Category: TWIET

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This Week in Enterprise Tech, Week 56

In this podcast episode of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO office:

  1. Databricks + Anthropic Agentify Claude for the Enterprise
  2. Workato Buys DeepConverse to Strengthen Agentic Support
  3. N8n Raises $60M to Open Up AI Automation
  4. Symphony AI + Microsoft Partner to Automate Industrial Environments
  5. Red Hat AI Boosts Model Testing, Governance Capabilities
  6. US House Orders a SAMOSA to Take On Software Costs
  7. Virginia Vetoes an AI Bill: Repercussions for Your AI?
  8. OpenAI Adopts Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol
  9. CIOs Cull Internal GenAI Projects
  10.  OpenAI Goes Viral Mimicking Studio Ghibli

Buzzsprout Podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16902573

For this video presentation of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech issues for the CIO office:

  1. Databricks + Anthropic Agentify Claude for the Enterprise
  2. Workato Buys DeepConverse to Strengthen Agentic Support
  3. N8n Raises $60M to Open Up AI Automation
  4. Symphony AI + Microsoft Partner to Automate Industrial Environments
  5. Red Hat AI Boosts Model Testing, Governance Capabilities
  6. US House Orders a SAMOSA to Take On Software Costs
  7. Virginia Vetoes an AI Bill: Repercussions for Your AI?
  8. OpenAI Adopts Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol
  9. CIOs Cull Internal GenAI Projects
  10.  OpenAI Goes Viral Mimicking Studio Ghibli

Databricks and Anthropic Agentify Claude for the Enterprise

Databricks and Anthropic announce a partnership where Databricks Mosaic AI provides tools to build governed agents on proprietary data while Anthropic’s Claude models optimize with hybrid reasoning. Charles and Hyoun discuss how this partnership helps both vendors, each facing massive challengers. 

Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-and-anthropic-sign-landmark-deal-bring-claude-models 

Workato Acquires DeepConverse to Strengthen Agentic Support

Workato announced the acquisition of AI Agent vendor DeepConverse to enhance agentic support. Hyoun and Charles discuss how these customer support automation capabilities are technically helpful to Workato and how this is also a smart talent acquihire for AI.

BusinessWire Press Release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250327092892/en/Workato-Acquires-Generative-AI-Support-Automation-Company-DeepConverse-Further-Investing-in-the-Agentic-Enterprise 

N8N Raises 60 Million to Open Up AI Automation

Germany-based N8N raised $60 million to support AI-based workflow automation. Charles and Hyoun discuss N8N in a rapidly growing world of “AI-powered automation” and their “fair code” commitment to open source. 

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/24/fair-code-pioneer-n8n-raises-60m-for-ai-powered-workflow-automation/ 

Symphony AI Partners with Microsoft to Automate Industrial Environments

Symphony AI launched Microsoft Azure IOT Operations to push Industrial AI capabilities to the edge. Hyoun and Charles share insights on bringing operational tech and agentic AI together with some special insights from Symphony’s own Charles Araujo. 

Big Data Wire: https://www.bigdatawire.com/this-just-in/symphonyai-expands-industrial-ai-to-the-edge-with-microsoft-azure-iot-operations/ 

Red Hat AI Enhances Model Testing and Governance Capabilities

Red Hat enhances both OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux with AI capabilities. Charles and Hyoun disagree on how meaningful this announcement is for the AI world. 

Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-boosts-enterprise-ai-across-hybrid-cloud-red-hat-ai  

US House Orders a SAMOSA  to Take On Software Costs

SAMOSA is the tasty acronym for a bipartisan bill to cut government software costs. This straightforward approach to the US government’s $15 billion software bill makes sense to Charles and Hyoun, but will it get enacted?

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/28/congress_software_licensing/ 

Virginia Vetoes an AI Bill: Repercussions for Your AI?

The Virginia Governor recently vetoed a bill requiring regulations for using high risk AI systems. Charles and Hyoun puzzle over why this happened and how this helps tech vendors and users. 

CIODive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/Virginia-AI-bill-veto-HB2094-Youngkin-policy-regulation/743518/ 

OpenAI Adopts Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol for Data Connection

In a rare sign of shared standards and adoption between hyper-competitive AI megastartups, OpenAI has agreed to use Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) for data augmentation. This may be as close as AI gets to interoperability and Hyoun and Charles discuss why this is a vitally important announcement for the future of AI. .

