The Catalyst by Softchoice

Every vendor in the industry is slapping the word "agentic" on their roadmap. But, what is agentic AI, really? And should IT leaders care?

In this episode, we bring together three voices with very different answers: a skeptic who says it's rebranded orchestration, a strategist who says the reasoning layer is genuinely new, and a founder betting his company on it. Together, they cut through the noise and answer the question every IT leader is quietly asking: what should I actually do about agentic AI in 2026?

Key takeaways:

• Why 80% of AI projects fail — and it has nothing to do with the technology
• The difference between "embedded agents" you're already using and custom agents you probably don't need yet
• "Start with your decisions, not your technology" — a practical framework for mid-market teams
• How to move AI from "pet project" to operationalized infrastructure

Featuring: Sean Larkin, Principal Architect at Softchoice, a World Wide Technology company | Scott Trump, Founder & CEO of Treva AI (former AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle) | Skip Vanderburg, Founder of Prioriti AI

#AgenticAI #MidMarketIT #AIStrategy #TheCatalyst #Softchoice #ITLeadership

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

When David Koopmans' IT manager started sending strange messages to employees, David knew something was wrong. By then, threat actors had been inside his network for 30 days.

What followed was a ransomware nightmare that cost $14 million, put David in the hospital, and ended with him being let go—despite years of warning leadership they needed to invest in security.

In this episode, we follow David's story from chaos to recovery, with expert context from Fortinet's incident response team on what actually happens when the call comes in (spoiler: it's always Friday afternoon), the critical mistakes that make attacks worse, and why 30 minutes a week of preparation could be the difference between survival and catastrophe.

Key Takeaways:

• Why "we're not a target" is the most dangerous assumption in securit
• The common mistake that lets attackers hit you twice
• How tabletop exercises helped one company respond to a near-identical real incident
• The 30-minute weekly habit that separates prepared teams from overwhelmed ones

Featuring: 

David Koopmans (CIO, MMT Ambulance), Josh Brewer (Softchoice), John Simmons (FortiGuard IR Lead, Americas), John Hollenberger (FortiGuard Proactive Lead)

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This episode is brought to you by Fortinet

When a cyber incident hits, the difference between chaos and recovery comes down to preparation. Learn how FortiGuard Incident Response Services can help your team respond faster and recover stronger at softchoice.com/fortinet

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Resources

• FortiGuard Incident Response Services: softchoice.com/fortinet

• Book: "Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercises: From Planning to Execution" by John Hollenberger (No Starch Press, October 2024)

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

Multi-cloud used to be a dirty word — something that happened to you through mergers, shadow IT, or teams gone rogue with corporate cards. But the walls came down, the standards converged, and best-of-breed finally seemed within reach. Then AI arrived with a whole new layer of complexity.

Or did it?

In this episode, we explore how agentic AI might actually solve the thing that made multi-cloud hard in the first place. Three cloud experts—Jack French from World Wide Technology, Alex Kozaris from Softchoice's AWS practice, and Ron Espinosa from Softchoice's Google Cloud team—break down what's changed, what matters for mid-market teams, and why the "gold record" might finally be possible.

Key Takeaways:

• Why 90% of organizations are already multi-cloud (whether they planned to be or not)

• How abstraction layers and platform engineering help smaller teams manage complexity

• What each major cloud does best: AWS for builders, Microsoft for productivity, Google for data/AI

• The compliance curve ball forcing some organizations into multi-cloud for AI governance

• How agentic AI creates "connective tissue" that makes integration problems irrelevant

Featuring:

• Jack French, Senior Director of Cloud, World Wide Technology

• Alex Kozaris, Public Cloud Leader for AWS, Softchoice

• Ron Espinosa, Google Cloud Category Director, Softchoice

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

Everyone's chasing AI. Meanwhile, most organizations are wasting 25-30% of their software budget on tools nobody uses.

In this episode, we meet James Malek, Senior VP of IT Infrastructure at Lexitas, who inherited chaos—45 acquisitions in five years, no structured IT department, and a hodgepodge of contracts everywhere. Instead of chasing the next shiny thing, James took a different approach: foundation first.

What his team discovered when they finally got visibility into their software estate—including 300 employees using ChatGPT at a legal services company handling sensitive data—changed everything.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why software waste persists despite decades of awareness—and what actually fixes it

• How one company consolidated seven separate ShareFile contracts into one

• The shadow AI problem hiding in your organization right now

• Why you can't do it all yourself—and what to do instead

Featuring:

• James Malek, Senior VP of IT Infrastructure, Lexitas

• Elizabeth D'Amico, Manager, SAM Programs & Enablement, Softchoice

• Josh Brewer, Account Executive, Softchoice

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

AI is transforming education—but not evenly, and not easily.

