Agentic AI is everywhere, but does every problem actually need an agent? In this special edition of Hot Takes, Zack Austin and Fran Fernandez bring in Nelson Veiga, Resolve's Senior Vice President of Customer Solutions, to react to Gartner's When to Use or Not to Use AI Agents report. Drawing on real-world enterprise implementations, the trio explores why organizations are shifting from AI experimentation to measurable business outcomes, where deterministic automation still has an advantage, and how enterprises should decide when autonomous reasoning is actually necessary. 

Zack Austin sits down with Alex Cinovoj, founder of TechTide AI, to explore what separates impressive AI demos from systems enterprises can actually trust in production. Drawing on years of hands-on IT and engineering experience, Alex explains why successful AI requires reliable workflows, clean data, observability, permissions, governance, and measurable outcomes, not 'just' a clean-looking model.

Everyone wants AI agents, but few organizations have figured out how to govern them effectively. In this Hot Takes episode, Zack Austin reacts to three recent industry reports examining the rapid rise of agentic AI, autonomous workflows, and enterprise AI adoption. He explores why so many organizations rush to deploy AI before defining the problems they want to solve, why trust is the missing ingredient in autonomous operations, and why successful AI initiatives depend less on choosing the right model than on orchestrating work safely across the enterprise.

Zack Austin sits down with Bruno Santos, Executive Director at Celfocus, to explore how some of the world's largest telecommunications providers have approached AI, automation, and intelligent operations over the past decade. Drawing on years of experience delivering large-scale transformation projects, Bruno shares how organizations can move beyond experimentation and implement AI that delivers measurable operational value.

AI adoption is accelerating across the enterprise, but many organizations are discovering that adding more AI tools doesn't automatically create better business outcomes. In this Hot Takes episode, Fran Fernandez and Zack Austin react to recent reports on tool sprawl fatigue and infrastructure complexity. They discuss why enterprises often buy AI before defining the problem they're solving, as well as why orchestration (not tool proliferation) is becoming the foundation for meaningful AI transformation. 

As AI agents become more autonomous, organizations face a new challenge in managing machine identities at enterprise scale. In this Hot Takes episode, Fran Fernandez and Zack Austin react to recent coverage on agentic AI identity governance, and access management. They discuss why agents are starting to resemble digital employees, how identity frameworks must evolve beyond traditional user accounts, and why automation may ultimately make AI systems safer and more governable than human-operated processes.

Fran Fernandez and Zack Austin sit down with Chris Ennis, Senior Technology Solutions Specialist at Risepoint, to discuss what successful automation adoption looks like in a growing organization. Chris draws on his diverse experience to share lessons learned from implementing automation at scale, as well as using AI to solve real business problems. 

AI adoption is accelerating across the enterprise, but governance is struggling to keep up. In this Hot Takes episode, Ari Stowe is joined by Chief Product Officer Fran Fernandez and Director of Product Marketing Zack Austin to unpack what happens when organizations move too quickly with agentic AI without fully understanding the processes underneath. 
 
The episode also marks Ari’s departure from Agents of IT as the show transitions to Fran’s and Zack’s stewardship.

AI personalization can indeed make work smarter and more intuitive... but only when it feels helpful instead of invasive. In this Hot Takes episode, Ari reacts to recent coverage on hyper-personalization, enterprise AI, and predictive systems. He explains why personalization is really about context, how agents can remove friction from everyday workflows, and why successful AI adoption depends on striking the right balance between autonomy, transparency, and trust.

This week, Ari meets up with Geoff McQueen, founder and CEO of Ascendius, to review how AI is changing the way businesses operate, as well as how leaders should think about performance in an AI-first world. Drawing on 25 years of building and scaling tech companies, Geoff shares some hot takes on everything from individual productivity gains to agentic workflows and, ultimately, business-level AI.