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/26/openai-adopts-rival-anthropics-standard-for-connecting-ai-models-to-data/ 

Tags: Kyle Wiggers, TechCrunch, Anthropic, OpenAI, Model Context Protocol

CIOs Cull Internal GenAI Projects

As Generative AI spend soars, CIOs start to shift from “Build Your Own Model” to “There’s an App for That”. Charles and Hyoun settle a recent debate on why AI projects were failing. 

CIODive’s Matt Ashare: https://www.ciodive.com/news/generative-ai-software-device-spending-soars-gartner/743888/ 

OpenAI Goes Viral Mimicking Studio Ghibli

OpenAI built another event that, in CEO Sam Altman’s words, “melted the chips” with its recreation of the Ghibli artistic style. Hyoun and Charles explored what risks Altman is taking and what should you consider as you seek to imitate copyrighted works or currently famous artists? 

Yahoo: https://www.yahoo.com/news/openais-ghibli-frenzy-took-dark-122253521.html 

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This Week in Enterprise Tech – Week 55

In this podcast episode of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO office:

  1. NVIDIA Strikes an Agentic Pose with Llama Nemotron
  2. NVIDIA Launches a Laser Show with Photonics Switches
  3. NVIDIA, Google, Disney Take on Reality with Physical AI
  4. NVIDIA Open Sourcing cuOPT
  5. Adobe Summit (How Adobe Can Regain its AI Mojo)
  6. Stop It; Operational Efficiency Is Not Innovation
  7. Research Says Teamwork and AI Make the Dream Work Even Better
  8. We Needed an Executive Order on IT Procurement?
  9. SAP Predicts Data Entry Will Disappear By 2027

Buzzsprout Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16855327

For this video presentation of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech issues for the CIO office:

  1. NVIDIA Strikes an Agentic Pose with Llama Nemotron
  2. NVIDIA Launches a Laser Show with Photonics Switches
  3. NVIDIA, Google, and Disney Take on Reality with Physical AI
  4. NVIDIA Open Sourcing CuOPT
  5. Adobe Summit and How Adobe Can Regain its AI Mojo
  6. Stop it. Operational Efficiency is Not Innovation. 
  7. Research Says Teamwork and AI Make the Dream Work Even Better
  8. We Needed an Executive Order on IT Procurement?
  9. SAP Predicts Data Entry Will Disappear By 2027

NVIDIA Strikes an Agentic Pose with Llama Nemotron

NVIDIA launched the Llama Nemotron models to support agentic AI. Some of the biggest names in tech like Microsoft, SAP, ServiceNow, Accenture, and Deloitte have already committed to using models either to support or augment their current AI efforts. 

We wonder if every tech vendor will end up with their own tweaked versions of Llama that end up fragmenting the market 100 different ways? 

NVIDIA Press Release: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-family-of-open-reasoning-ai-models-for-developers-and-enterprises-to-build-agentic-ai-platforms

CIO Dive’s Lindsey Wilkinson: https://www.ciodive.com/news/Nvidia-gtc-llama-nemotron-model-family-ai-agent-development/742994/?utm_source=AmalgamInsights 

NVIDIA Launches a Laser Show with Photonics Switches

NVIDIA launches silicon photonics networking switches as part of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics Ethernet and NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand platforms. If you had told us a few years ago, that Nvidia would bring out the fastest networking equipment for the enterprise, we would have wondered what you were smoking. Charles explains the business logic while Hyoun wonders how long networking providers will continue to be asleep at the wheel. 

NVIDIA: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-spectrum-x-co-packaged-optics-networking-switches-ai-factories

Optics.org: https://optics.org/news/16/3/26

NVIDIA, Google, and Disney Take on Reality with Physical AI

NVIDIA is also working on physical AI with Google on both AI Robotics and in creating an open-source physics engine. The latter effort also includes Disney Research, well known for translating cutting-edge research into customer experiences. Will this reality-simulating exercise make its way into cars or mass transit?


NVIDIA: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-alphabet-and-google-collaborate-on-the-future-of-agentic-and-physical-ai

NVIDIA Open Sourcing CuOPT

NVIDIA opens the floodgates for a well-known analytic use case by open sourcing its cuOPT massively parallelized decision optimization engine. As market leaders including FICO and IBM have already committed to this engine, the strategy seems clear  to drive demand for GPUs. Hyoun and Charles discuss how this execution demonstrates NVIDIA’s focus in use cases in a market that often  struggles to get past nonsensical naming structures. 

