In the rush to build out AI applications, a full understanding of the dynamics of personal data management can be difficult to achieve. As we kick off Pride Month, the complexities of personal data handling deserve more attention and Emily Jasper and Alan Moore join host Eric Hanselman to discuss the concerns and approaches to address privacy issues. Enterprises accumulate both operational and self-reported personal data, some with regulatory requirements for collection and reporting and some in support of employee development. Is that data the new oil that can fuel their efforts, the new water that can leak or the new plutonium that can be powerful, but also dangerous? 

With many systems accumulating data, it can be difficult to ensure that right data is in the right places. Data migration is hard, but can be necessary in technology transitions. Data is the raw material that builds AI value, but personal data increases the risks of not only expose, but of creating presumptions by AI models of association and affiliation. There are additional risks in inadequate datasets for training. As we’ve pointed out in previous episodes, organizations need to be aware of how well their training data reflects the populations they intend to serve.

More S&P Global Content:

• Webinar: Winning the Ad Dollar: Data-Driven Sales Enablement
• Next in Tech | Ep. 213: AI and Privacy
• Next in Tech | Ep. 204: Ethical AI Data

For S&P Global subscribers:

• Safeguarding privacy in the AI era – Highlights from VotE: Data & Analytics
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• 2025 Trends in Data, AI & Analytics

Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Emily Jasper, Alan Moore
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

Around the globe, municipalities are facing a set of challenges managing the impacts of more extreme weather, while addressing aging infrastructure and more chronic issues, such as rising heat and sea levels. There are a set of technologies that can help them to both be aware of the risks and improve planning to work on mitigating them. The Internet of Things (IoT) can play a role in sensing and advances in digital twins can aid in simulating climate-driven events. It’s a set of tools that, when applied well, can help to better build resilience. 

At the same time, the resilience of utility systems are being challenged by tech advances. Power consumption by datacenters is impacting the load on electricity grids. The transition to greater use of renewables is changing grid dynamics and investment is needed to maintain stability. Climate impacts can have differing impacts across society and efforts manage equity are critical. The upcoming webinar will dig into all of this in more detail – join us to continue the conversation!

Join the webinar: Risk to Resilience: How Technology is Reinventing Urban Preparedness

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• Climate physical risk insights for the U.S. municipal bond market
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• Lessons from the Iberian blackout: The starfish and the spider
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Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Therese Feng, Zoë Roth, Johan Vermij
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

With all of the drama associated with AI, it’s easy to miss the need to understand the foundations that deliver the data that is the raw element from which AI value is built. Databases and storage infrastructure are critical components that have to work in concert with AI plans and returning guests Henry Baltazar and James Curtis join host Eric Hanselman to discuss what’s been happening and what enterprises need to know about the future. Databases and storage management systems have been intertwined for a long time and AI pressures are tightening that connection. Storage systems perform analytics on the data they store to optimize its handling, tracking use and characteristics. The same insights that aid in compression and tiering are also useful in classifying data for AI. Data classification has always been a challenge for enterprises, as storage systems are typically disconnected from the data owners and applications that use them. Intelligent storage systems have been able to intuit the nature of content, including mapping databases and virtual machines. Databases have been able to leverage storage capabilities like snapshotting for resilience.

Into this mix a new set of AI focused storage and database offerings arrive that target AI uses. The question is whether the native database and storage systems can do enough of what’s needed. They already store key data and have valuable insights and classification capabilities. Some vendors are attaching GPU clusters to storage systems to provide high performance AI model training functionality. The major issue for most, is the matter of data placement. Shifting petabytes of data is no small task and concerns about data security and the costs involved now loom much larger.

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• Next in Tech | Ep. 213: AI and Privacy
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For S&P Global Subscribers:

• Rapid data growth and migrations increase storage burdens
• Amazon S3 Tables and automated metadata highlight recent AWS Storage enhancements
• 2025 Trends in Cloud and Cloud Native

Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman 
• Guests: Henry Baltazar, James Curtis
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

The annual NAB Show delivered a more fully digital ecosystem when it convened in Las Vegas this year. While traditional broadcast technologies are still the focus, hyperscale cloud providers, digital media platforms and no shortage of AI were all on display. Returning guests Justin Neilson and Peter Leitzinger join host Eric Hanselman to discuss what they saw at broadcasting’s big event and the impacts of various technologies on the media landscape. The digital television evolution is continuing apace. The ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV standard has been rolling out across the globe, albeit a bit more slowly in the U.S.. The higher resolution, more interactive capability is available to over three quarters of the market. Multi-screening functionality is interesting, but digital advertisers are looking to the direct access to consumers as a better path to monetizing viewers and delivering a direct path to content creators. The smart TV market is also hopeful, driving the uptake of new chipsets and televisions.  

The show also revealed the greater participation of the hyperscale cloud providers in broadcast media. Greater volumes of digital content are depending on cloud scale in ever greater measure. The creeping incrementalism of AI in media production still has to overcome some fundamental objections from studios and some content creators, but it is working its way into many parts of the industry. It seems like its convenience and velocity may be too much to resist.

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• US TV set projections through 2028: Solid rebound on track to continued growth
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Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Justin Nielson, Peter Leitzinger
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

The game of Rugby is having a moment on the global stage. It’s attracting investment and growing its fan base and audiences. The Six Nations competition has just finished, with France triumphing over Scotland and the Women’s World Cup is on the horizon. With dedicated fans and upmarket advertisers, the media rights are garnering significant interest. An old saying contrasted soccer (football to most of the world) with rugby by saying that football was a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, while rugby was a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen. And today, both the women’s and men’s games are gaining prominence. Unlike soccer (football), the world governing body for rugby spans both leagues and has strong female representation on its board.

