The Tech Field Day sessions enterprise IT leaders actually watch.
Volume 342, Issue 5 · 6 articles from 6 issues
AI Costs Push Enterprise IT Toward Efficient Inference
A Tech Field Day podcast episode featuring Tom Hollingsworth, Alastair Cooke, and Stephen Foskett explores how enterprises are transitioning from speculative AI investments to practical business inference.
The panelists discuss economic pressures reshaping technology priorities through 2026 and 2027, including a looming hardware supply crisis affecting RAM and SSD costs.
Key topics include token pricing opacity, enterprise cost transparency challenges, and power dynamics between hyperscalers and legacy infrastructure providers that will shape future networking, cloud, and security strategies.
A panel discussion on why Fibre Channel remains foundational to modern AI storage infrastructure.
Stephen Foskett and Tom Hollingsworth of The Futurum Group lead a discussion on how Fibre Channel serves as the foundation for contemporary AI storage. The session, presented by Cisco MDS, examines the integration of high-speed storage networking with AI workloads.
Panelists specializing in cloud, networking and emerging technologies provide analysis of the requirements AI places on storage fabrics.
Experts debate whether indoor standard power for 6 GHz Wi-Fi is necessary despite the capability existing.
A Tech Field Day podcast episode featuring Wi-Fi experts Mark Houtz and Keith Parsons explores whether enabling standard power indoors for 6 GHz networks is worthwhile.
While standard power allows client devices to transmit with greater strength for improved coverage, it demands Automated Frequency Coordination implementation and reduces available spectrum channels.
The panelists discuss real-world device behavior and channel width trade-offs, concluding traditional Low Power Indoor design remains the smarter option for most deployments.
Commvault's Vidya Shankaran says securing AI agents starts with centralized identity governance and tested clean recovery.
On a Tech Field Day Podcast episode presented by Commvault, Vidya Shankaran joins delegates Karen Lopez and Shala Warner to discuss workforce security as AI agents move behind the firewall.
They recommend forming an AI Center of Excellence to set governance, identity and access, controlled through a centralized IAM tool, while recognizing that tool becomes a new attack surface.
The first step is a tested data protection strategy enabling clean recovery of complete data and applications after a breach, a theme Commvault will expand on at its SHIFT event in November.
A Tech Field Day podcast explores how to use AI for infrastructure automation safely without reckless "vibe coding."
In this Tech Field Day Podcast episode, host Alastair Cooke joins Pete Welcher and Jens Soeldner to discuss using generative AI for infrastructure deployment and CloudFormation templates.
The panel stresses the difference between disciplined AI assistance and dangerous improvisation, warning that using the same AI to both write and test code is "a recipe for disaster."
They cover problem decomposition, digital twins for testing, the impact on junior engineer employment, and the economics of rising AI token costs.
The conversation focuses on how enterprise IT teams can gain AI's speed benefits without sacrificing governance or code quality.
A Tech Field Day podcast episode on how affordable solar, batteries and electrification can make utility grid power optional.
This Tech Field Day podcast episode features delegates Andy Banta and Paul Braren discussing their own home deployments of solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and EV charging.
They argue solar and battery electrification has become affordable enough to replace utility service. Motivations include environmentalism, independence, frugality and technical interest.
Many started with efficient electric appliances and EVs, then added batteries and inverters for backup, which pair with rooftop solar to let the whole system run autonomously.
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