Tech Talks Daily

• 3521: What ABB Is Seeing Across Global Industrial Energy Systems

  In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by Stuart Thompson, President of ABB's Electrification Service Division, to explore the intersection of industrial sustainability, energy security, and cutting-edge technology.   As industries face growing energy demands and climate targets, Stuart explains how companies can modernize their infrastructure to drive efficiency, reduce carbon footprints, and stay ahead of the energy curve.   Navigating the Industrial Sustainability Challenge   We start by addressing the urgent need for industries to rethink their energy and carbon strategies. Stuart highlights the significant role of construction and manufacturing in global energy-related emissions, stressing that many businesses are still behind on their 2030 sustainability targets.   We dive into the emerging shift from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpEx) models, such as predictive maintenance, to maximize value from existing assets.   Asset Modernization   Stuart explains how asset modernization—upgrading intelligent components like switchgear within existing infrastructure—can dramatically improve efficiency and reduce carbon without the need for costly, full-scale replacements.   He also shares examples, including Intel's semiconductor upgrades and Jadal Steel's success in Oman, demonstrating how targeted upgrades can meet sustainability goals while boosting productivity.   Smarter Energy Management with AI and AR   We explore how AI and augmented reality (AR) are transforming service delivery and operational intelligence. Stuart discusses how AI-powered predictive maintenance helps companies anticipate failures and optimize energy management, while AR facilitates remote assistance for faster issue resolution.   He also touches on how these technologies contribute to energy savings and carbon reduction by automating service reports and enabling real-time visibility into asset performance.   BESS as a Service: Solving the Energy Security Trilemma One of the key innovations Stuart highlights is ABB's Battery Energy Storage as a Service (BESSaaS), a solution designed to solve the "energy trilemma" of security, cost, and sustainability.   With on-site battery storage and AI-driven energy trading, businesses can bypass slow grid connections, ensure energy security, and even turn their energy storage into a profit center. This model is already making waves in industries ranging from data centers to manufacturing.   A Glimpse into the Future: ABB's Investment in Asset Management Tech   As we look to the future, Stuart reveals ABB's upcoming investment in asset management technology, set to be announced globally in early December 2025. This exciting move will have a significant impact on major customers like the London Underground and Saudi Electric Commission, further cementing ABB's role as a leader in energy innovation.   Don't miss this episode, where we discuss the latest trends in industrial sustainability, energy security, and technology's pivotal role in shaping a greener, more efficient future.   Useful Links Connect with Stuart on Linkedin Learn more about ABB Tech Talks Daily is sponsored by Denodo

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• 3520: How Ecolab Is Rethinking Water Risk In An AI Driven World

  Are we finally treating water risk like a board-level issue, rather than a line item that only shows up when something breaks?   In this episode, I'm joined by Emilio Tenuta, SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer at Ecolab, to unpack why water has become a strategic variable for business, right alongside energy and carbon. Ecolab works with customers across more than 40 industries in more than 170 countries, so Emilio has a front row seat to how quickly the conversation is changing.   Why water risk feels different in 2025 One of the most useful parts of this conversation is how Emilio frames water as "hyperlocal." A company can publish a global target, but the real pressure shows up basin by basin, site by site, community by community.   We also discuss the misconception that water is primarily an operational concern. The knock-on effects show up in uptime, expansion plans, permitting, reputation, and the social license to operate.   Emilio points to disclosure data that puts real money behind the issue. CDP has estimated water-related supply chain risks at $77 billion across responding companies, which helps explain why boards are paying closer attention.   Where AI meets water and energy   AI is a catalyst in two directions at once. It can help organizations measure, predict, and reduce waste, but it also drives demand for more data centers, more power, and more cooling.   We examine the tension many people are whispering about: building digital capacity in places already facing water stress. Emilio's view is pragmatic: the answer is responsible innovation, coupled with transparency on how water is used and how impacts are managed.   That takes us into Ecolab's push toward digital visibility and real-time control, because you cannot improve what you cannot see.   From "site to chip" cooling and smarter stewardship   Emilio shares that Ecolab's 3D TRASAR Technology for direct-to-chip liquid cooling is designed to protect high-performance servers by monitoring coolant health indicators in real time and translating that data into actionable steps for operators.   We also discuss what happens when AI is applied to the water side of the data center equation. Ecolab and Digital Realty have described a pilot across 35 US data centers to reduce water use by up to 15% and avoid up to 126 million gallons of potable water withdrawn annually.   To round things out, we discuss circularity as a business strategy, the role of collaboration through efforts like the Water Resilience Coalition, and why Ecolab's Watermark Study is worth reading if you want a pulse check on water stewardship and public sentiment.   So after listening, where do you land on the big question: is AI going to become a stress test for local water systems, or a tool that finally helps us run them better, and why? Useful Links:  Connect with Emilio Tenuta Learn more Ecolab Follow Ecolab on Linkedin Tech Talks Daily is sponsored by Denodo

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• 3518: AWS re:Invent: The New Playbook For Detection, Response, And Secure AI