NVIDIA: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/cuopt-open-source/

Adobe Summit and How Adobe Can Regain its AI Mojo

We think Adobe has been a vanguard of AI adoption and innovation, but the tech market at large doesn’t appreciate this role. At Adobe Summit, the tech behemoth made its case for Adobe Experience Platform to be the foundation of a new wave of AI agents for marketers and creatives. Charles and Hyoun debate what else Adobe needs to do to make a case for increased Adobe adoption. 

Adobe on Agents: https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/03/adobe-brings-ai-agents-to-adobe-experience-cloud

Adobe on Gen AI: https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/03/adobe-firefly-services-custom-models-unlock-on-brand-content-production

CIO.com coverage: https://www.cio.com/article/3847382/adobe-makes-agentic-ai-push-with-agent-orchestrator-purpose-built-agents.html 

Stop it. Operational Efficiency is Not Innovation

Strategy consultant Michael Bertha argues that by addressing the “missing middle,” companies can bridge the gap between ideas and execution to innovate. Charles and Hyoun discuss how efficiency and innovation approaches can be quantified and framed. 

CIO.com, Michael Bertha : https://www.cio.com/article/3847331/operational-efficiency-is-not-transformation.html

Research Says Teamwork and AI Make the Dream Work Even Better

Professor Ethan Mollick and a bevy of colleagues from Harvard and P&G came out with a fascinating report showing how AI productivity helps both individuals and groups. Hyoun and Charles dig into this study of P&G revenue and research professionals. Don’t miss Charles’ four-part framework for AI innovation starting with why expert augmentation is a core starting point. 

One Useful Thing – Ethan Mollick: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-cybernetic-teammate

We Needed an Executive Order on IT Procurement?

It is rare that IT procurement reaches the level of either a CEO or president’s executive memos and public statements. But in 2025, IT procurement has finally reached that stage with a new executive order designed to provide directive action for federal government operations. Hyoun and Charles discuss where this EO makes sense and where it might not pass standard enterprise logic. 

White House Executive Order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/eliminating-waste-and-saving-taxpayer-dollars-by-consolidating-procurement/

The Register’s Brandon Vigliarolo: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/21/trump_orders_it_contracts_consolidated

SAP Predicts Data Entry Will Disappear By 2027

SAP CEO Christian Klein predicts manual data entry will disappear from SAP by 2027 as SAP continues its focus on trying to look easier and simpler to use. Both Hyoun and Charles have their separate concerns with this messaging as Charles wonders how practical it is and Hyoun wonders if it fits into SAP customer desires. 

CIO’s Ji-Hyun Lee: https://www.cio.com/article/3850705/sap-ceo-christian-klein-ai-transformation-in-korean-enterprises-will-be-driven-by-business-data-cloud-and-jules.html

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This Week in Enterprise Tech, Week 53

In this podcast episode of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO office:

  1. Salesforce Announces Agentforce 2dx
  2. Is Salesforce Going Into ITSM?
  3. ServiceNow Acquiring Moveworks for Agentic AI
  4. Manus, a General Agent for the Masses
  5. IPO-ready CoreWeave Acquires Weights & Biases
  6. Anthropic Raises 3.5 Billion 
  7. Anysphere Raises at $10 Billion Valuation to Push Cursor
  8. LlamaIndex Llaunches LLamaCloud for Unstructured Data Agents
  9. HPE Among First to Bear Trump Tariffs 
  10. No Doubt, IT Unemployment is Rising
  11. Ransomware’s New Target: IT Vendors
  12. Agentic Management is a Massive Emerging IT Challenge

Podcast Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16770817

For this video presentation of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech issues for the CIO office:

  1. Salesforce Announces Agentforce 2dx
  2. Is Salesforce Going Into ITSM?
  3. ServiceNow Acquiring Moveworks for Agentic AI
  4. Manus, a General Agent for the Masses
  5. IPO-ready CoreWeave Acquires Weights & Biases
  6. Anthropic Raises 3.5 Billion 
  7. Anysphere Raises at $10 Billion Valuation to Push Cursor
  8. LlamaIndex Llaunches LLamaCloud for Unstructured Data Agents
  9. HPE Among First to Bear Trump Tariffs 
  10. No Doubt, IT Unemployment is Rising
  11. Ransomware’s New Target: IT Vendors
  12. Agentic Management is a Massive Emerging IT Challenge

Salesforce Announces Agentforce 2dx

At TrailblazerDX, Salesforce announced Agentforce 2dx, which includes agents that can work on background tasks and a variety of developer and administrator tools to help scale out Agentic usage. And Salesforce also launched AgentExchange, a marketplace for agents.  Charles and Hyoun discuss how this launch speaks to some of the more subtle, but necessary aspects of expanding Agentic usage in the enterprise. 

Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2025/03/05/agentforce-2dx-news/ 

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3840122/salesforce-takes-on-hyperscalers-with-agentforce-2dx-updates.html 

Is Salesforce Going Into ITSM?

Is Salesforce going into ITSM? This intriguing article by Bob Evans caught a quick mention that Benioff made on Salesforce’s most recent earnings call. Hyoun and Charles discuss where they saw potential for Salesforce to enter the ITSM market and compare to ServiceNow’s recent entrance to CRM.

Cloudwars.com: https://cloudwars.com/business-apps/salesforce-vs-servicenow-benioff-jumps-into-itsm-as-mcdermott-targets-crm/ 

ServiceNow Acquiring Moveworks for Agentic AI

ServiceNow announced its intention to acquire Moveworks, an enterprise agentic vendor that has successfully gained market share in a crowded market. Charles and Hyoun discuss how this makes ServiceNow a stronger player in the agentic AI market. 


MSN.com: https://www.msn.com/en-ae/money/companies/servicenow-nears-deal-to-buy-ai-assistant-maker-moveworks/ar-AA1AzBEm 

Manus, a General Agent for the Masses

Manus is a Chinese general AI agent that takes on tasks autonomously without long rounds of iterative prompting. Charles and Hyoun discuss how this agent seems to deliver on the promise of Generative AI for everyday tasks. 

Forbes – https://www.forbes.com/sites/craigsmith/2025/03/08/chinas-autonomous-agent-manus-changes-everything/ 

Manus Website: https://manus.im

IPO-Ready CoreWeave Acquires Weights & Biases

While preparing for an IPO, CoreWeave announced that it was preparing to acquire Weights and Biases,, which has been a strong enabler for both models and AI-based applications. W&B has been an important part of the enterprise AI toolkit for years and this acquisition helps CoreWeave become a more strategic provider for AI compared to its current role as an AI hyperscaler and compute aggregator. 

Weights and Biases: https://wandb.ai/wandb/wb-announcements/reports/W-B-being-acquired-by-CoreWeave–VmlldzoxMTY0MDI1MQ 

Anthropic Raises 3.5 Billion 

In the battle of the titans that is the foundational AI model space, Anthropic announces another $3.5 billion in funding. Hyoun and Charles discuss the relative focus Anthropic has shown compared to OpenAI’s grandiose plans for a global data center footprint, as well as the more tactical successes that Anthropic has had of late, including Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code.  

Anthropic: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/03/anthropic-raises-3-5b-to-fuel-its-ai-ambitions/ 

Anysphere Raises at $10 Billion Valuation to Push Cursor

The coding assistant space is hot and Anysphere Cursor is considered the market leader in this space. In response to Codeium’s recent funding, which we also covered, Anysphere is also raising money at an estimated 70X earnings. Charles and Hyoun discuss this bubble. 

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/cursor-in-talks-to-raise-at-a-10b-valuation-as-ai-coding-sector-booms/ 

Prior coverage of Codeium: https://amalgaminsights.com/2025/02/25/this-week-in-enterprise-tech-week-51/ 

LlamaIndex Llaunches LLamaCloud for Unstructured Data Agents

Along with its recent funding, LlamaIndex launched its LLamaCloud offering for structured data agents. Hyoun and Charles discuss how quickly the agentic AI market is evolving, and how structured data is increasingly important from a work and process perspective.

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/04/llamaindex-launches-a-cloud-service-for-building-unstructed-data-agents/ 

HPE Among First to Bear Trump Tariffs 

HPE is among the first companies in tech to fall victim to the Trump tariffs as it provided muted guidance based on future facing revenue and the increased costs of doing business and then faced a 20% drop in stock price. Charles and Hyoun discuss the reality that every US based hardware company likely has some relationship with either Canada or Mexico to build its equipment. 

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/07/hpe_q1_2025/ 

No Doubt, IT Unemployment is Rising

Based on a recent CIO Dive article that shows that IT unemployment rose in February, Charles and Hyoun discuss repercussions for the CIO office in both training and hiring staff.

CIODive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/IT-unemployment-february-compTIA-2025/741954/ 

CompTIA: https://www.comptia.org/newsroom/press-releases/tech-employment-across-labor-market-increases-while-other-indicators-retreat-according-to-comptia-reporting 

Ransomware’s New Target: IT Vendors

Global ransomware pirates have a new target: IT vendors. Although Charles and Hyoun recently celebrated that ransomware demands were lower last year, this does not mean that they went away. We provide some advice on vendor selection and contractual reviews.

