IT Visionaries

Does AI watch your network? Read-only of course!

In this segment from IT Visionaries, Chris Brandt and John Capobianco discuss where AI agents can create real value for network teams before they ever touch production infrastructure. Instead of jumping straight to full automation, John makes the case for read-only AI: agents that document the network, compare changes over time, run tests, support compliance, enrich tickets, and help engineers understand what changed when something breaks.

They also explore why networking may be uniquely suited for AI-assisted operations. Networks are deterministic, but the problems can be difficult to spot - especially when outdated documentation, configuration drift, and human error pile up over time.

Before AI changes the network, maybe it should learn to watch it.

Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6zZmgPOW7I

Chapters

0:00 - Why AI Should Watch the Network

1:03 - Finding What Changed

3:51 - Beyond Config Management

7:15 - From Detection to Safe Remediation

--
This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.
That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---
IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your people aren't tired of change — they're saturated. There's a difference, and it's the difference between an AI rollout that lands and one that bounces off your workforce entirely.

Kelle Fontenot is the Chief Digital Officer at KPMG US, where the CIO, the CTO, and the Chief Data Officer all report to her. She owns internal innovation, architecture, platform, engineering, and data across a 40,000-person workforce — and she's spent the last four and a half years steering that organization through cloud, data, and now an AI wave reshaping how every one of her people does their job.

In this conversation, Kelle reframes 'change fatigue' as 'change saturation,' reveals that KPMG employees built 25,000 AI agents in the last six months alone, walks through the synthetic-data acquisition powering regulated AI testing at scale, and explains the brand-new Anthropic partnership turning a 140-year-old services firm into a products company.

 

What you'll learn

• Why 'change fatigue' is the wrong diagnosis — and what 'saturation' changes about how you roll out AI

• Why KPMG refuses to use AI as a head-count lever — and why that decision is actually accelerating adoption

• How 40,000 KPMG employees built 25,000 AI agents in six months — and what that means for who counts as a 'builder'

• Why the CIO, CTO, and CDO all report to one person — and what would break if they didn't

• How synthetic data lets a regulated firm test AI at scale without the breach risk

• What KPMG's Anthropic partnership signals about the future of professional services

 

Connect

Kelle Fontenot on LinkedIn

KPMG US

IT Visionaries Podcast

 

Chapters

0:00 AI Change Has Become AI Saturation

1:29 Why “Change Fatigue” Is the Wrong Diagnosis

3:27 Prompting Like It’s November

4:46 Giving People Space to Innovate

6:38 AI Is Not a Headcount Lever

10:07 Building AI in a Regulated Business

11:24 The Risk Container Around AI

14:12 The AI-Augmented Auditor

17:21 The Agent Governance Problem

20:59 Why Digital, Data, and Tech Sit Together

22:59 Building an Inside Startup

30:04 Innovation Has to Happen at the Edge

36:48 The ROI Math for AI Agents

38:50 Why KPMG Bought a Synthetic Data Company

44:09 KPMG’s Anthropic Partnership

51:03 Shipping AI at Scale

52:10 Kelle Fontenot’s Advice for Leaders

--
This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.
That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---
IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Companies are making the exact same mistake with AI that they made with cloud.

FICO's CIO Mike Trkay breaks down why 95% of companies are failing at AI alignment, why "automating a bad process faster" is the #1 trap, and why regulated industries are already abandoning LLMs in favor of focused language models.

 

Key takeaways:

• Only 5% of AI pilots make it to production — and MIT's research backs it up

• The lift-and-shift parallel: cloud costs went up for the same reason AI ROI is missing

• Why the LLM-to-focused-language-model shift mirrors cloud-native vs lift-and-shift

• What "AI native" actually means (and why chatbots aren't it)

 

Chapters

00:00 The 5% Alignment Problem

01:09 Only 7% Even Measure If Their AI Works

02:15 "You're Just Doing a Bad Process Faster"

06:29 LLM Repatriation and the Rise of Focused Language Models

--
This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.
That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---
IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Network automation has been "coming soon" for over a decade. So what's actually different this time?