In this episode of The Catalyst, we step inside classrooms, school boards, and districts, navigating the AI revolution with tight budgets, limited staff, and high stakes for students. From fears around cheating and data privacy to confusion over licensing and unused tools already paid for, this conversation reveals what AI adoption really looks like in public education.

Featuring educators, IT leaders, and policy thinkers on the front lines, the episode explores what schools are getting wrong, what’s quietly working, and why the biggest barrier to AI in education may no longer be money—but people and readiness.

You’ll hear from:

• Drew Olsson, Director of AI & Instructional Technology, Agua Fria Union High School District
• Sophie McQueen, Resource Teacher & Board Consultant, Conseil scolaire ViaMonde
• José Antonio Bowen, Senior Fellow, AAC&U; Author, Teaching with AI
• Sandali Amunugama, Microsoft Education Specialist, Softchoice
  
  

Key takeaways:

• Why academic integrity fears are masking a deeper relationship problem
• How most schools already have AI tools they aren’t using
• What happens when AI costs drop—but training and trust don’t
• Why meaningful adoption spreads teacher-to-teacher, not top-down
  
  

This episode is a candid look at what it takes to move forward when guidance is unclear, expectations are high, and standing still isn’t an option.

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Learn how Softchoice, a World Wide Technology company, helps public sector and education teams do more: softchoice.com/public-sector.

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

Enterprise expectations. Startup-sized teams. And zero margin for failure.

Across museums, national parks, retail stores, and nonprofit organizations, mid-market IT leaders are being asked to do more than ever—with fewer people, tighter budgets, and growing complexity. Most burn out. Some figure it out.

In this episode, The Catalyst brings together two leaders navigating that reality from different sides of the work:

• Scott Gagon, Network Security Engineer, Event Network
• Tariq Chaudhri, VP of Technology, Goodwill of Northwest North Carolina

Together, they explore what it takes for small IT teams to support enterprise-scale environments—and why trusted partnerships are often the difference between survival and real progress.

You’ll hear:

• How small IT teams manage massive, distributed operations
• Why empathy, mission, and decisiveness matter as much as tools
• How partners like Softchoice become force multipliers—not vendors

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

When mid-market IT leaders call about AI, most ask the wrong question. Instead of “What problem are we solving?” they jump straight to “Which LLM should we use?” — a mindset that helps explain why 95% of AI pilots fail to deliver measurable business returns.

In this episode, two of Softchoice’s leading AI experts — Sean Larkin, AI Principal Architect, and Ron Espinosa, Director, Google Cloud Category — break down why technology-first thinking derails AI initiatives before they start. From market validation to crawl-walk-run design, they reveal how organizations can escape the hype cycle and build AI solutions that actually work.

Key takeaways:

• Why “What LLM should we use?” is the wrong first question
• How market validation prevents multimillion-dollar failures
• Why data hygiene is still the most overlooked risk
• What crawl-walk-run actually means in AI deployments
• How executive alignment eliminates costly blind spots between IT and business teams

Guests

• Sean Larkin, AI Principal Architect, Softchoice
• Ron Espinosa, Director, Google Cloud Category, Softchoice

This episode is packed with field stories, hard truths, and practical frameworks mid-market organizations can apply immediately.

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Take the first step in your AI journey

Book your Executive Alignment Session today: https://www.softchoice.com/solutions/ai-and-data/executive-alignment-session

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

937 applications. 42 interviews. 80 days. That's what it took one experienced data scientist to land a job in 2025—and he's one of the lucky ones.

In this episode of The Catalyst, we follow two tech professionals through what they call "the worst job market ever." Emily, a software developer with 10 years of experience and a degree from University of Waterloo's prestigious computer science program, gets laid off on a Tuesday and was interviewing the next day. Santiago, a data scientist and former manager at Deloitte, launches what he calls a "denial of service attack" on the job market—bombarding it with nearly a thousand applications while tracking every rejection in a dashboard styled like Super Mario.

Both land jobs. Both consider themselves fortunate. And both say the system is fundamentally broken.

