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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 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