Putting Agents To Work
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We’re well underway in the integration of agents into various enterprise workflows, but there are many questions about where and how they can be used effectively. Emily Jasper and Sheryl Kingstone return to the podcast to discuss their recent research and upcoming webinar with host Eric Hanselman. Much has been made of claims that agents are going to replace SaaS applications, particularly in applications like CRM, but that relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of where their value lies. CRM systems are the repositories of crucial enterprise data and agents can help to deliver on many of...
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The RSAC Conference – Agents on The Loose
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The RSAC Conference, a major cybersecurity gathering in the spring, is coming up and the impacts of agents will be on full display. Scott Crawford, Brenon Daly, and Dan Kennedy join host Eric Hanselman to explore their expectations and look at what’s been taking place in both the marketplace, investments and M&A activity. Agents are automating tasks, not jobs, and there are a great set of use cases, but they’re not a panacea. There will be disruption, but it will be in specific areas, rather than a universal replacement of existing tooling. Are we industrializing the automated creation...
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CEO Series: Wildfire Risk with Bryan Spear
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Wildfires have grabbed the headlines recently and AI is being put to work to assess risk aid strategic planning in reducing events. The next in our CEO series brings Bryan Spear, the CEO of Technosylva, in to talk with host Eric Hanselman about not only wildfire, but also the ways in which AI can address flood and extreme weather risks, as well. There are interesting commonalities in the datasets that are used and AI has helped them to pivot into new areas as they dig deeper into what, in many cases, was data they already had. Their computational requirements have driven them to invest in a...
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CEO Series: Agents and Context with Douwe Kiela
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We continue our CEO series with Douwe Kiela, the CEO of Contextual AI, who is addressing the challenges of building effective agentic applications. The shift to agentic amplifies the need for enterprises to improve their data management capabilities and infrastructure scaling. The best models won’t perform well, if there isn’t well built context to support them. Much like people, if there’s not enough of the right information, decision making is going to suffer. There’s an evolution from the prompt engineering needed to generate better results from LLM’s, to the context engineering...
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CEO Series: AI and Supply Chains with Francisco Martin-Rayo
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The next in our series of discussions with CEO’s of companies that are putting AI to work has Fransico Martin-Rayo of Helios discussing the agricultural supply chain with host Eric Hanselman. Helios is leveraging AI to generate insights in the complex dynamics of food production and sourcing at a dramatically finer level of granularity. AI not only enables more complex analysis but also allows customized delivery of the results. Shifting interfaces from legacy dashboards and static reports to queryable constructs lets users explore the analyses in ways that better fit their needs. AI can...
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CEO Series Kick Off: AI and Energy Markets with Sean Kelly
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We’re kicking off a new series of discussions with CEO’s of companies that are putting AI to work to tackle complex problems. Sean Kelly of Amperon joins host Eric Hanselman to dig into how they’re using AI for energy grid forecasting. The combination of weather, changes in generation capacity with renewables, and now increased data center demand is making forecasting a critical requirement for grid stability, as well as energy trading. While this might have been a problem that could be tackled with spreadsheets back in the day, scope and scale of the problem has grown to a size that is...
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AI Data
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There are such significant changes going on in how data is managed and in how AI manages data, that it’s not always clear which requirements are driving which trends. Jim Curtis returns to look data highlights from AWS re:Invent and to identify important changes that are taking place. FinOps and broader cloud cost management efforts are leading providers to offer tools and programs to corral spending. AWS has introduced database savings plans to provide discounts in much the same way they’ve done with other services as they look to foster platform commitment. AWS is also expanding its...
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The NRF Conference
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The National Retail Federation’s annual NRF conference has become a showplace for the latest technology, as well its core retail foundations. Sheryl Kingstone returns to discuss what was on display and how it will impact retail and the larger tech landscape with host Eric Hanselman. While we may be a ways off from having robot dogs retrieving shoes at your local mall store, automation and agentic applications are delivering significant value in customer interactions - $22 billion in the recent 451 Research study. The days of clunky chatbot interfaces seem to be well and truly behind us. One...
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Agentic AI Use Cases
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The choice of use cases in AI has a significant impact on achieving on project outcomes. The latest results of the 451 Research Voice of the Enterprise AI use cases study are out and Alex Johnston joins host Eric Hanselman to explore the data and its implications. The study highlights a widespread, yet often unstructured and fragmented, adoption of AI within organizations, indicating a stall in overall maturity despite significant growth in usage. Key challenges include a clogged project pipeline, where many initiatives remain in limited deployment, and difficulties in consistently measuring...
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A Wild Earnings Season
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We’re just out of the recent earnings season and we’ve seen a wild range of results and some interesting implications. Melissa Otto CFA, head of S&P Global’s Visible Alpha research team, returns to discuss what that markets have been saying and what she makes of the data with host Eric Hanselman. Macroeconomic effects are having some impact, as consumer sentiment diverges across the top and the bottom of the economy. In technology, there are mixed feelings about AI as the hunt continues for use cases with decisive revenue returns. The hyperscalers are continuing to invest capital at...
info_outlineSupercomputing has shifted from an esoteric and exotic part of technology to much more mainstream, mostly driven by AI. The massive amounts of computational power that once were reserved for the largest of computing problems in high performance computing (HPC), like weather and seismic analysis, are now commonplace in the world of AI. Analyst Gabriella Brown returns to talk about complex computing problems, quantum computing and photonics with host Eric Hanselman. SC25 has grown to over 16,000 attendees and almost 600 exhibitors, enough to sprawl across St. Louis’ Americas Center and into its football stadium. As they mature, the next step in enterprise adoption is working out how all of these will work together. AI is tackling many problems, but quantum could address a whole different class of computing questions.
Quantum computing is scaling up and moving closer to becoming a key part of an everyday computing portfolio. Techniques like quantum annealing are finding practical applications today while pure-play quantum approaches are increasing the density and stability of their computing capabilities as they push for quantum advantage, the point at which they’re doing things that classical computers can’t. New areas like photonic computing were also on display at SC25, as well as all of the supporting infrastructure to power, house and cool HPC installations. As AI clusters head toward gigawatt power dissipation, they require specialized support.
More S&P Global Content:
- Cybersecurity, talent needs and ongoing adoption were key themes at Quantum.Tech USA 2025
- Access to quantum hardware remains cloudy, but more options are starting to appear
- Quantum computing and the future of data privacy
For S&P Global subscribers:
- 2026 Trends in Applied Infrastructure & DevOps
- Information security, cloud and AI vendors stand out as critical to businesses – Highlights from Vo…
- Quantum Computing Market Monitor & Forecast
- Quantum computing competitive landscape and market forecast: Expecting $6.5B by 2029
- Mea culpa — NVIDIA GTC brings quantum to the stage to help set the record straight
Credits
- Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
- Guests: Gabriella (Ellie) Brown
- Producer/Editor: Feranmi Adeoshun
- Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Kyra Smith