CIODive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/vendor-driven-cyberattacks-losses/741686/  

Prior Coverage of Ransomware Down 35% https://youtu.be/KsVicmSzORo?si=LlWZMCI2cE3IkO8r 

Agentic Management is a Massive Emerging IT Challenge

The CIO piece by Paula Rooney highlights concerns for agentic management from a variety of executives and vendor representatives. Hyoun and Charles note how there are many conflicting and varied concerns associated with the technical and organizational management of agents.

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3836084/it-leaders-brace-for-the-ai-agent-management-challenge.html 

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This Week in Enterprise Tech, Week 52

In this podcast episode of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech news for the CIO office:

  1. Salesforce Hypes AI Success But Agentic Demand Still Lags
  2. IDC Launches AI-Based TechMatch for Software Selection
  3. IBM Plans to Acquire DataStax, Finishes Acquiring HashiCorp 
  4. Take This Open Source Tech and Fork It
  5. RIP Skype: August 29, 2003 – May 5, 2025
  6. Overcommit and Don’t Invest: Microsoft Cuts Data Center Leases
  7. Wasabi Reports Data Center Costs Out Of Control
  8. Pew: Only 12% of Workers are Trained on AI
  9. Sergey Brin Wants Googlers In the Office Five Days a Week
  10. DOGE Shuts Down 18F, An Agency that Cut Software Costs

Buzzsprout Podcast Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16730460

For this video presentation of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess the biggest tech issues for the CIO office:

  1. Salesforce Hypes AI Success But Agentic Demand Still Lags
  2. IDC Launches AI-Based TechMatch for Software Selection
  3. IBM Plans to Acquire DataStax, Finishes Acquiring HashiCorp 
  4. Take This Open Source Tech and Fork It
  5. RIP Skype: August 29, 2003 – May 5, 2025
  6. Overcommit and Don’t Invest: Microsoft Cuts Data Center Leases
  7. Wasabi Reports Data Center Costs Out Of Control
  8. Pew: Only 12% of Workers are Trained on AI
  9. Sergey Brin Wants Googlers In the Office Five Days a Week
  10. DOGE Shuts Down 18F, An Agency that Cut Software Costs

Salesforce Hypes AI Success But Agentic Demand Still Lags

A Tale of Two Agentforces. It was the best of times. It was the worst times. Salesforce ended its 2025 fiscal year with a ‘quarter of Agentforce’ with over 3,000 paying enterprise customers   The company reported $900 million in revenue from its Data Cloud and AI segment, up nearly 120% from the previous year. But, Salesforce has admitted that demand for Agentforce is lower than expected, pushing back revenue expectations to 2027. Which of these two realities actually describes salesforce best? Charles and Hyoun duke it out.

Roberto Torres of CIO Dive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/salesforce-agentforce-AI-Q4-2025/741212/ 

Tom Krazit of Runtime News: https://www.runtime.news/salesforce-fesses-up-demand-for-ai-agents-is-slow/ 

IDC Launches AI-Based TechMatch for Software Selection

IDC is debuting a software selection tool based on analyst input. For large analyst firms, software selection support has been a challenge as many junior analysts have practically become contact center representatives taking calls and basing recommendations on Marketscapes, Marketscopes, Magic, and other existing research documents. Does this change the industry analyst market? Hyoun and Charles wrestle with this issue. 

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3834832/idc-launches-techmatch-to-help-businesses-select-software-vendors.html 

IBM Plans to Acquire DataStax, Finishes Acquiring HashiCorp 

IBM had a good week as they both planned to acquire long time AI data partner DataStax and completed its Hashicorp purchase. IBM has focused on solving large problems regarding IT orchestration and modernizing large data environments. Charles and Hyoun discuss how both acquisitions fit strategically into IBM‘s specific hybrid cloud strategy for large enterprises. .


Datastax: https://www.datastax.com/blog/ibm-plans-to-acquire-datastax 

Hyoun’s LinkedIn Response: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hyounpark_accelerating-production-ai-and-bringing-nosql-activity-7300215943660552193-Iz6x

IBM: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-02-27-ibm-completes-acquisition-of-hashicorp,-creates-comprehensive,-end-to-end-hybrid-cloud-platform 

Take This Open Source Tech and Fork It

Dr Dawn Foster, director of data science at the CHAOSS Project, presented at the State Of Open Con ’25 in London regarding three major Open Source projects – Terraform, Redis, and Elasticsearch – and how they were forked after their licenses were changed for commercial reasons. Hyoun and Charles discuss repercussions for the CIO office in maintaining Open Source with a nod to Tidelift. 

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/24/open_source_licensing/ 

RIP Skype: August 29, 2003 – May 5, 2025

Microsoft has officially committed to an end date for Skype, a product that helped define the new world of computer-aided communications, but struggled to keep up with market demands over time. Microsoft transferred a lot of Skype capabilities to Teams and largely crippled Skype’s community over the past five years. Charles and Hyoun lament the end of an era and imagine what might have been. 

Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/02/28/the-next-chapter-moving-from-skype-to-microsoft-teams/ 

Overcommit and Don’t Invest: Microsoft Cuts Data Center Leases

Based on a TD Cowen research note, Microsoft seems to have both canceled some leases and refrained from moving forward with other leases as Microsoft cuts back on data commitments. Even mighty Microsoft has limits on AI related spend as the financial considerations have changed rapidly. Hyoun and Charles marvel at how data center capacity is still a big CIO concern. 

ForexLive: https://www.forexlive.com/news/here-is-the-td-data-center-note-that-has-everyone-buzzing-20250223/ 

Morningstar: https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2025022430/the-research-note-thats-raising-eyebrows-microsoft-reportedly-is-cancelling-data-center-leases 

Wasabi Reports Data Center Costs Out Of Control

Cloud Storage provider Wasabi reports 62% of its research respondents overran their budget in 2024. Charles and Hyoun bemoan how egress fees are a massive cost tracking concern for cloud IT. 

Wasabi: https://wasabi.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/over-half-of-organizations-globally-experience-it-or-business-delays-due-to-cloud-storage-fees-according-to-wasabi-s-2025-global-cloud-storage-index 

Pew: Only 12% of Workers are Trained on AI

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows only 12% of workers have been trained on AI over the last year. But Charles thinks that Pew is asking the wrong question when it comes to AI adoption. 

CIO Dive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/workers-lack-AI-training/740920/ 

Sergey Brin Wants Google Workers In the Office Five Days a Week 

Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggests the Gemini team should work harder in the office. Despite his comments, Google still maintains a three-day office work policy. But both Charles and Hyoun have different reasons to think that Sergey is misplacing his blame for Google’s struggles in AI.

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/technology/google-sergey-brin-return-to-office.html

DOGE Shuts Down 18F, An Agency that Cut Software Costs

DOGE takes a look at  government software license utilization, a topic that both Charles and Hyoun have plenty of experience with. We were… not impressed with the approach. And Elon Musk shut down the 18F agency & got rid of FinOps pros who had a variety of big wins both to reduce the cost of government and make access to government services easier, such as its recent free tax filing service. 

Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-software-license-cancel-federal-budget/ 

Silicon Angle: https://siliconangle.com/2025/03/02/elon-musks-doge-shuts-gsas-technology-unit/ 

Mark Cuban’s take: https://bsky.app/profile/mcuban.bsky.social/post/3lje6uqhmdc2w 

18F Guide to Software Selection: https://guides.18f.gov/derisking-government-tech/ 

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This Week in Enterprise Tech , Week 51

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

  1. Microsoft Quantum Takes a Majorana Step Forward
  2. Alibaba and Apple Both Commit $50B to AI
  3. Avaya Cuts Off Customers with <200 Seats
  4. Gitlab Being Sued For Providing Believable AI Hype
  5. TMobile Wins NYC 911 Contract with Network Slicing
  6. Ready for a Personalized AI Agent? PIN AI thinks so
  7. Codeium Raises at Near-$3 Billion Valuation to Assist Coders
  8. Is Your  Most Important Customer AI
  9. xAI Plays Fast and Loose with Grok 3 Benchmarks

Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/episodes/16688357

Microsoft Quantum Takes a Majorana Step Forward

Microsoft made big news with its quantum announcement of the Majorana chip, which apparently is not marijuana. Charles and Hyoun discuss the quantum science behind this chip and what it could mean for the long-term feature of the CIO.

Source

Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-just-claimed-a-quantum-breakthrough-a-quantum-physicist-explains-what-it-means/ 

Alibaba Commits Over $50B to AI, while Apple Goes Further

Alibaba committed $52 billion to AI for the next three years. Although this is more than Alibaba has invested over the past decade in the space, is it enough? Hyoun and Charles discuss the increasingly heated global AI Cold War.

