Beyond The Pilot: Enterprise AI in Action

Originally Released in February 2024 In his role as Global Leader for Tech and Digital Advantage at the Boston Consulting Group, Vlad Lukic has overseen hundreds of AI deployments. Now working with scores of enterprise companies racing to embrace gen AI, he finds that critical considerations are often overlooked, such as readiness of data and pivotal financial factors. Missteps such as deploying AI where it’s not really needed and neglecting the essential task of managing organizational change for seamless AI adoption can also tank the best intentions to capitalize on gen AI. He also has lots of advice on how to do it right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally Published in July 2023 FedEx handles 100 billion daily transactions, from tracking packages to routing flights. To keep up with this massive data demand, the company has invested in data center performance, especially in high-performance computing. Ken Spangler, EVP of IT and CIO of Global Operations Technology, FedEx, talks with VB Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall about how the company has adopted the co-location model for the data center, which allows it to leverage the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining control of the technology stack. He also reveals how FedEx is partnering with edge computing providers to deploy “mini data centers” that can reduce latency and enhance security for its customers – and of course AI and automation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally published in July 2023 Kamran Ziaee, SVP, Technology Strategy & Global Infrastructure at Verizon sits down with VB Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall to discuss how data centers now must handle greater and greater demands. While high-performance computing used to be reserved for exceptionally data-intensive applications, like gene sequencing or self-driving cars, every industry is seeing real use cases for adopting HPC. Verizon is an example of a company that says HPC is now table stakes for many applications it runs in its data centers. While Verizon has consolidated down to three data centers from nine, it has also invested in multi-access edge computing (MEC) to ensure rapid response time for customers. We explore his unique approach to an optimized hybrid cloud, where many critical applications stay on-prem and highly elastic applications migrate to the public cloud to enjoy performance gains there. We touch on the Gen AI craze and the proof of concepts the company is running, which also point to a hybrid future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally published in October 2023 VentureBeat Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall talks with Archana Deskus, EVP & CIO of Paypal, on how the payment giant, with more than 400 million users, is meeting the need for more computation, more power and more storage, particularly during peak periods — all while committing to sustainability and greater efficiency. Deskus dives into bursting capacity, data center consolidation, asset utilization, efficient code and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally published in October 2023 VentureBeat Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall talks with Mazen Rawashdeh, SVP & CTO of eBay, about how one of the world’s largest online marketplaces is using innovative technologies to power its data centers and reduce its environmental impact while meeting the growing demand for data processing in the age of generative AI. Rawashdeh explores the importance of fungibility between CPUs and GPUs, hybrid cloud, open source, running their data centers on 85% utilization and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally Released in October 2023 How do companies identify the best uses cases for gen AI — and then navigate the complexity of AI-first products and tools to drive that innovation at scale? VB’s editorial director, Michael Nuñez, speaks with Databricks co-founder Reynold Xin and Vijoy Pandey, SVP at Outshift by Cisco, about the many factors that will determine how organizations succeed, or don’t, during a time of, as Xin says, bottom-up innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices