IT Ops Query

AI data management and governance take center stage in 2026

You might recognize Rob Strechay from his appearances on TheCube livestreaming videos during industry conferences, but he's worn many hats in the industry over the years. In this wide-ranging discussion, he looks back at how AI data management evolved in 2025, and predicts that AI "governance, security and data quality are going to be all the rage in 2026."
Featuring: Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst at TheCube Research
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
The Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) project
AI data management, data gravity and the persistence of data silos
AI security, governance and sovereign AI
AI agents and the future of business workflows
and more!
References:
New consortium to aid AI by standardizing semantic modeling
MCP OAuth update adds security for personalized AI
Nutanix sovereign cloud hits Broadcom with multi-cloud hook
2026 will be the year data becomes truly intelligent
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

Behind the scenes with AIOps in Salesforce Hyperforce

As it rolled out AI and AIOps, Salesforce shunned the cloud repatriation route and instead expanded its public cloud presence with Hyperforce. Paul Constantinides, an engineering leader at Salesforce for more than 21 years, currently leads engineering for Hyperforce. In this episode, he details the evolution of the Salesforce internal platform over the years, what was behind the decision to launch Hyperforce, his team's extensive use of AIOps and his "NoOps" goals in the age of AI agents.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: IT Ops Query will be on a holiday break the next two weeks, returning Jan. 8 with all-new episodes.
Featuring: Paul Constantinides, executive vice president of engineering, Salesforce
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
Trust as a core value in infrastructure management at scale
How cloud-native principles improve resilience for AI applications
How internally developed AIOps tools perform automate incident remediation and response
The role for human engineers in a NoOps future
and more!
References:
What Salesforce’s AI agents can do for nonprofits
A+E Global Media boosts AIOps with deterministic AI
GenAI tools set to exceed past waves of AI automation
Salesforce workflow automation tools, Hyperforce debut
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

'Back to the Future' with self-hosted bare metal

Rob Hirschfeld is the CEO and co-founder of RackN, founded in 2014, focused on "addressing the messy challenge of operating at scale in physical data centers," according to his LinkedIn profile. Hirschfeld has had a front-row seat to the last decade of conversations in enterprise IT ops about bare-metal server operations and cloud repatriation, topics that remain hot as some enterprises look to move AI inference workloads on-premises.
Featuring: Rob Hirschfeld, CEO and co-founder of RackN
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
The recent history of cloud repatriation
The VMware factor in enterprise bare metal decisions
How generative AI workloads change the dynamics of self-hosted infrastructure for enterprises
Why going back to self-hosted infrastructure in 2025 doesn't mean going back to 2005 IT management practices
and more!
References:
AWS AI Factories target hybrid cloud AI infrastructure | TechTarget
Top 9 bare-metal cloud providers of 2025
New VMware private AI infrastructure rethinks Tanzu, again
Cloud repatriation vs. multi-cloud: IT seeks cost relief
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

JFrog ML CTO on enterprise AI software supply chain security

Yuval Fernbach has more than a decade of hands-on experience in the realm of data and machine learning, and served as the co-founder and CTO of Qwak from 2020 until it was acquired by JFrog in 2024. Fernbach is now vice president and CTO of JFrog ML, a subset of the JFrog software supply chain management toolset focused on AI and machine learning operations, or MLOps. In this interview, he discusses the unique challenges generative AI poses in software supply chain security, and what enterprise developers and platform engineers need to know about this new frontier in technology.
Featuring: Yuval Fernbach, vice president and CTO of JFrog ML
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
Increased risks and governance issues due to generative AI's widespread use among software engineers
JFrog's platform extensions for managing AI models and Shadow AI detection
The importance of maturing AI adoption practices
JFrog Fly, an agentic artifact repository designed for small teams
and more!
References:
JFrog integrates with Hugging Face, Nvidia; intros JFrog ML
JFrog extends DevSecOps playbook to AI governance
JFrog connects key software supply chain management dots
JFrog buy bolsters MLOps combo with DevSecOps
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

ServiceNow AI maven on AI agent evolution

Enterprise service management platform vendor ServiceNow has been one of the most assertive in the industry in developing its AI agent products over the past 14 months. Our guest, Dorit Zilbershot, has been with ServiceNow for six years, serving in various product management leadership roles focused on AI. In this interview, she shares recent ServiceNow AI model development news with Nvidia, how enterprise AI agent adoption has developed in 2025, and how IT organizations can get past the 'trough of disillusionment' with agents.
Featuring: Dorit Zilbershot, Group Vice President of AI Experiences & Innovation, ServiceNow
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
ServiceNow and Nvidia's Apriel 2.0
Which IT discipline has led AI adoption this year
The connection between AI project failures and governance
and more!
References:
ServiceNow shops share AI copilot results, prep for agents
ServiceNow expands AI governance, emphasizes ROI
ServiceNow makes the case to users for AI management
How AI governance manages risk at scale for enterprises
 
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.
 

