Petri Dish
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- Petri Dish
Russell Smith hosts Petri Dish, a podcast for Microsoft system engineers and administrators looking to keep up to date with the latest trends in IT.
Latest Episode: The Problem With Moving AI From Cloud to Edge
Petri Dish Episodes
The Problem With Moving AI From Cloud to Edge
Enterprise AI has moved well beyond the experimentation phase, yet many organizations still struggle to turn successful pilots into operational systems that deliver measurable business value. Across industries such as manufacturing, utilities, and oil & gas, the challenge is often less about identifying compelling use cases and more about navigating the realities of deployment, integration,...
Your AI Can Find the CEO’s Salary. Can Your IT Team Stop It?
What happens when an employee asks AI how much the CEO earns—and gets an answer? In this episode of Petri Dish, ENow Software CEO Jay Gundotra shares a story of exposed executive pay that puts the risks of AI governance into perspective. We explore how AI agents are expanding access to business data, why more...
Why Email Security Training Alone Won’t Stop Payment Fraud
For years, organisations have trained employees to spot fraud by looking for suspicious emails, spelling mistakes, unusual links, and other obvious warning signs. But as attackers have started using AI, many of those indicators have lost their value. In this episode of Petri Dish, I’m joined by Shai Gabay, CEO and Co-Founder of Trustmi, to...
Still Fighting Endpoint Fires? How to Scale IT Change Without the Chaos
Today on Petri Dish, I’m speaking to Bob Kelly, Chief Product Officer at Juriba, author, and the founder of two communities that helped shape how IT professionals learned their craft: AppDeploy and ITNinja. We explore why organizations still struggle to turn technology change into business outcomes, where even the best-equipped IT teams get stuck, and...
Data Sovereignty Isn’t Just About Where Your Data Lives
In today’s episode of Petri Dish, I’m joined by Giovanni Carraro, SVP, Global Strategic Alliances at Kyndryl. We discuss sovereign cloud but not just as a data residency checkbox. Kyndryl and Microsoft are expanding their collaboration around Kyndryl Sovereignty Solutioning and Microsoft Sovereign Cloud, and the bigger question is how enterprises build architectures that work...
How ExtraHop Gives Security Teams the Context AI Attacks Demand
For years, cybersecurity teams have focused on keeping attackers out. But in today’s AI-driven environments, the bigger challenge may be understanding what’s happening after they get in. New research from ExtraHop shows that nearly half of organizations don’t detect attacks until after data has already been exfiltrated. Joining me today is Heath Mullins, Chief Evangelist...
AI Can Now Fix Outages While You Sleep. Are Enterprises Ready?
AI agents can now write code, investigate incidents, and in some cases resolve IT problems before anyone is even aware there’s an issue. But how close are we really to autonomous IT? In this episode, I sit down with Karthik Sj, Chief AI Officer at LogicMonitor, to explore how AI is moving beyond chatbots into...
AI Is Changing Tech Hiring: How IT Pros Can Still Stand Out
AI is changing almost every part of the tech hiring process, from how candidates tailor résumés and apply for roles to how employers screen, assess, and communicate with applicants. But as both sides lean more heavily on automation, the process risks becoming noisier, less personal, and harder to trust. In this episode, I’m joined by...
AI Theatre: Why Enterprise AI Projects Keep Failing
Is your organization building real business value with AI or just putting on a show? In this episode of Petri Dish, Russell Smith speaks with Troy Norcross, Founder of SER Team, Fractional COO and AI Governance Advisor, about why so many enterprise AI projects fail to deliver meaningful results. Instead of starting with a clear...
Why IT Holds the Key to Better Financial Decisions
Finance wants to become more strategic, but IT has to provide the governed, trustworthy data foundation first. In this episode of Petri Dish, I’m talking to Brian Kobleur, who is Vice President of Ecosystems at Vena Solutions. We discuss how the humble Excel spreadsheet is still quite often the core tool used by financial planning...
AI Agents Are Moving into Windows and IT Needs a Plan
AI agents are moving beyond simple productivity helpers and becoming autonomous workers across Windows, Microsoft 365, and enterprise systems. In this episode of Petri Dish, Russell Smith talks with Craig Birch, Principal Technologist at Cayosoft, about Microsoft’s AI agent announcements from Build, including Agent 365, Microsoft 365 E7, agent identity, permissions, governance, and the risk...
From NASA to the White House: How WordPress VIP Protects High-Risk, High-Traffic Websites
Today on Petri Dish, we’re joined by Brian Alvey, CTO of WordPress VIP, the enterprise-grade CMS platform trusted by organisations like NASA, Salesforce, and major global publishers. Brian has been building on the web since the earliest days, bringing a rare mix of builder and operator experience to modern content platforms. In this conversation, we’ll...