Description: Keith sits down with Ryan Booth — former network automation specialist, Apstra alum, and now principal consultant at Blue Ridge Consulting — to trace the real career arc from infrastructure engineer to applied AI practitioner. They dig into the transferable skills that actually matter (hint: it's not the coding), why curiosity-driven entry points like [...]

At Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, Keith sits down with returning guest Woon Jung, CTO of Clumio, to break down their new GCS backup launch — and why "replication" and "backup" are not the same thing. They dig into the real failure domains that catch GCP-native organizations off guard, the operational reality of multi-cloud [...]

Everyone says clean your data before you invest in AI. The problem is, your data is getting dirty faster than you can clean it. In this episode, Keith sits down with Joe Onisick, founder of UnicornIQ, to dig into why data hygiene is AI's most underestimated failure point — and why throwing more GPU power [...]

AI is changing the data center—but not always in the ways enterprises expect. In this episode, Keith Townsend is joined by Intel’s Lynn Comp for Part Two of their conversation, shifting the focus squarely to AI infrastructure realities. They explore why many AI workloads never justify GPUs, how CPU-based deployments often exceed real [...]

Episode Summary Enterprise leaders are facing two equally hard problems at the same time: deciding what to do next with virtualization in the post-VMware era, and figuring out how—or whether—to deploy AI infrastructure responsibly. In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with long-time industry peer and infrastructure expert [...]

Enterprise IT didn’t plan for this problem—but now it has to solve it. In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with Lynn Comp, Head of Data Center Market Readiness at Intel, for a candid, unsugarcoated conversation about how Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has fundamentally disrupted the enterprise infrastructure status quo. [...]

In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with Betsy Tong, founder of Authority Architect, to explore how seasoned professionals can transform decades of experience into thriving consulting businesses. Betsy shares her personal story of being laid off at 56 and realizing the traditional job market—dominated by keyword filters and age [...]

In this episode, Keith Townsend welcomes back Steven Dickens, founder of Hyperframe Research, for a candid conversation following VMware Explore 2025. The duo dives deep into the latest developments from VMware, focusing on the launch of VCF 9 and what it means for developers, customers, and the broader ecosystem. Key topics include: Steven’s impressions of [...]

📝 Show Notes: On this episode of the CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith sits down with independent analyst Brian Wang of Next Big Future to unpack one of the hottest debates in enterprise IT and AI research: the path to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and beyond to superintelligence. Brian brings his unique lens as a technologist [...]

In this special CTO Advisor Podcast episode, Keith Townsend sits down with Scott Robohn, founder of Tech Sales Craft and co-founder of the Network Automation Forum, for a timely conversation recorded live during GTC week in San Jose — but not at GTC. The duo dive deep into the evolution of network operations and why [...]