  How do you move faster with AI and cloud innovation without losing control of security along the way?   Recorded live from the show floor at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, this episode of Tech Talks Daily features a timely conversation with Kimberly Dickson, Worldwide Go-To-Market Lead for AWS Detection and Response Services. As organizations race to adopt agentic AI, modernize applications, and manage sprawling cloud environments, Kimberly offers a grounded look at why security must still sit at the center of every decision.   Kimberly explains how her role bridges two worlds at AWS. On one side are customers dealing with prioritization fatigue, fragmented security signals, and growing pressure to do more with fewer resources. On the other hand, there are the internal service teams building products like Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Inspector, and AWS Security Hub. Her job is to connect those realities, shaping services based on what customers actually struggle with day to day. That perspective sets the tone for a conversation focused less on hype and more on practical outcomes.   We unpack how AWS thinks about security culture at scale, from infrastructure and encryption through to threat intelligence gathered across Amazon's global footprint. Kimberly shares how AWS uses large-scale honeypots to observe attacker behavior in real time, feeding that intelligence back into detection services while also working with governments and industry partners to take down active threats. It is a reminder that cloud security is no longer just about protecting individual workloads, but about contributing to a safer internet overall.   The conversation also dives into new announcements from re:Invent, including the launch of AWS Security Hub, extended threat detection for EC2 and EKS, and the emergence of security-focused AI agents. Kimberly explains how these tools shift security teams away from manual investigation and toward faster, higher-confidence decisions by correlating risks across vulnerabilities, identity, network exposure, and sensitive data. The goal is clear visibility, clearer priorities, and remediation that fits naturally into existing workflows.   We also explore how AWS approaches security in multi-cloud and hybrid environments, why foundational design principles still matter in an AI-driven world, and how open standards are helping normalize security data across vendors. Kimberly's reflections on re:Invent itself bring a human close to the episode, highlighting the pride and responsibility felt by teams building systems that millions of organizations depend on.   As AI adoption accelerates and security teams are asked to keep pace without slowing innovation, what would it take for your organization to move faster while still trusting the foundations you are building on?

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• 3519: How Verdent AI is Building the Next Generation AI Coding Agents.

  In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sit down with Yuyu Zhang to unpack a shift that many developers can feel but struggle to articulate. Yuyu's journey spans academic research at Georgia Tech, building recommendation systems that power TikTok and Douyin at global scale, and leading the Seed-Coder project at ByteDance, which reached state-of-the-art performance among open source code models earlier this year. Today, he is part of Codeck, where the focus has moved beyond AI assistance toward autonomous coding agents that can plan, execute, and verify real engineering work. Our conversation begins with a simple but revealing observation. Most AI coding tools still behave like smarter autocomplete. They help you type faster, but they do not own the work. Yuyu explains why that distinction matters, especially for teams dealing with complex systems, tight deadlines, and constant interruptions. Autonomy, in his view, is not about replacing engineers. It is about giving them back their flow. We explore Verdent, Codeck's autonomous coding agent, and Verdent Deck, the desktop environment designed to coordinate multiple agents in parallel. Instead of one AI reacting line by line inside an editor, these agents operate at the task level. They plan work with the developer upfront, execute independently in safe environments, and validate their output before handing anything back. The result feels less like using a tool and more like managing a small engineering team. Yuyu shares how parallel agents change both speed and predictability. One agent can implement a feature, another can write tests, and another can investigate logs, all without stepping on each other. Just as important, he walks through the safeguards that keep humans in control. Explicit planning, permission boundaries, sandboxed execution, and clear, reviewable diffs are all designed to address the very real concerns engineering leaders have about letting autonomous systems near production code. The discussion also turns personal. Having worked on some of the highest-scale systems in the world, Yuyu reflects on why developers lose momentum. It is rarely about raw ability. It is about constant context switching. His goal with Verdent is to preserve mental focus by offloading interruptions and letting engineers return to work with clarity rather than cognitive fatigue. We close by looking ahead. The definition of a "good developer" is changing, just as it has many times before. AI is not ending programming. It is reshaping it, pushing human creativity, judgment, and design thinking to the foreground while machines handle the repetitive churn. If autonomous coding agents are becoming colleagues rather than helpers, how comfortable are you with that future, and what would you want to stay firmly in human hands?

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• 3517: How AWS and the PGA Tour Are Changing Live Sports Technology

  How do you capture every moment of a golf tournament spread across hundreds of acres, tens of thousands of shots, and dozens of players competing at the same time? That question sits at the heart of this conversation recorded at AWS re:Invent, where I sat down with Eric Hansen, VP of Product at the PGA Tour, and Elaine Chiasson, who leads the global golf team at AWS, to unpack how data and AI are reshaping the way fans experience the game. Eric explains why modern professional golf has more in common with Formula 1 than most people realize. Every ball struck, every position on the leaderboard, and every shift in momentum generates data that needs to be processed instantly. With more than thirty thousand shots across a single tournament and only a fraction of them shown on traditional broadcasts, the PGA Tour faces a constant challenge. How do you give fans context, insight, and a sense of presence when most of the action is never seen on screen? Elaine shares how AWS has helped the Tour build the foundation to answer that question. From migrating decades of video and shot data into the cloud to applying generative AI for automated commentary, language translation, and real time insights, this partnership goes far beyond infrastructure. Together, they are experimenting with automated camera switching, AI driven production workflows, and personalized fan experiences that surface the right information at the right moment, whether you are following the leaderboard or a single favorite player. The conversation also digs into trust and accuracy. Eric walks through how the PGA Tour validates AI generated commentary to ensure it stays aligned with the sport's standards, while Elaine highlights why operational discipline and governance matter just as much as innovation. They explore what hyper personalization looks like inside the PGA Tour app, how global broadcasts could evolve, and why the long term opportunity lies in making every shot matter for every fan. As live sports move toward a future shaped by data, automation, and AI agents working behind the scenes, this episode offers a clear look at what that transformation really involves. So as golf continues to blend tradition with technology, what kind of fan experience do you want to see next, and how comfortable are you with AI calling the shots? Useful Links Connect with Eric Hansen, VP of Product at the PGA Tour. Connect with Elaine Chiasson Learn more about AWS and PGA Tour Tech Talks Daily is sponsored by Denodo

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