that this device will be more profitable than many AI deployments this year. Charles is more skeptical. 

Brian Heater on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/05/this-tiny-robot-cat-will-blow-on-your-coffee-to-cool-it-off/ 

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TWIET Episode 44

Welcome back to This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo analyze the latest enterprise technology announcements and how they will affect your business and your bosses’ expectations.

Join TWIET as we guide CIOs and technical managers through the strategic ramifications behind the vendor hype, product innovation, and the avalanches of money going in and out of enterprise tech. As always, this podcast is available in audio, video, and broken up into sections for your benefit.

As always, if you enjoy this, like, subscribe, comment, and get in touch with us. 

Audio – https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16394894

Topics for this week include:

  1. How Does Florida’s Pornhub Ban Affect Content Access?
  2. 6th Circuit Kills Net Neutrality: IT Investment Concerns
  3. Has Google Figured Out GenAI’s Killer App?
  4. Agentforce 2.0 Evolves Enterprise Agentic AI
  5. What Is the Future of AI Pricing?
  6. Aaron Levie Clarifies the Value of AI Access to PCs
  7. Bench’s Rough Winter Break: Enterprise SaaS Considerations
  8. Felicis & The Promise of Lights Out Ops
  9. Is AI Your New Organizational Strategist?
  10. Are AI Hallucinations About Being Wrong or Being Creative?

1. How Does Florida’s Pornhub Ban Affect Content Access?

At the beginning of 2025, Florida placed a new age and ID verification requirement for adult content leading to notorious site PornHub leaving the state. Behind the shock value, this is a trend in the United States with 19 states now having specific ID verification requirements for certain types of content. What does this mean for businesses seeking to provide content?

Source:

Jessica Lyons on The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/05/pornhub_vpn_demand_surge/

2. 6th Circuit Kills Net Neutrality: IT Investment Concerns

The United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided on January 2, 2025 to repeal the concept of net neutrality, the idea that content should be treated equally by networks. Now that networks have no legal obligation to treat content equally, what does this mean for software providers and for large enterprises providing content over the Internet? Will networks play favorites? Will hyperscalers need to team up with networks?

Sources:

Brian Barrett’s coverage on Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/net-neutrality-ruling-dead/ 

US 6th Circuit Court Ruling: https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/25a0002p-06.pdf 

3. Has Google Figured Out GenAI’s Killer App?

Despite Google’s undeniable groundbreaking work in AI, Google is finding itself playing catch-up in the enterprise AI world. Google DeepMind has unveiled Project Astra and Gemini 2.0  to enhance generative AI. Astra is intended to act as a multimodal universal assistant using text, speech, and images. The technology is interesting and novel, but Charles and Hyoun debate whether Google will figure out how to productize this technology. 


Source:

Will Douglas Heaven on MIT Technology Press: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/11/1108493/googles-new-project-astra-could-be-generative-ais-killer-app/  

4. Agentforce 2.0 Evolves Enterprise Agentic AI

Salesforce announced Agentforce 2.0, one of the first 2.0 products in the Agentic AI world. Among other things, Salesforce upgraded its agentic capabilities, included more of Saleforce’s ecosystem directly into the Agentforce offering, and doubled its commitment to AI sales. Hyoun and Charles discuss how the Salesforce AI technology ecosystem stands up in a heated AI market. 

Source:

Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2024/12/17/agentforce-2-0-announcement/ 

5. What Is the Future of AI Pricing?

CIO.com’s Grant Gross takes on one of the most interesting topics in tech: the conundrum of pricing for AI. Charles and Hyoun explore a varied portfolio of pricing strategies and maturity models, along with a classic Harvard Business Review article, that will shape the future of AI FinOps and cost. 

Source

Grant Gross on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3624540/how-will-ai-agents-be-priced-cios-need-to-pay-attention.html

6. Aaron Levie Clarifies the Value of AI Access to PCs

Box CEO Aaron Levie is no stranger to sticking his neck out when it comes to predicting the future of enterprise software. In a recent X post, Levie elucidates the value of AI agents accessing browsers and personal computers from an information access perspective. Charles and Hyoun discuss a future where the agent is more empowered to directly connect users and apps. 

