Modern CTO

Merry Christmas! Tune in next week to two of our favorite episodes of the year.

How did they reduce customer onboarding from 5 days to 7 minutes?

Today, we're talking to Misha Keener, CTO at Flowable. We discuss why orchestration is more important than automation, how context engineering beats prompt engineering in agentic AI, and why enterprise readiness will separate winners from losers in 2025.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To learn more about Flowable, check out their website here.

Peacock has become a streaming giant. How did they scale it to millions of users?

Today, we're talking to António Vieira, Director of Global Apps Engineering at Sky. We discuss how Peacock handles 30% of internet traffic during major NFL games, why live streaming is exponentially harder than video on demand, and how AI is being used to create personalized content experiences with synthetic voices.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To learn more about Sky, check out their website here.

All tech is witchcraft…until it isn’t.

Today, we're talking to Sam Ransbotham, AI editor at MIT Sloan Management Review and host of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast. We discuss why 76% of executives now view AI as a coworker rather than a tool, how healthcare privacy laws from 1996 can't handle modern AI capabilities, and why cheaper coding will create more programming jobs instead of eliminating them.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

Thank you to Digital Ocean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that’s built to scale, check out Digital Ocean here.

To read MIT Sloan's AI study, "The Emerging Agentic Enterprise," check it out here!

They’ve created a “Google Translate” for the cloud, and it’s changing everything.

Today, we're talking to Brad Parks, CloudOps and Private Cloud Leader at HPE. We discuss how Morpheus is bringing cloud operating models to on-premises infrastructure, why hybrid cloud is an inevitability rather than a strategy for most enterprises, and how HPE is helping IT teams eliminate vendor lock-in while maintaining workload portability across any infrastructure.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To get learn more about HPE and Morpheus, check out their website here.

How is the biggest newspaper in the United States using GenAI?

Today, we're talking to Jason Sobel, CTO at The New York Times. We discuss how technology is transforming journalism for the digital age, why 70% of journalism jobs have disappeared in the last 25 years, and how The New York Times uses AI to enhance reporting without replacing human journalists.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

Thank you to Digital Ocean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that’s built to scale, check out Digital Ocean here.

To get learn more about the New York Times, check out their website here.

Gartner placed them in the highest corner of their Magic Quadrant. Why is HPE leading their industry?

Today, we're talking to Brian Gruttadauria, CTO of Hybrid Cloud at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. We discuss how agentic AI is transforming hybrid cloud infrastructure, why human-in-the-loop will remain critical for enterprise AI adoption, and how HPE went from 20% to 92% GitHub Copilot adoption in just over a year.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To get learn more about HPE, check out their website here.

When will customer service be run entirely by bots?

Today, we're talking to Adrian McDermott, CTO at Zendesk, about how AI agents are transforming customer experience. We discuss why automation drives escalation instead of elimination, how Zendesk is moving from seat-based to outcome-based pricing with their resolution platform, and why the future of leadership requires being more like a slot machine than a vending machine.

Thank you to Digital Ocean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that’s built to scale, check out Digital Ocean here.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To get learn more about Zendesk, check out their website here.

This is some of the best advice we’ve ever heard on managing teams.

Today, we're talking to Mark Porter, CTO at dbt Labs. We discuss why knowing your audience is the foundation of effective communication, how to create psychological safety for escalation without surprises, and why hiring remarkable talent requires unconventional tactics like asking for negative references and spending six hours with final candidates.

Thank you to Digital Ocean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that’s built to scale, check out Digital Ocean here.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To get learn more about dbt Labs, check out their website here.

When he went to investors, nobody believed that the internet would be a big deal.

Today, we're talking to Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, the Father of the Cable Modem. We discuss how he invented broadband when no one believed home internet would succeed, why letting your product do the talking beats PowerPoint presentations, and how to distinguish between technology hype and delivery reality in the age of AI.

Thank you to Digital Ocean for sponsoring this episode. For simple cloud and powerful AI that’s built to scale, check out Digital Ocean here.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To get a copy of Rouzbeh's book, The Accidental Network, buy it here on Amazon.

To check out Rouzbeh's YAS Foundation, visit their website here.