Sources

Morningstar: https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/20250224715/alibaba-to-spend-more-than-52-billion-in-ai-cloud-over-next-three-years 

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/23/asia_tech_news_roundup/ 

The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/news/618172/apple-500-billion-us-investment-tariffs-trump 

Avaya Cuts Off Customers with Fewer than 200 Seats

Avaya plans to cut off cloud-based contact center customers with less than 200 seats in an ongoing trend for large companies to focus more on the enterprise and abandon their smaller customers. Charles and Hyoun ponder what this means for CIOs in managing key business technologies. 

Source
Avaya: https://news.avaya.com/axp-evolution-update-partners 

Gitlab Being Sued For Providing Believable AI Hype

Gitlab is facing multiple lawsuits because they were apparently too optimistic about their AI capabilities. Charles and Hyoun ponder whether this is justified and if the CIO faces potential liability or due diligence concerns. 

Source

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/20/gitlab_thrice_sued/ 

T-Mobile Wins NYC 911 Contract with Network Slicing

T-Mobile has won the New York City contract for 911 services based on its ability to provide a capability called network slicing on its 5G network. This allows New York City to carve out a portion of the network for emergency services. Hyoun and Charles wonder if this is a precursor to network slicing used either by vendors or enterprises to gain preferential access to networks and Internet.

Source

Fierce Network: https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/t-mobile-pushes-network-slicing-major-nyc-deal-announced 

Ready for a Personalized AI Agent? PIN AI Thinks So

PIN AI has an interesting vision for a secure AI agent, including both a local app and large language model to become your personalized intelligence network. Charles and Hyoun discuss how this looks like the future of AI, not just at the personal level, but the enterprise as well.

Source

Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/91278338/pin-ai-encrypted-assistant-app-launch-llm 

Codeium Raises at Near-$3 Billion Valuation to Assist Coders

Codeium, an AI code assistant, is raising money at a $2.85 billion evaluation, making it another new AI unicorn. But what makes Codeium so much more valuable than every other code assistant? Charles and Hyoun wrestle over what makes Codeium special when Anysphere, Microsoft, and Google have all made waves in this market. 

Source

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/19/ai-coding-startup-codeium-in-talks-to-raise-at-an-almost-3b-valuation-sources-say/ 

Your Most Important Customer May Be AI

Scott Mulligan of the MIT Technology Review takes on the interesting idea that our most important customer is now AI. Hyoun and Charles discuss why this is so difficult as every AI is starting to establish its own preferences, biases, and limits. 

Source

MIT Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/19/1112076/your-most-important-customer-may-be-ai/ 

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TWIET 50 – Feb. 19, 2025

Congratulations to us on 50 Episodes of This Week in Enterprise Tech! And appropriately, this week was a busy one with everything from Snowflake vs. Databricks to Workday and Cisco throwing in their versions of agent management to some surprising research coming from Microsoft Research on how too much AI can atrophy confidence.

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

  1. The Dissection of Intel Begins…
  2. AWS Marketplace Changes Affect SaaS FinOps Strategy
  3. Glean Releases Agents to Manage Data
  4. Snowflake Brings Cortex Agents to Public Preview
  5. SAP & Databricks Team Up to Unlock SAP Data
  6. Workday Releases Agent System of Record
  7. Outshift by Cisco Discusses Internet of Agents
  8. PegaSystems Points Out Employee Concerns for Agents
  9. Anthropic Economic Index Measures Enterprise AI Usage
  10. Microsoft Research Discovers AI Atrophies Cognitive Confidence
  11. DOGE Struggles to COBOL Together a Mainframe

The Dissection of Intel Begins …

Broadcom and TSMC have been discussing how to break up Intel along with the Trump administration. For Intel fans, this is tough to watch. Charles and Hyoun toast the end of an era as well as potential CIO repercussions. 

WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-intel-deals-that-would-split-storied-chip-maker-966b143b

AWS Marketplace Changes Affect SaaS FinOps Strategy

AWS is requiring any SaaS eligible for AWS discounts to be 100% hosted on AWS moving forward. Although this seems like a reasonable policy, the challenge is in getting Amazon certification, which can be a time consuming process and may lead to some lost discounts. Hyoun and Charles provide their caveats to the financially minded CIO and FinOps pro. 