Meanwhile, over 700 tech workers are being laid off every day while companies claim they can't find talent. Something doesn't add up. Through their stories and expert analysis from Bobby Burns, Vice President of R&D at Indeed, we uncover what's really happening: applicant tracking systems filtering out 75% of qualified candidates, AI conducting first-round interviews before humans ever get involved, and a catch-22 nobody can solve—where will senior developers come from in 2030 if we're not hiring junior developers in 2025?

Key Takeaways:

• Why the "talent shortage" exists alongside mass tech layoffs
• How applicant tracking systems reject 75% of resumes due to formatting issues
• The psychological toll of sending hundreds of applications into the void
• What AI tools might (and might not) fix about hiring and fighting bias
• Why even graduates from top programs can't get entry-level roles

Read about Emily's experience on her Medium: https://emilyxiong.medium.com/my-experience-of-finding-a-tech-job-in-2025-6830297c5197

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This episode is brought to you by Softchoice, a World Wide Technology company. We work with mid-market IT leaders on their biggest challenges, including how to build and retain great teams in a market that makes it harder than ever. Visit softchoice.com to learn more.

Listen now at: softchoice.com/podcast

#TechJobs #Hiring #ITCareers #JobSearch #TechLayoffs #TheCatalyst #Softchoice

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

Every night, IT professionals across the country go home and cry. They work until 10PM unpaid. They become "the guy" their entire organization depends on. They stay in toxic jobs because they feel guilty, or because people are counting on them, or because they simply can't imagine leaving.

In this episode of The Catalyst by Softchoice, we follow two IT professionals through their burnout journeys. Sean stayed at a behavioral health nonprofit for years, supporting 1500 users with just two techs and management that thought IT "just helps people log in." He rebuilt the entire infrastructure while crying himself to sleep at night, driven by mission and what clinical psychologist Dr. Rick Ginsberg calls "responsibility handcuffs."

John worked at a Manhattan company where he felt so grateful for his salary that he stayed through years of abuse and lies. He'd sit at his desk until 9 or 10PM—not because of emergencies, but because he had no energy left to stand up.

One stayed and rebuilt his broken department into a world-class operation. The other escaped to his dream job doing Linux work. Both had to heal from trauma. And according to Business Insider, 57% of IT workers report the same burnout they experienced.

Through their stories and expert analysis from Dr. Rick Ginsberg, we explore why burnout has become epidemic in IT, what the warning signs are, and—most importantly—what can actually be done about it.

Key Takeaways:

• Why IT professionals are particularly vulnerable to "responsibility handcuffs"
• The difference between staying to rebuild and knowing when to leave
• How gratitude can become a trap that keeps you in toxic environments
• What managers need to do differently to prevent team burnout
• Why 76% of IT workers say job stress is getting worse every year

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This episode is brought to you by Softchoice Cloud Lifecycle Services Plus for Microsoft Azure. Get control of your Azure subscriptions, optimize your cloud spend, and access the technical support you actually need when you need it. 

Visit softchoice.com/azurecls to learn more.

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology. 

What if the best employee AI adoption strategy is one most companies refuse to try?

While business leaders rush to mandate AI from the top down, Softchoice discovered something counterintuitive: the most successful transformations happen when you let people experiment on their own terms. (Safely!)

This episode takes you inside Softchoice's organic approach to AI adoption—from a VP who started experimenting with AI nine months before ChatGPT launched, to an engineering team that went from skepticism to shipping code in a single prompt, to a solutions architect who hit 300% of plan by letting AI handle his meeting notes.

You'll learn:

• Why psychological safety beats corporate mandates for technology adoption
• How to balance experimentation with responsible guardrails
• The "crawl, walk, run" framework that scales innovation
• Why one person with AI can match an entire marketing department's output

Featuring:

• Craig McQueen, VP of AI Solutions, Softchoice
• Andrew Campbell, Engineering Manager – App Development & AI Solutions, Softchoice
• Geoffrey Whalley, Solutions Architect, Softchoice
• Danielle Ryterband, Associate General Counsel & Privacy Officer, Softchoice

This isn't just an AI story. It's a framework for how change actually happens in organizations—and how IT leaders can apply it to any transformative technology.

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This episode is brought to you by Arctic Wolf Incident Response.

When a cyber attack hits, Arctic Wolf's insurance-approved team gets you back to business fast with 24/7 containment, digital forensics, and full business restoration.

Learn more at softchoice.com/arcticwolf

#ArtificialIntelligence #ITLeadership #DigitalTransformation #ChangeManagement #Softchoice #MidMarketIT #AIAdoption

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.