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

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.

OpenAI is giving AI agents more work to do. Meta is making a bigger push into enterprise AI. And the industry is racing to connect those systems to company data — and control what they do next.

In this episode, World Wide Technology CTO Mike Taylor unpacks the stream of news coming out of the White House regarding AI policy and regulation, OpenAI’s DevDay announcements, Meta’s new enterprise business, Microsoft and Google’s push for shared business definitions, and agent security efforts from NVIDIA and Okta. 

Plus: why companies are turning to open-weight models to manage costs, and what AI providers’ enormous infrastructure commitments could mean for their customers.
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 agents are consuming more tokens than humans, and Jeetu Patel thinks we’re only at the beginning.
The Cisco president and chief product officer joins the AI Proving Ground Podcast to explore what changes when AI stops waiting for prompts and starts taking on the work itself. Suddenly, using AI well becomes an exercise in judgment: knowing what to hand over, what it’s worth and where human oversight still matters.
Patel also makes the case for a different measure of AI productivity. The goal isn’t simply to generate more or move faster. It’s to use AI to produce better thinking, tackle harder problems and do things that weren’t possible before.
Support for this week's episode provided by: Eaton
More about this week's guest:
Jeetu Patel is Cisco’s President and Chief Product Officer, leading the company’s product vision across networking, security, computing, Splunk, silicon and more. A recognized expert in AI and product strategy, he oversees several multibillion-dollar businesses and is helping shape the infrastructure powering the AI era. Before Cisco, Patel held senior leadership roles at Box, EMC and Doculabs.
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 was on the agenda for world leaders this week as OpenAI and Anthropic released cheaper models and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called for stronger testing and verification before developers release systems they cannot safely evaluate. Meanwhile, a specialist model called Jev is drawing attention for making fast decisions inside software, and established software companies are discounting or bundling AI as customers weigh what these tools are worth. 
 On this week’s AI Proving Ground Podcast, World Wide Technology CTO Mike Taylor breaks down the headlines and what they mean for enterprise AI leaders deciding where — and how — to put AI to work.
Taylor unpacks Huang’s case for open-weight AI, the hidden “evaluation tax” of keeping up with new models and the rise of specialized AI designed to make decisions inside software. He also examines what buyers should watch as AI pricing shifts across models, platforms and familiar software suites.
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.

The AI Proving Ground podcast teamed up with Great Place to Work’s Better podcast for a conversation that puts the technology in the background and the people navigating it front and center.
Every leader talks about change. Few talk about what it actually feels like.
In this episode of Better, Roula Amire and guest co-host Brian Feldt sit down with World Wide Technology CIO Kevin Dana to talk about the human side of AI adoption. While many organizations are focused on the technology, Kevin argues that trust is what determines whether people embrace change or resist it.
Drawing on World Wide Technology's experience, he shares practical lessons on creating space for experimentation, learning from failure, building peer-to-peer support, and helping employees navigate uncertainty. One powerful takeaway: AI can help with the work, but people still own the outcome
More about this week's guest:
Kevin Dana has held significant roles at Accenture, Avanade, and Deloitte before joining WWT in 2018. His extensive background in IT and cybersecurity has positioned him as a leader in guiding WWT's digital transformation efforts. At WWT, Kevin leads the Information Technology organization, focusing on establishing and growing joint business and technology partnerships. His approach is centered on delivering outcomes through innovation, starting with process design and followed by technology implementation. Kevin's leadership has been instrumental in driving WWT's technology strategy, ensuring secure, resilient, and innovative technology solutions.
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.