TechTarget

"Never say no without a caveat … I don't believe IT's job is just to say no," said Matthew Watkins, CIO of IMA Financial Group, Inc. I asked experienced CIOs to share their top leadership tips. Check out what they had to say! Thanks to Chris Campbell of DeVry University, Russ Ahlers of BDO USA and Matthew Watkins of IMA Financial Group, Inc. https://lnkd.in/edKPnWFA TechTarget #CIO #ITLeadership #Leadership

Centralized or federated security? 🤔 CISOs are rethinking security structures as enterprises evolve. And the answer is more nuanced than you'd think. IT leaders must rethink governance to balance control, agility and risk as the business evolves. But which model -- centralized or federated -- can best help drive innovation while managing threats? In some cases, it isn't either/or. It's a hybrid approach. ✍️ Damon Garn lays about the differences between centralized, federated and hybrid security models. 🔗 : https://bit.ly/4cWwdTr #Cybersecurity #CybersecurityModels #CybersecurityStrategy #CISO #CISOstrategy #CentralizedSecurity #FederatedSecurity #HybridSecurity

Are CIOs becoming irrelevant? Not in theory but in practice. I explored this in my latest TechTarget article and let’s be honest, the signs are already there.While CIOs debate governance frameworks and cost control, the business has moved on. AI is being adopted without them. Data strategies are being defined around them. And new titles like Chief AI Officer, Chief Digital Office are quietly carving up what used to be their territory. So let’s stop pretending this is evolution. For many organisations, it’s replacement. The uncomfortable truth? The CIO role became too focused on protecting the estate… and not focused enough on creating value. And in a world where technology is the business, that’s a fatal mistake. Because today, relevance isn’t earned by owning IT, it’s earned by driving revenue, not just efficiency, leading AI adoption, not policing it and influencing the board, not reporting to it. The CIOs who get this will become the most powerful operators in the C-suite. And the rest? They won’t disappear overnight, they’ll just become… less necessary. So here’s the real question. Are CIOs still leading transformation or just trying to keep up with it? #CIO #Leadership #AI #DigitalTransformation #TechStrategy #FutureOfWork https://lnkd.in/e8nYWWM3

We are one week away from Red Hat Summit! 🧢 Red Hat's annual open source event returns from May 11-14, hosted in Atlanta. Whether you'll be on the conference floor or following along from home, we've got you covered. Our constantly updating conference guide will have breaking news, analysis and coverage live from the conference. Get up to date on what to expect from this year's summit with our guide, too. It includes pre-conference coverage to help you learn about this year's theme -- "Navigate what's now. Unlock what's next." -- and recaps from last year's conference. ✍️ Our SearchITOperations team has compiled all you need to know for Red Hat Summit 2026. 🔗 : https://bit.ly/4tMIuB4 #RHSummit #RedHat #RedHatSummit #OpenSource #OpenSourceAI #AIstrategy #TechConference #ITleadership #IToperations #ITops

Bounded autonomy — giving agents freedom to act within explicit limits on scope, permissions, decisions, and duration — is becoming the operating model for production agentic AI. Shared my perspective with Mary K. Pratt for her TechTarget feature this week on what it actually takes to govern autonomous systems at scale, alongside perspectives from Forrester, Deloitte, and IDC. The numbers tell the story: 74% of enterprises plan to deploy agentic AI broadly within two years. Only 21% have a mature governance model for it. That delta is the risk surface for 2026. A few things I pushed on in the piece: • Treat digital agents like workers, with policies to match. • IAM for agents has to mirror what we already do for humans. Short-lived, task-bound access. Authentication shouldn't be forever. • Permission an agent for the action it needs to take, and only that one. Agentic AI investments are less a model decision than a data, identity, and observability one. Read More: How agentic AI governance tackles data, security challenges https://lnkd.in/eh8mRP-J #AgenticAI #AIGovernance #EnterpriseAI #CISO #ResponsibleAI UST Merrick Laravea

When over $300 million is at stake in the most exciting 2 minutes in sports, network speed matters. 🏇 "There's no do-over for the Derby," Kathleen Casey tells Sabrina Polin in the latest episode of Tech News This Week. That's why Churchill Downs' partnership with Cisco was so notable. With live events like the Kentucky Derby and Boston Marathon, there is no room for downtime, latency, or lag. Get the full conversation here: https://bit.ly/49334Vq #kentuckyderby #networkinfrastructure #technews

There’s a phrase I’ve been hearing more and more lately: “pilot purgatory.” And candidly… it fits. Organizations aren’t struggling with whether agentic AI works, they’re struggling with how to make it matter at scale. That’s exactly what I had the chance to unpack in a recent TechTarget conversation with David Essex: https://deloi.tt/48f2KTc    Here’s the truth as I see it: this isn’t a technology problem. The tech works. What’s often missing is clarity of vision — what are you actually solving for, and where do you want AI to create value? Cost? Growth? Experience? If that north star isn’t clear, pilots stay exactly that… experiments without a path to enterprise impact.    The second unlock — and this is where it gets real — is discipline. Too many pilots are built in isolation, optimized for a moment instead of designed for scale. If you’re not thinking about data, governance and orchestration at the start, you’re already creating friction for the future. Scaling agentic AI isn’t about finding the best idea in a sandbox… it’s about building a system that can carry hundreds of those ideas forward, consistently and responsibly.    And then there’s the part we don’t talk about enough: the work itself. AI doesn’t just make tasks faster — it should change which tasks exist at all. When we redesign work, we unlock capacity, elevate human judgment, and start to see the real value equation shift. That’s where transformation lives.    We’re at a moment where the conversation needs to move beyond “what can AI do?” to “how do we operationalize it with intent?” If you’re navigating that journey, I’d encourage you to lean into the uncomfortable questions — because that’s where scale (and outcomes) begin.

Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise entered its agentic era at last week's Google Cloud Next conference. ☁️ Specifically, the vendor announced Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, which builds on existing Vertex AI capabilities to become a more cohesive AI agent platform spanning from workspace apps to infrastructure. This platform aims to deepen integrations among Google's cloud and AI services and expand multi-agent orchestration, data management and security features. ✍️ Beth Pariseau has more on Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and other news from the conference floor. 🔗 : https://bit.ly/4n0jrIf #GoogleCloudNext #GoogleCloud #GoogleCloudNext2026 #CloudComputing #AI #AIinfrastructure #BusinessTech #TechNews #BusinessNews #GeminiEnterprise