John Capobianco, Head of AI & Developer Relations at Itential, built NetClaw — a CCIE-level AI agent that manages network infrastructure through Slack and WhatsApp. It hit 300 GitHub stars in two weeks. It can analyze packet captures, configure routers, run compliance tests, and generate documentation — all through natural language.

John spent 15 years as a network engineer before becoming one of the leading voices in network automation. He's published multiple books, created dozens of open-source projects, and just launched the VibeOps community where 600+ network engineers share AI code without judgment.

Key takeaways:

• Why natural language is the breakthrough that makes network automation finally work (hint: nobody has to learn Python anymore)

• The 5 use cases beyond config management that deliver value on day one — all read-only, all low-risk

• How to go from human-in-the-loop to fully agentic network operations without triggering panic

• Why "shadow AI" is the new shadow IT — and what leadership needs to do about it

• The contrarian case that writing configs by hand is now a solved problem

 

Guest: John Capobianco — Head of AI & Developer Relations, Itential

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/john-capobianco-644a1515

X/Twitter: @John_Capobianco

NetClaw: github.com/automateyournetwork/netclaw

VibeOps Forum: Reach John on LinkedIn or X for invite

 

Chapters

0:00 Why AI Is Different for Network Automation

2:32 Natural Language: The Interface That Changes Everything

3:51 "The Network Should Be Like a Telephone" — Why Engineers Resist Change

6:08 The No-Win Life of a Network Engineer

8:08 OpenClaw: More GitHub Stars Than Linux

10:15 What NetClaw Actually Does (90 Skills, 43 MCPs)

11:37 The RFC Documentation Problem AI Can Solve

13:03 Day One Agent Rules: Start Read-Only

13:58 When Was the Last Time We Hired a Junior?

15:54 How NetClaw Hit 300 Stars in Two Weeks

19:54 Deterministic vs Non-Deterministic: Getting Engineers Over the Hump

23:36 War Stories: Fat Fingers, MTU Issues, and the DNS Nightmare

28:32 Documentation: The AI Use Case Nobody Can Argue With

32:34 Beyond Config Management: 5 AI Use Cases That Matter Now

36:00 The IDS/IPS Analogy: Why AI Agents Succeed Where Signatures Failed

40:02 AI Hallucination Is Overstated — Misalignment Is the Real Problem

41:53 Model Convergence: Why the Stuff Around the Model Matters More

46:00 Shadow AI Is the New Shadow IT

47:59 What Happens When AI Understands Your Business Context

53:59 The Optimistic Case for AI and Humanity

56:05 VibeOps: Building a Safe Space for AI-Curious Engineers

1:00:36 Is Vibe Coding Just Coding Now?

1:01:54 "Don't Write the Configs Anymore"

1:02:43 Closing & Where to Find John

--
This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.
That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---
IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your basic search is missing a massive section of the internet.

In this IT Visionaries Spotlight, Chris Brandt talks with Sudheesh Nair, Co-Founder and CEO of TinyFish, about the hidden layer of the internet - the data, pricing, and real-world context that never shows up in search results.

The future isn’t better search. It’s AI that can operate the web for you - executing multi-step tasks, navigating complexity, and returning answers that actually reflect your situation.

 

Chapters:

0:00 The Internet You Never See

1:55 From Search to “Operating the Web”

4:30 The Real Value - From Pricing to Taste

 

--
This episode of IT Visionaries is brought to you by Meter - the company building better networks. Businesses today are frustrated with outdated providers, rigid pricing, and fragmented tools. Meter changes that with a single integrated solution that covers everything wired, wireless, and even cellular networking. They design the hardware, write the firmware, build the software, and manage it all so your team doesn't have to.
That means you get fast, secure, and scalable connectivity without the complexity of juggling multiple providers. Thanks to meter for sponsoring. Go to meter.com/itv to book a demo.

---
IT Visionaries is made by the team at Mission.org. Learn more about our media studio and network of podcasts at mission.org.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.