AI Proving Ground Podcast: Exploring Artificial Intelligence & Enterprise AI with World Wide Technology

For years, enterprises have been stuck with aging software that's too expensive, too complicated or too risky to replace. AI is changing that equation. But faster code doesn't necessarily mean better software.
What happens when AI can rebuild a critical application in a fraction of the time, but the people who understood why it worked that way are long gone?
On this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT's Nate McKie joins host Brian Feldt to explore how generative AI is rewriting the rules of legacy application modernization. From reconstructing software without its original source code to the legal gray areas of AI-powered replication, the conversation reveals just how much is becoming possible, and what organizations still need to get right.
Because the real challenge isn't simply replacing old code. It's preserving the business decisions buried inside it, proving the new system works and rethinking development practices for a world where AI can write software faster than organizations can approve it.
Support for this episode provided by: Coder
More about this week's guest:
Nate McKie is Senior Practice Director of AI Native Engineering and Senior Executive AI Advisor at World Wide Technology. With more than 25 years of experience in software and automation engineering, Nate helps organizations turn emerging AI capabilities into practical business solutions. His work focuses on AI-driven software development, legacy application modernization and helping enterprises rethink how they build, manage and evolve critical systems.
The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. 
Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.
The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.
Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.

Is your enterprise ready for AI it can't fully control? WWT CTO Mike Taylor breaks down the week's biggest AI news: Bank of America's patching push, Satya Nadella's call for an AI emergency brake, Anthropic's warning about AI that copies itself and the CoreWeave debt jitters.

In this episode of The Weekly Signal, host Brian Feldt and Mike Taylor dig into the trust gap behind this week's enterprise AI headlines. The topics include cybersecurity, AI agents, AI governance and GPU infrastructure.
In this episode:
Why hiring more people is only a stopgap for the surge in AI-discovered vulnerabilities, and why patching needs automation and AI agents
What an AI kill switch could look like inside your enterprise, starting with visibility, versioning and the ability to shut agents off
Why JPMorgan and Amazon are limiting outside AI agents, and the "DNS for agents" problem enterprises need to solve
How Anthropic's warning about small AI models copying themselves onto smart devices creates a new kind of security problem
What CoreWeave's roughly $50 billion debt load means for enterprises buying AI infrastructure, and why older NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs still earn their keep
The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. 
Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.
The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.
Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.

For decades, network engineers have been the ones keeping everything running. Now AI is learning to do the job itself. And in some cases, it's already doing it better.
As AI agents place unprecedented demands on enterprise networks, the infrastructure supporting them is undergoing its own transformation. Networks that can detect problems, optimize performance and even repair themselves are moving from ambitious concept to operational reality.
On this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, HPE's Sudheer Matta and WWT's Christine Fierro join host Brian Feldt to explore what happens when the network starts thinking for itself. From a university engineer who was challenged to step away from his keyboard to an AI-generated application that brought a manufacturing site to a halt, the conversation reveals both the extraordinary potential and very real stakes of autonomous networking.
The technology is advancing. The harder question is how much control we're ready to give it.
Support for this episode provided by: Equinix
More about this week's guests:
Sudheer Matta is a networking technology leader who helped shape Mist Systems' growth through product management and its integration with Juniper Networks. A passionate technologist, he emphasizes disciplined execution, strong teams and lasting customer partnerships. His approach centers on earning trust through customer success — a philosophy reflected in Mist's commitment to building lifelong customer relationships.
Christine Fierro has over 17 years of experience in networking, with an initial focus on optical networking. Since joining WWT in 2014, she has held numerous roles and now serves as the Sr. Director for the Networking practice within the Global Solutions & Architecture (GS&A) team. Her team is responsible for the strategy, development, enablement, and pre-sales technical support within the company for Core Networking, Campus & Branch, Data Center Networking, and Enterprise Architectures, representing over $14B in revenue.
The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. 
Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.
The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.
Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.

AI-powered cyberattacks are getting faster, billions are pouring into compute infrastructure and the promised productivity gains are still difficult to measure. Is enterprise AI moving faster than businesses can adapt?
WWT CTO Mike Taylor joins Brian Feldt to unpack the week's biggest AI developments, from Anthropic's expanding cybersecurity efforts to the growing debate over compute capacity and AI's economic payoff. They explore why stronger security requires more than better tools, how organizations can turn individual AI productivity into measurable business outcomes and what it will take to build teams ready for what's next.
The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. 
Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.
The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.
Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.

AI is getting cheaper, faster and easier to put to work. So why are so many companies still struggling to show a return?
Purdue University’s Richard Ryffel and Mohammad Saifur Rahman join the AI Proving Ground Podcast to argue that the problem may be how businesses are thinking about AI in the first place. Treating it as another efficiency tool can only take you so far. The bigger opportunity comes when companies use cheaper intelligence to rethink how work gets done, where humans create value and what the business is capable of doing next.
The shift won’t happen overnight. There’s a J-curve between investing in AI and realizing its value, and getting through it may require a different approach to leadership, talent and even how we measure progress.
Because the real question isn’t how much work AI can replace. It’s what becomes possible when intelligence itself costs less.
Support for this episode provided by: Glean
Richard Ryffel is Special Advisor to the Dean and Professor of Practice at Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business, where he works with business leaders on AI and executive education. He brings 35 years of experience across finance, investment management and corporate advisory, including roles at J.P. Morgan, Bank of America and Edward Jones.
Mohammad Saifur Rahman is the Daniels School Chair in Management and Professor of Management at Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business. His research explores the economics of digitization, AI and decision-making, with a focus on how emerging technologies reshape business and create value. His work has appeared in Management Science, Information Systems Research and MIT Sloan Management Review.
The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. 
Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.
The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.
Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.