Duckbill Group: https://www.duckbillgroup.com/blog/new-aws-marketplace-rules/

Glean Releases Agents to Manage Data

Glean has entered the agentic fray with Glean Agents, which automate tasks using a wide range of data to enable task automation and data analysis. Charles and Hyoun debate whether this announcement does enough to stand out in a crowded data agent market. 


Glean: https://www.glean.com/press/glean-makes-horizontal-ai-agents-for-enterprises-expands-work-ai-with-glean-agents 

Snowflake Brings Cortex Agents to Public Preview

Snowflake launched its Cortex Agents in public preview to support data management use cases that Snowflake is well known for. The granularity of the agent as well as iterative process and continuous governance capabilities help Cortex Agents to stand out. 

Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/ai-data-agents-snowflake-cortex/ 

SAP & Databricks Team To Unlock SAP Data

SAP is teaming up with Databricks to create SAP Business Data Cloud,  a joint product designed to improve SAP customer access to the deep metadata within their SAP deployment. Charles and Hyoun debate how this may prevent SAP customers from migrating their data over to Snowflake by working with a competitor with both technical capabilities and head to head competitive experience in selling against Snowflake. 

SAP: https://news.sap.com/2025/02/sap-databricks-open-bold-new-era-data-ai/ 

Tags: SAP Databricks, Business data cloud, Mosaic AI, Databricks SQL, Unity Catalog

Workday Releases the Agent System of Record

Workday announces a system of record for agents to support the inventory and indexing of agents. Hyoun and Charles discuss how they are making big claims but not taking full advantage of the breadth of workday metadata and application functionality across skills, contingent, labor, and performance management to truly treat agents as work enablement technologies. 

This concept is interesting especially after NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang’s recent claim: “The IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future.” Workday would prefer that HR remain the HR department for AI agents. But can they pull it off?

AOL: https://www.aol.com/finance/nvidia-jensen-huang-says-become-133641793.html 

Workday: https://investor.workday.com/2025-02-11-The-Next-Generation-of-Workforce-Management-is-Here-Workday-Unveils-New-Agent-System-of-Record 

Outshift by Cisco Discusses the Internet of Agents

Cisco estimates there will be 20,000 AI agents per company: How will they all work together? Cisco posits the need for an Internet of Agents, an open and secure system that allows different AI agents to communicate and collaborate. Charlie and Hyoun discuss some of the challenges of an Internet of Agents, including thinking beyond the API.

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/20000-ai-agents-per-company-how-will-they-all-work-together 

PegaSystems Points Out Employee Concerns for Agents

A new PegaSystems survey shows that a large percentage of workers are uncomfortable using agents in the workplace. Even as we’ve seen other data showing that executives actually want their workers to use agents and AI. Hyoun and Charles discuss employee concerns and whether executives are ready to teach and train their expectations regarding AI. 

CIODive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/Workforce-AI-agent-sentiment-concern-accuracy-quality/740134/ 

Anthropic Economic Index Measures Enterprise AI Usage

Anthropic is launching the Anthropic Economic Index to track the value and use of AI. This is both a website and a research paper. The most interesting finding that got Charles and Hyoun’s attention is that 3/4 of current AI usage is concentrated in 4% of jobs. These metrics serve as a strong reminder of the current maturity of enterprise AI, which leads Charles to an interesting conclusion. 

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/11/ai_impact_hits_midtohigh_wage_jobs/ 

Anthropic economic index: https://www.anthropic.com/economic-index 

Paper: https://assets.anthropic.com/m/2e23255f1e84ca97/original/Economic_Tasks_AI_Paper.pdf 

Microsoft Research Discovers AI Atrophies Cognitive Confidence

Microsoft finds that too much AI leads to cognition atrophy. Uh oh. The interesting aspect, as Charles wisely notes in this discussion, is that this study measures the human perception of cognitive quality, leading to concerns on how to keep sharp in an AI world. Hyoun provides some tips and suggestions for more human AI. 

404 Media: https://www.404media.co/microsoft-study-finds-ai-makes-human-cognition-atrophied-and-unprepared-3/ 

Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf 

DOGE Struggles to COBOL Together a Mainframe

What happens when you get a former COBOL programmer and a former IT asset auditor and data analyst to look at DOGE?

Elon Musk’s DOGE team may need a crash course in COBOL as they dig deep with their presidentially conferred admin access to Social Security, Medicare, and other key government payments and transactional data. Hyoun and Charles discuss the real challenges of budget and data audits and Charles provides an unconventional solution to DOGE. 

Fast Company: https://www.fastcompany.com/91278597/elon-musk-doge-cobol-language 

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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/