Source:

Aaron Levie: https://x.com/levie/status/1867027506286694539 

7. Bench’s Rough Winter Break: Enterprise SaaS Considerations

Bench was once known for having raised over $110 million to support small and medium business accounting needs and posted of having over 35,000 US customers. But on December 27, all that changed as venture debt became due, and Bench was unable to pay. Hyoun and Charles warn of how this may be a harbinger for the volatility of SaaS solutions in 2025 that have not provided a Plan B to customers. 

Sources:

Bench FAQs: https://www.bench.co/transition-faqs

Josh Scott on BetaKit: https://betakit.com/bench-had-a-crazier-holiday-break-than-your-startup/

8. Felicis Outlines The Promise of Lights Out Ops

IT ops has long been a consuming, demanding, and challenging job to support. Venture capital firm Felicis provides its vision on the future of IT management with a strong assist from AI. Charles and Hyoun are fully onboard with this vision, but we point out some of the challenges of taking on current enterprise stalwarts, such as ServiceNow and Atlassian. 

Source:

Felicis: https://www.felicis.com/insight/ai-it-qa-incident-response 

9. Is AI Your New Organizational Strategist?

On Wired, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick argues that AI can serve as a new organizational management strategist to help connect people, show new relationships between employees, and even help structure the company more optimally. Charles and Hyoun debate AI‘s readiness to serve as the strategist both from a discovery perspective and whether existing employee management systems are ready to support this vision. 

Source:

Wired.com: https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-work-organizational-strategy/

10. Are AI Hallucinations About Being Wrong or Being Creative?

What is an AI hallucination? In this recent New York Times article, scientists including recent Nobel Prize winner David Baker are described as using AI hallucinations in their research when they are using AI to design theoretical or prospective proteins. Is using AI to take a defensible and novel approach a hallucination? Or are we starting to overuse the term hallucination when it comes to AI? Charles and Hyoun dig into the problematic nature of the AI hallucination. 

Source:

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/science/ai-hallucinations-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.j04.sL5u.KAcpuZWQiabS&smid=url-share 

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TWIET Episode 43

Welcome back to This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo analyze the latest enterprise technology announcements and how they will affect your business and your bosses’ expectations.

Join TWIET as we guide CIOs and technical managers through the strategic ramifications behind the vendor hype, product innovation, and the avalanches of money going in and out of enterprise tech. As always, this podcast is available in audio, video, and broken up into sections for your benefit.

Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16252199

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week’s biggest tech news:

  1. AWS Enhances Amazon Connect with Generative AI Tools
  2. AWS Takes on AI Hallucination Challenges
  3. AWS Bedrock Adds Multi-Agent Orchestration and Model Routing
  4. AWS Centralizes AI Efforts with SageMaker
  5. Casey Newton Examines AI Skepticism’s Comforts
  6. Emergence AI Coordinates Multi-Vendor Agents
  7. Exa Redefines Generative Search Experiences
  8. MLCommons Benchmarks LLM Output Risks
  9. South Korea’s Unrest Threatens Global Memory Supply
  10. Werner Vogels on Managing “Simplexity”
  11. Broadcom Adjusts to Minimize VMware Migration Risks

AWS Upgrades Amazon Connect with New Generative AI Features


Amazon Connect has been a successful cloud contact center product and contact center has been one of the clearest areas for AI to provide productivity benefits and increase potential revenue transactions,  AWS re:invent was an opportunity to announce the latest generative AI advancements within Connect. Charles and Hyoun discuss the opportunities for contact centers to adopt AI.

Source:
Maria Deutscher from Silicon Angle: https://siliconangle.com/2024/12/01/aws-upgrades-amazon-connect-new-generative-ai-features/ 

AWS Tackles AI Hallucinations

AWS launches Automated Reasoning checks to cross reference outputs with known facts and enterprise data. Although this is not as novel as AWS was stating, it is a valuable step forward. Hyoun and Charles debate the utility of this Automated Reasoning checks and whether AI hallucinations really matter or are just a sign of AI immaturity and inexperience. 

