As enterprises rush to prepare for AI, most of the attention is focused on models, GPUs, and applications. But what if the real starting point isn’t AI at all?

In this episode of the Built for Trust Podcast, Nick Lippis sits down with Patrick Heinz from Ameriprise to explore why observability is the true foundation of AI-ready infrastructure. Patrick draws on decades of experience spanning service providers, startups, and large enterprises to explain why AI systems depend on continuous, high-quality data and why visibility across networks, applications, and service providers is no longer optional.

The conversation dives into synthetic path monitoring, breaking down data silos, contextualizing massive volumes of telemetry, and how “data without context is dangerous.” Patrick also shares real-world examples of how improved visibility builds trust with users, operations teams, and service providers while reducing outages, escalations, and firefighting.

If you’re thinking about AI readiness, automation, or agentic systems, this episode makes one thing clear: you can’t automate what you can’t see, and trust starts with visibility.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

In this episode of Built for Trust, Nick Lippis shares firsthand observations from ongoing conversations with enterprise IT leaders and technology providers across the industry.

Nick explores the growing divide between AI-first enterprises that are moving aggressively into large-scale deployments and organizations that are still evaluating where AI fits, how to justify the investment, and how to manage risk. He unpacks why some enterprises remain quiet about their AI initiatives, how concerns around GPUs, cost, and power are shaping infrastructure decisions, and what’s driving the shift toward cloud-based versus on-prem AI strategies.

The discussion also dives into how security and networking are becoming native components of AI infrastructure, why the control plane for agentic AI remains undefined, and how incumbent enterprise vendors are repositioning to close the gap between ambition and execution.

This episode offers a grounded look at where enterprise AI really stands today, not the hype, but the reality from the field.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

Most companies are experimenting with AI in customer experience. Very few are actually transforming it.

In this episode of Built for Trust, Nick Lippis is joined by Puneet Mehta, Founder and CEO of Netomi, to explore what it really takes to design AI-driven customer experience that works in the real world at enterprise scale, under regulatory constraints, and without breaking trust.

Puneet shares why simply automating human workflows misses most of AI’s value, and how agentic AI enables a shift from reactive support to proactive, context-driven customer engagement. Drawing on real-world deployments with companies like DraftKings and United Airlines, the conversation dives into how enterprises can safely orchestrate AI across siloed systems, manage authority and compliance, and deliver faster, more empathetic customer experiences.

The discussion also looks ahead to a future where AI becomes the primary customer interface and where AI agents may soon interact directly with other AI agents on behalf of consumers. For enterprise leaders navigating trust, governance, and transformation, this episode offers a grounded look at what agentic AI means beyond the hype.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

Agentic AI is redefining how work gets done. But without the right architecture and controls, autonomy becomes risk.

In this episode, Nick sits down with Peter Campbell to explore the emerging Agentic AI Overlay and what enterprises must build to support secure, scalable agentic workflows. From multi-agent communication and trust boundaries to identity, governance, and responsible AI enforcement, they examine the critical building blocks required to move from AI experimentation to production-ready systems.

The conversation also highlights early findings from ONUG community polling and outlines what’s next as the industry works to turn architecture into action.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

In this episode, Nick reviews lessons from 2025 that shift from POC to production in enterprise AI. Then he discusses key predictions for 2026 and discusses why it is such a pivotal year for enterprises to embrace AI.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

When a model learns your secrets, it never forgets.

In this episode, Nick sits down with Tom Gillis from Cisco to explore one of the most pressing challenges of the AI era: data sovereignty. As AI models absorb sensitive information and operational data at unprecedented scale, organizations are facing a new reality: once that knowledge is embedded, it can’t simply be erased.

Tom unpacks how Cisco is reimagining the data center for this new world from GPU-driven architectures and co-packaged optics to federated analytics that bring computation to the data instead of the other way around. Together, they discuss the return of on-prem infrastructure, the risks of IP leakage in model training, and why protecting data sovereignty may be the defining trust challenge of enterprise AI.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

In this episode, Nick sits down with David Reilly from World Wide Technology to explore how trust and structure must guide every AI transformation. Riley shares the five-question framework he used to evaluate technology decisions, from cost and reliability to risk and talent, and why it’s more critical than ever as enterprises race to adopt AI. Together, they discuss how CIOs can balance innovation with stability, build confidence with business partners, and lead teams through change without losing trust along the way.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

Hyperscalers have redefined what modern networking looks like, and now those same principles are reshaping how enterprises build for the AI era.

In this episode, Nick sits down with Marc Austin from Hedgehog to explore how open networking, SONiC, and cloud native automation are converging to make hyperscaler level networking accessible to organizations of any size.

Marc shares Hedgehog’s origin story, why SONiC has finally matured for enterprise scale, and how cloud style UX and zero touch lifecycle management remove the historical barriers to open networking. They explore the rise of AI Networking as a new category, the complexity of GPU fabrics, and how automation and performance tuning can even outperform some NVIDIA reference benchmarks.

From multi-vendor freedom to real world AI cloud deployments operated by a single DevOps engineer, this conversation reveals the technologies and design principles that are powering the next generation of private AI infrastructure.

If you are building for AI, rethinking your network strategy, or interested in the future of open networking, this episode shows what it really takes to network like a hyperscaler.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

AI is advancing fast, but the networks underneath it aren’t. 

In this episode, Nick and Andy Bechtolsheim from Arista Networks break down the real bottleneck slowing AI performance and why traditional networking models can’t keep up with today’s training and inference demands.

They explore what Ultra Ethernet brings to the table, why packet loss and traffic scheduling matter more than ever, and what enterprises actually need to build AI-ready infrastructure without hyperscaler budgets. Andy also shares why he believes we’ve finally hit the hardware tipping point that will accelerate AI innovation for years to come.

A clear, candid look at the networking challenges shaping the future of AI and what leaders need to prepare for next.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!

In this episode of Built for Trust, host Nick Lippis talks with Holland Barry, Global Field CTO at DXC Technology, about how AI is transforming the way enterprises identify, measure, and manage technical debt. What was once a cost of doing business is now becoming a catalyst for modernization. Holland shares how DXC is developing a Tech Debt Scoring System that uses AI and community collaboration to benchmark enterprise health, reveal modernization priorities, and accelerate AI readiness. Together, they explore how this data-driven approach turns maintenance into momentum and trust into a measurable outcome.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!