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APMdigest and The Field CTO Launch The AI+ITOPS Podcast - Episode 1 Guest: EMA's Dennis Drogseth

APMdigest and The Field CTO (TheFieldCTO.com) joined forces to launch the AI+ITOPS Podcast.


"Digital transformation ... and the need for IT to enable digital business outcomes, is greater than ever, and all the tools including AIOps and automation ... are critical in making the difference." Listen to the podcast

The first series of podcasts — one podcast per week for the next 11 weeks — are sponsored by New Relic One, Observability Made Simple.

The mission of the AI+ITOPS Podcast is to discuss the struggles faced by ITOps — such as digital transformation and the need to keep IT services "always on" — and explore how AI/ML, AIOps, Application Performance Management (APM), and other ITOps and DevOps technologies can help.

The AI+ITOPS Podcast is hosted by Andy Thurai of The Field CTO (TheFieldCTO.com). Thurai is an accomplished IT executive, strategist, advisor and evangelist with 25+ years of experience in executive, technical and architectural leadership positions at companies such as IBM, Intel, BMC, Nortel and Oracle; he advises many start-ups; and he is a Steering Committee Member for AIOps Exchange. He has been a keynote speaker in many major conferences, as well as host of many webcasts, podcasts and video chats. He is a regular Forbes contributor, and has written 100+ articles on emerging technology topics for publications such as Forbes, AI World, VentureBeat and Wired. Andy Thurai can be reached on Twitter at @AndyThurai, LinkedIn, or his website at www.TheFieldCTO.com.

Taking an Insider's Look at EMA's Upcoming AIOps Research

In Episode 1, Andy Thurai interviews Dennis Drogseth, VP and Analyst at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), for an insider's look at the firm's upcoming research into the AIOps market. In the full interview, they discuss the very meaning of AIOps, types of products and features, challenges, winning strategies, the relationship between automation and AIOps, and AIOps in a pandemic world.

For your convenience, Episode 1 is available in a shorter "express version" and a longer full interview.

You can go to the AI+ITOPS Podcast page or simply listen to or download your choice of podcast below.

If you prefer to listen via a podcast service, the AI+ITOPS Podcast is currently available on RSS Feed, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more. Go to the AI+ITOPS Podcast page for a full list of podcast services.

Episode 1 - Express Version (21:42)

Click here for a direct MP3 download of Episode 1 - Express Version

Episode 1 - Full Interview (38:09)

Click here for a direct MP3 download of Episode 1 - Full Interview

Hot Topics

The Latest

Most organizations approach OpenTelemetry as a collection of individual tools they need to assemble from scratch. This view misses the bigger picture. OpenTelemetry is a complete telemetry framework with composable components that address specific problems at different stages of organizational maturity. You start with what you need today and adopt additional pieces as your observability practices evolve ...

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 5, the final installment, covers AI's impacts on IT teams ...

APMdigest and The Field CTO Launch The AI+ITOPS Podcast - Episode 1 Guest: EMA's Dennis Drogseth

APMdigest and The Field CTO (TheFieldCTO.com) joined forces to launch the AI+ITOPS Podcast.


"Digital transformation ... and the need for IT to enable digital business outcomes, is greater than ever, and all the tools including AIOps and automation ... are critical in making the difference." Listen to the podcast

The first series of podcasts — one podcast per week for the next 11 weeks — are sponsored by New Relic One, Observability Made Simple.

The mission of the AI+ITOPS Podcast is to discuss the struggles faced by ITOps — such as digital transformation and the need to keep IT services "always on" — and explore how AI/ML, AIOps, Application Performance Management (APM), and other ITOps and DevOps technologies can help.

The AI+ITOPS Podcast is hosted by Andy Thurai of The Field CTO (TheFieldCTO.com). Thurai is an accomplished IT executive, strategist, advisor and evangelist with 25+ years of experience in executive, technical and architectural leadership positions at companies such as IBM, Intel, BMC, Nortel and Oracle; he advises many start-ups; and he is a Steering Committee Member for AIOps Exchange. He has been a keynote speaker in many major conferences, as well as host of many webcasts, podcasts and video chats. He is a regular Forbes contributor, and has written 100+ articles on emerging technology topics for publications such as Forbes, AI World, VentureBeat and Wired. Andy Thurai can be reached on Twitter at @AndyThurai, LinkedIn, or his website at www.TheFieldCTO.com.

Taking an Insider's Look at EMA's Upcoming AIOps Research

In Episode 1, Andy Thurai interviews Dennis Drogseth, VP and Analyst at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), for an insider's look at the firm's upcoming research into the AIOps market. In the full interview, they discuss the very meaning of AIOps, types of products and features, challenges, winning strategies, the relationship between automation and AIOps, and AIOps in a pandemic world.

For your convenience, Episode 1 is available in a shorter "express version" and a longer full interview.

You can go to the AI+ITOPS Podcast page or simply listen to or download your choice of podcast below.

If you prefer to listen via a podcast service, the AI+ITOPS Podcast is currently available on RSS Feed, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more. Go to the AI+ITOPS Podcast page for a full list of podcast services.

Episode 1 - Express Version (21:42)

Click here for a direct MP3 download of Episode 1 - Express Version

Episode 1 - Full Interview (38:09)

Click here for a direct MP3 download of Episode 1 - Full Interview

Hot Topics

The Latest

Most organizations approach OpenTelemetry as a collection of individual tools they need to assemble from scratch. This view misses the bigger picture. OpenTelemetry is a complete telemetry framework with composable components that address specific problems at different stages of organizational maturity. You start with what you need today and adopt additional pieces as your observability practices evolve ...

One of the earliest lessons I learned from architecting throughput-heavy services is that simplicity wins repeatedly: fewer moving parts, loosely coupled execution (fewer synchronous calls), and precise timing metering. You want data and decisions to travel the shortest possible path. The goal is to build a system where every strategy and each line of code (contention is the key metric) complements the decision trees ...

As discussions around AI "autonomous coworkers" accelerate, many industry projections assume that agents will soon operate alongside human staff in making decisions, taking actions, and managing tasks with minimal oversight. But a growing number of critics (including some of the developers building these systems) argue that the industry still has a long way to go to be able to treat AI agents like fully trusted teammates ...

Enterprise AI has entered a transformational phase where, according to Digitate's recently released survey, Agentic AI and the Future of Enterprise IT, companies are moving beyond traditional automation toward Agentic AI systems designed to reason, adapt, and collaborate alongside human teams ...

The numbers back this urgency up. A recent Zapier survey shows that 92% of enterprises now treat AI as a top priority. Leaders want it, and teams are clamoring for it. But if you look closer at the operations of these companies, you see a different picture. The rollout is slow. The results are often delayed. There's a disconnect between what leaders want and what their technical infrastructure can handle ...

Kyndryl's 2025 Readiness Report revealed that 61% of global business and technology leaders report increasing pressure from boards and regulators to prove AI's ROI. As the technology evolves and expectations continue to rise, leaders are compelled to generate and prove impact before scaling further. This will lead to a decisive turning point in 2026 ...

Cloudflare's disruption illustrates how quickly a single provider's issue cascades into widespread exposure. Many organizations don't fully realize how tightly their systems are coupled to thirdparty services, or how quickly availability and security concerns align when those services falter ... You can't avoid these dependencies, but you can understand them ...

If you work with AI, you know this story. A model performs during testing, looks great in early reviews, works perfectly in production and then slowly loses relevance after operating for a while. Everything on the surface looks perfect — pipelines are running, predictions or recommendations are error-free, data quality checks show green; yet outcomes don't meet the ground reality. This pattern often repeats across enterprise AI programs. Take for example, a mid-sized retail banking and wealth-management firm with heavy investments in AI-powered risk analytics, fraud detection and personalized credit-decisioning systems. The model worked well for a while, but transactions increased, so did false positives by 18% ...

Basic uptime is no longer the gold standard. By 2026, network monitoring must do more than report status, it must explain performance in a hybrid-first world. Networks are no longer just static support systems; they are agile, distributed architectures that sit at the very heart of the customer experience and the business outcomes ... The following five trends represent the new standard for network health, providing a blueprint for teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, integrated future ...

APMdigest's Predictions Series concludes with 2026 AI Predictions — industry experts offer predictions on how AI and related technologies will evolve and impact business in 2026. Part 5, the final installment, covers AI's impacts on IT teams ...