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

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.

AI safety warnings are intensifying, frontier labs are calling for a slowdown and businesses face growing pressure to keep agent security and spending under control. What should enterprise leaders make of it all? WWT Chief Technology Officer Mike Taylor unpacks the debate over AI’s pace, the risks of agents acting without authorization and Salesforce’s latest push to connect AI to enterprise workflows. He also examines a mounting challenge: determining which AI spending delivers value as token bills climb.
More about this week's guest:
Mike Taylor oversees WWT's Global Engineering and IT organization and Services segment to position WWT as a single-source provider to accelerate digital transformation. Mike aligns WWT's unparalleled technical capabilities with its collective business acumen to both advise and execute customers as they seek to become more agile and innovative. As business and technology become more complex, it is crucial organizations use technology investments to drive strategic initiatives. Mike is responsible for connecting business strategy into the IT organization, and simplifying the sales and services process to create a more seamless experience for both customers and partners.
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 investment is rising fast, but figuring out what actually creates value is still a work in progress. For WWT CEO Jim Kavanaugh, that uncertainty isn't a reason to slow down. It's a reason to get closer to the work.
In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Jim shares what WWT is learning by putting AI to work inside its own business. That means experimenting aggressively, seeing what holds up in a real enterprise environment and giving people across the organization room to learn, adapt and rethink how work gets done.
The bigger lesson: AI transformation is business transformation. The companies that pull ahead won't be the ones that get every decision right. They'll be the ones that learn quickly, course-correct and turn individual breakthroughs into capabilities the entire organization can use.
And as AI gets more capable, human expertise doesn't become less valuable. It becomes the thing that connects the technology to the business: knowing what matters, where to apply it and how to turn what you're learning into growth.
More about this week's guest:
Jim Kavanaugh is globally recognized as an innovative business executive and is renowned for his inclusive, people-first leadership style. His emphasis on promoting a healthy, vibrant workplace has anchored WWT's award-winning culture, while his savvy business acumen has propelled the company's substantial growth from a small startup to a global technology solution provider that helps organizations conquer the speed and complexity of technology, harness the power of digital transformation and make a new world happen.
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 changing by the week. Most companies are still planning by the quarter.
Softchoice CEO Andrew Caprara joins the AI Proving Ground Podcast with a refreshingly practical take on what it actually takes to keep up. Forget starting with the latest tool or another sprawling AI transformation plan. Start with a broken workflow, put the right people around it and build something in days, not months.
Andrew talks openly about Softchoice’s own experience. The first year brought a lot of activity without much to show for it. Since then, they’ve changed how the work gets done, moving AI projects faster, getting the right people closer to the problem and building a weekly rhythm around AI. And it’s translating into real business results, including more capacity without adding headcount.
Because when the technology moves weekly, a 12-week project plan starts to look a little suspicious.
More about this week's guest: 
Andrew Caprara is President and CEO of Softchoice, where he’s leading the company through the same AI transformation challenges facing its customers. Since joining Softchoice in 2014, he has led across sales, services, operations and strategy, giving him a firsthand view of what it takes to turn new technology into real business results. Before Softchoice, Andrew worked in management consulting at McKinsey & Company and earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
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 spending is climbing fast. But the number itself may be less important than what it reveals about how an organization is actually using AI.
WWT CFO Tom Strunk and CIO Kevin Dana are watching that shift firsthand. As token consumption moves from thousands to millions, the spend becomes a signal: where people are experimenting, which use cases are gaining traction and where it may be worth looking more closely for value.
They also get into a challenge traditional IT budgets weren't built for. AI usage can scale quickly and unpredictably, making transparency between finance and technology critical. The goal isn't simply to control the cost. It's to understand what's driving it, where it's creating value and how the business can make smarter decisions as adoption grows.
Support for this episode provided by: Snowflake
More about this week's guests:
Tom Strunk is Chief Financial Officer and Chief Data Officer at World Wide Technology, where he helps shape the company’s financial, data and investment strategy. Since joining WWT as its 21st employee in 1994, he has helped guide its growth into a global technology solutions provider. Tom brings a CFO’s perspective to AI investment, rising consumption and the challenge of connecting AI spend to real business value.
Kevin Dana is Senior Vice President of IT and Cybersecurity and CIO at World Wide Technology, where he leads the company’s technology strategy and digital transformation efforts. With more than 28 years of IT experience, Kevin focuses on using technology to drive meaningful business outcomes. He brings a CIO’s perspective to AI adoption, rapidly growing token consumption and what AI spend can reveal about usage, opportunity and business value.
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.