In this inaugural “Hot Take” episode of IT SPARC Cast, John Barger and Lou Schmidt deliver a candid, unscripted conversation about the seismic shift coming to enterprise IT. Prompted by recent moves—like OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer joining Cisco’s board and Sam Altman’s AGI talk with Snowflake’s CEO—the hosts explore what these changes really mean for network professionals, IT vendors, and infrastructure strategy.

They argue the network operating system is dead—or at least on life support. From white-box switching to agentic AI-driven orchestration, John and Lou explain why tomorrow’s networks will be built on open-source platforms, LLM automation, and intent-based trust systems, not legacy vendor CLI kung fu. Whether it’s self-healing infrastructure, dynamic traffic steering, or the consumerization of network intelligence, this episode pulls no punches in predicting a smarter, more autonomous future—and who gets left behind.

⸻

🧠 Topics Covered:

•Why traditional network OSes like Cisco IOS and ArubaOS are becoming irrelevant

•How open-source access points and white-box switches are gaining momentum

•Why LLMs and agentic systems are the real future of infrastructure management

•The role of orchestration over configuration

•Why older network admins might resist—but can’t stop—the shift

•What Cisco’s alliance with OpenAI really signals

•Predictions for AI-powered, fully autonomous enterprise networks

⸻

🔗 Social Links

IT SPARC Cast

@ITSPARCCast on X

LinkedIn - SPARC Sales

John Barger

@john_Video on X

LinkedIn - John Barger

Lou Schmidt

@loudoggeek on X

LinkedIn - Lou Schmidt

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.