With high value advertisers driving revenue and both country competitions and national leagues creating a rich game schedule, media valuations are continuing to grow. From its origins as an amateur league, it’s become much more. There’s a nascent shift from free-to-air broadcast to paid media and streaming. It’s quite a scrum!

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• Authenticity, women's sports and African potential dominate SportsPro Live

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• Sports calendar 2025 — High-profile women's events and sustainability concerns
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Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Richard Berndes
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

The annual RSA Conference on information security is coming up and it arrives during a very active security market. Analysts Garrett Bekker, Dan Kennedy and research director Scott Crawford return to the podcast to discuss what they expect to see in San Franscisco with host Eric Hanselman. The largest transaction ever in the information security world, Google’s acquisition of cloud security unicorn Wiz, has been echoing across capital and technology markets. It’s reinforced the importance of cloud security and its nature as a distinct technology segment. Enterprises have become fully hybrid in their infrastructure mix and they’re struggling to mitigate cloud risks. Part of the struggle is leading to tool consolidation and platform approaches to security management. It’s a situation that’s led by the fact that the average enterprise already reports spending a third of their security budgets on a single security operations vendor.

Of course, AI will be front and center and this year agentic AI is being examined as a way to scale up security capabilities. AI capabilities have been part of security tools for many years and the challenge has always been building trust in automated actions. It will be some time before autonomous actions are turned on. There’s a long history of keeping human review in place as trust is built. It’s not that different from previous technology automation transitions, but with security, there’s a greater imperative.

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• AI for security: Agentic AI will be a focus for security operations in 2025
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Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Garrett Bekker, Scott Crawford, Daniel Kennedy
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

Cloud native patterns and open source developments were on display at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe conference. The biannual gathering was showing how the container ecosystem continues to mature and analysts Jean Atelsek and William Fellows join host Eric Hanselman to explore their insights. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), part of the Linux Foundation, continues to expand the event and advance the maturity of the open source projects that are part of its purview. Day 2 operations have been gaining focus and the pre-conference FinOps X event was an indication of the emphasis on operational controls as it digs into infrastructure cost management. The opening “Day 0” events at KubeCon, which have been the forum for specialized project meetings, have become a key part of the conference, with over 6,000 attendees, almost half of the reported 13,000 total. 

The Kubernetes container management project is now over ten years old and one of the other signs of technology evolution was the integration of the OpenInfra Foundation, which managed the OpenStack project and other infrastructure elements, into the Linux Foundation. Open source projects are gaining wider adoption and one of the messages from projects and vendors at KubeCon, was the hope that it could offer alternatives to enterprise infrastructure stalwart, VMware. The CNCF is expanding its investments in improving security across the projects under its umbrella. There was also continued development of platform engineering initiatives. Bounding the expanding world of open source projects to create consistent development and operational tool chains for enterprise is one more sign of maturity in the container world.

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For S&P Global subscribers:

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Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Jean Atelsek, William Fellows
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

The many impacts of AI extend across business and consumer interests and issues around privacy are some of the broadest. Analyst Paige Bartley returns to the podcast to discuss the results of two recent studies on enterprise and consumer perspectives on AI and privacy with host Eric Hanselman. Enterprise privacy concerns are shifting from regulatory to operational and reputational, as the awareness of the importance of data privacy grows. The landmark UK GDPR legislation was announced in 2016 and most early efforts focused on compliance. That’s shifted to building privacy functionality into the foundations of the way businesses operate.

PrivacyOps approaches are growing rapidly as organizations come to realize that customer trust has to both be established and maintained in ways that are meaningful to customers. The opportunity for businesses is to move from treating privacy as overhead to making part of supporting business interests. It comes full circle by helping to enable better data use for AI.

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• Data Insight: Consumer data privacy in the modern world of generative AI — no going back?

Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guest: Paige Bartley
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

It’s come a long way from its game developer roots and the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2025 edition was so well attended, it was straining the capacity of the San Jose Convention Center, its long-term home. John Abbott returns to discuss what debuted and the implications with host Eric Hanselman. NVIDIA has taken a starring role in AI and this year’s GTC had all of the glitz of a Hollywood production – CEO’s of major tech partners delivered a video tribute and Disney-designed robots cavorted on stage with CEO Jensen Huang. The event reinforced the extent to which NVIDIA has become a systems and software company, rather than simply a supplier of high performance silicon.

The event highlighted not only new GPU’s and rack-scale compute systems, but also countered the concerns around declines in GPU demand raised by the release of the DeepSeek AI models. The shift to reasoning models for AI is expected to drive further demand. The impacts on energy consumption and associated pressure on energy transition plans weren’t mentioned, but are a large part of the larger discussion around AI.

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Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guest: John Abbott
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

The M&A markets are in a tough situation. Transactions are harder to get done and exits just not happening. To sort out where this is all going, Scott Denne and Brenon Daly return to the podcast with host Eric Hanselman. Investors across technology have portfolios that are getting long in the tooth. They need exits to return value to their funds, but there are limited options. The IPO market is tentative, at best. 

At the same time, strategic investors are stepping back as they spend on AI. Capital expenditures continue to grow, with hyperscalers shelling out billions to expand their own infrastructure, as well as investing in AI startups. Google’s acquisition of Wiz is a massive transaction, but it is dwarfed by the ongoing internal investments. How far does this go and what will be the return on these investments?

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For S&P Global Subscribers:

• Shifting AI exits
• The public-private divide
• If not Wiz, who?
• Tech leads the way up and down on Wall Street

Credits:

• Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
• Guests: Brenon Daly, Scott Denne
• Producer/Editor: Adam Kovalsky
• Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith