For diversified enterprises, few operating model questions are as persistent or polarizing as centralization versus decentralization. Decentralization promises speed, ownership, and local responsiveness. Centralization promises efficiency, standardization, and leverage. Both can be right. Both can be wrong. The challenge is that many organizations end up with both models operating at once, without enough clarity about…
Somewhere in the last eighteen months, “AI agent” stopped being a useful term. CIOs may even be afraid to ask what “agent” truly means, as it now seems to describe everything from a chatbot that answers HR questions to an autonomous research system that plans its own week of work. When a single phrase carries…
In one ransomware response I observed, the master operational dashboard remained green while the underlying environment told a very different story. It was a classic example of what we in the IT audit profession call the “watermelon effect”—green on the outside, red on the inside. Beneath that dashboard sat an unmapped web of legacy technical…
China has created an international organization to set standards and introduce regulation for AI, inviting 28 other countries to join — but the US, a leading AI powerhouse is not part it. The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) was established by 29 countries, including China, Russia and Brazil, at a ceremony in Shanghai, China,…
We are inundated with promises that artificial intelligence will save us and that the next governance framework will protect us. Buy this platform, adopt that model and the hard part finally gets easier. After 15 years in this field, I have wanted that shortcut as much as anyone. But both promises are downstream of something…
I keep seeing a version of the same scene. A CEO has a question about AI. It is a real question, the kind that will shape where the company spends the next two years. The CEO does not bring it to the CIO. They bring it to a data leader two levels down, or to…
Once upon a time, there were actual arguments as to whether CIOs should be business people, not technology people. With any luck, these arguments were stomped out back here: “The case against the ‘business-savvy CIO’” — which drove the arguments for this false dichotomy into the ground back in 2018. Some complications have arisen in…
For three decades, enterprise software has been a buy-it decision. Packaged software from SAP, Oracle and Salesforce covered roughly 80% of requirements at a fraction of the cost of building. The economics were obvious, and for traditional applications, they still are. AI is introducing a wrinkle that is forcing even the most committed enterprise software…
Organizations usually face the same questions concerning XLAs: What should we measure, who owns the data, how should incentives work, and how will this change provider behavior after signature. There are no easy answers either, but after advising clients in MSP relationships with major providers, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. Successful XLA programs…
The Linux Foundation has launched the x402 Foundation, a new industry body that will oversee the x402 payment protocol, an open standard designed to let AI agents, applications, and APIs pay for digital services over HTTP. The x402 protocol, originally developed by Coinbase, embeds payment capabilities directly into web interactions, allowing AI agents, APIs, and applications to…