Source:

Kyle Wiggers on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/03/aws-new-service-tackles-ai-hallucinations/ 

AWS Bedrock Updates: Multi-Agent Collaboration, Model Routing

AWS announced interesting AI management updates for Amazon Bedrock. Both multi-agent management and prompt routing across models will be useful for enterprises seeking to expand the utility and cost structure of AI. Charles and Hyoun wonder if this agent management will cover the bill given the wide variety of agents that are starting to appear in the enterprise. . 

Source:

AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-multi-agent-collaboration-capability-for-amazon-bedrock/ 

AWS Wraps Everything Together Under Sagemaker

AWS create a new umbrella brand that includes data studio, data lake, analytics, and data management. Hyoun and Charles argue about whether Sagemaker, best known as a data science tool, was the right umbrella brand for these data efforts.

Source:

AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-the-next-generation-of-amazon-sagemaker-the-center-for-all-your-data-analytics-and-ai/ 

Casey Newton Examines AI Skepticism’s Comforts

One of TWIET’s favorite journalists, Casey Newton, weigh in on the false comfort of AI skepticism. Newton argues that the potential harm of AI is being underestimated by those who simply think that AI is full of lies or incompetent.  Charles and Hyoun discuss a more realistic path for IT departments to consider as they deploy AI.

Source:

Casey Newton on Platformer: https://www.platformer.news/ai-skeptics-gary-marcus-curve-conference/ 

Emergence AI Coordinates Multi-Vendor Agents

Start up Emergence AI announced its autonomous multi-agent AI orchestrator. At a time on every enterprise platform seems to be coming out with its own set of agents, Hyoun and Charles think it is about time for a third-party agent orchestration solution to hit the market and get some traction.

Source

Carl Franzen on VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/emergences-ai-orchestrator-launches-to-do-what-big-tech-offerings-cant-play-well-with-others/ 

Exa Redefines Generative Search Experiences

The MIT Technology Review covered a startup named Exa taking a novel approach to Gen AI based web searches with the goal of using the web like a database. Charles and Hyoun discuss the scale and results for this approach.

Source:

Will Douglas Heaven on MIT Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/12/03/1107726/the-startup-trying-to-turn-the-web-into-a-database/ 

MLCommons Benchmarks LLM Output Risks

MLCommons has released its AIluminate 1.0 benchmarks to describe several categories of harm including sex crimes, violence, and defamation risks. Hyoun and Charles discuss past challenges regarding model benchmarking and risks. 

Source:

MLCommons: https://ailuminate.mlcommons.org/benchmarks/ 

South Korea’s Unrest Threatens Global Memory Supply

South Korea saw government unrest in an attempted military coup last week. Although we are not expert political scientists, international supply chains do affect our ability to source IT. We discussed the ramifications of South Korea earning 60% of the global memory, check market and considerations for the CIO in looking at geopolitical strife.

Source:

Prasanth Aby Thomas on CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3617847/south-koreas-political-unrest-threatens-the-stability-of-global-tech-supply-chains.html 

Werner Vogels On Managing “Simplexity”

At Amazon re:invent, Amazon CTO pointed out both that complexity is inevitable and that there are two types of complexity that are important for technical audiences to consider, including a new concept of “simplexity”.. Hyoun is reminded of the Nassim Taleb concept of antifragility while Charles digs deeper into the strategic issues of technical debt. 

Source:

Tom Krazit on Runtime News: https://www.runtime.news/werner-vogels-complexity-is-inevitable/ 

Broadcom Adjusts to Minimize VMware Migration Risks

Broadcom has had to call back from its initial plans of making its top 2000 customers all direct and has handed much of that business back to its channels. With help from The  Register and Canalys, Hyoun and Charles discuss repercussions for tech sourcing. 

Source:

Simon Starwood on The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/05/vmware_user_migration_plans/