Cloud-native platform engineering in the enterprise

The director of engineering for a Fortune 20 automotive company shares his thoughts on the latest in cloud-native technologies for platform engineers during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025. He also discusses ways platform engineering can address common cybersecurity risks, including software supply chain security. Finally, Saxena gives his insights on the opportunities and challenges AI presents for platform engineering pros and the developers they serve.
Featuring: Gaurav Saxena, director of engineering, Fortune 20 automotive company
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
Cloud-native infrastructure automation tools for platform engineering including Crossplane, OpenTelemetry and KubeVela
Software supply chain security tools including Sigstore
AI agent networking and the Envoy AI Gateway project
and more!
References:
Kubernetes AI progress in 2025 and the road ahead
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2025 news coverage
OpenTelemetry adapts to AI observability
 
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

CNCF Surveys highlight cloud-native AI connections

Bob Killen, senior technical program manager at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), shares highlights from two survey reports released this week during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025: The 2025 State of Cloud Native Development report and AI Tech Radar Report. According to Killen, the results show that cloud-native technology has become more accessible to back-end developers, and that AI development is closely tied to cloud-native infrastructure – even though AI engineers might not be aware of it.
Featuring: Bob Killen, senior technical program manager, CNCF
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
How many back-end developers and AI engineers consider themselves "cloud-native," and what that means
What's behind increased hybrid cloud usage compared to previous years
The relatively young AI projects organizations are already using in production
and more!
References:
OpenTelemetry adapts to AI observability
Model Context Protocol fever spreads in cloud-native world
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2025 news coverage
CNCF: AI is the new workload, cloud-native is the new OS
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

Oracle's Sudha Raghavan on AI's infrastructure renaissance

Oracle senior vice president Sudha Raghavan manages all expansions and new buildouts for some of the world's largest infrastructure platforms supporting GPU clusters, including network design. As the company prepares to build new gigawatt data centers worldwide, she explains how its database heritage helps in operating increasingly demanding data center networks with high performance and efficiency.
Featuring: Sudha Raghavan, senior vice president, AI infrastructure, Cloud Infrastructure.
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
Oracle's Acceleron and how it supports AI workloads
Oracle AI World updates, including an Acceleron multi-planar network and converged Network Interface Card (NIC)
What's new with OCI Zettascale10 and the AMD Zettascale Supercluster, coming next year
and more!
References:
Oracle launches new platform to streamline AI development
Oracle adds AI agents to Fusion CX applications cloud stack
Oracle shifts focus of Fusion Cloud Applications to AI agents
Beyond Stargate: Oracle OCI ups cloud infrastructure appeal
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.

How GitHub Code Quality connects to AppSec

It's our first on-location episode! At GitHub Universe, Katie Norton, Research Manager for IDC's DevSecOps and software supply chain security practice, explains how a new extension to GitHub's CodeQL reflects increased awareness of security as a dimension of code quality. She also discusses the shifting strategic partnerships and competition that come with increased convergence between AppSec and QA workflows, along with the AI security and governance concerns that still linger for enterprise IT organizations.
Featuring: Katie Norton, Research Manager for IDC's DevSecOps and software supply chain security practice
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
GitHub's application security updates at GitHub Universe
IDC's market research on AppSec - QA collaboration
The competitive implications of DevSecOps tool consolidation
Advice for enterprise IT organizations on AI governance
and more!
References:
GitHub Agent HQ opens platform to third-party coding agents
JFrog-GitHub partnership eyes software supply chain security
New GitHub Copilot agent edges into DevOps
Glut of AI agent tools faces paradox of choice, skills gap
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.
 

Splunk exec on AI observability's "double-edged sword"

Patrick Lin from Splunk discusses how observability extends beyond IT, highlighting its importance in improving business decisions, customer support, and revenue. The interview also covers challenges in enterprise observability, like standardization and teamwork, along with the changing role of AI in observability methods. AI automation can help observability practitioners keep up with increasingly complex infrastructure, but customer-facing AI apps present their own thorny management problems as production workloads.
Featuring: Patrick Lin, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Observability at Splunk
In today’s episode, we’ll cover…
This week's Splunk State of Observability 2025 report
How observability practices affect digital businesses
How AI both solves and creates observability problems
and more!
References:
Cisco-Splunk strategy shift unveiled with Data Fabric
Under Cisco, Splunk AI roadmap tees up pricing overhaul
Splunk preps OpenLLMetry tie-ins for deeper AI monitoring
Cisco and Splunk are teaching AI to anticipate system failures
To learn more about software development and platform engineering, check out Search IT Operations.
To watch clips from our podcast, subscribe to our YouTube channel, @EyeOnTech.