Most AI strategies look good in a demo. The real challenge is getting them to run at scale.

Recorded live at NVIDIA GTC 2026, this episode with Ragu Chakravarthi from Core42 and Kraig Ecker from WWT explores what it actually takes to move from AI pilots to production systems.

They discuss sovereign AI as critical infrastructure, what control really means across data and operations, and why trust has to be built into every layer. From governance and observability to regulated environments, this is what it takes to run AI in the real world.

The conversation also looks ahead to agentic AI, rising token demand, and the growing need for traceability and access control.

If you are working to operationalize AI at scale, this episode breaks down what most teams underestimate.

Support for this episode provided by: Forescout

More about this week's guests:

Ragu Chakravarthi is Chief Technology and Product Officer at Core42, leading AI infrastructure, platforms, and operations. He oversees large-scale AI cloud deployments across NVIDIA, AMD, and Cerebras, and has driven innovations like Compass and JAIS. His work focuses on enabling secure, scalable AI adoption, with emphasis on sovereignty, performance, and enterprise readiness.

Kraig Ecker is EVP of Global Service Provider Sales at WWT, leading teams that help the world’s largest telecom and hyperscale companies adopt next-generation technologies. With deep industry relationships, he has driven growth across AI, 5G, cloud, and edge, expanded WWT into new markets, and helped establish the company as a leading partner across the global service provider ecosystem.

The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions.

Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.

The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.

Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.

AI is writing code faster than most teams can review it. That’s the tension.

Recorded live at NVIDIA GTC with Nate McKie, we get into what happens when developer speed takes off but security and quality don’t.

The middle of the development process is collapsing. Code is cheap. Mistakes aren’t.

So what actually has to change?

We get into AI-native engineering, agentic development and the shift from code generation to code governance. From code review bottlenecks and the “hourglass effect” to model selection, RBAC and secure data access, this is how enterprise teams scale AI without breaking things.

Support for this episode provided by: Thales

More about this week's guest:

Nate McKie is a Senior Executive AI Advisor with more than 25 years of experience in software and automation engineering. He helps organizations translate AI into real business outcomes, advising on strategy across data, infrastructure and applications to drive effective and responsible adoption.

The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions.

Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.

The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.

Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.

AI is working. Your data probably isn’t.

As enterprise AI moves into production, a new constraint shows up fast. Not models. Not compute. Data.

In this episode, recorded live at NVIDIA GTC, NetApp’s Tore Sundelin and WWT’s Derek Elbert get into what’s actually slowing teams down. The shift from clean, structured data to messy, high-value, unstructured data that’s harder to find, govern and use in real time.

This is where things start to break. Data spread across systems. Inconsistent policies. No clear way to trust what’s being used.

And once AI depends on live enterprise data, those gaps don’t stay hidden for long.

Because at this stage, AI doesn’t fail at the model. It fails at the data.

Support for this episode provided by: Riverbed

More about this week's guests:

Derek Elbert is an AI Practice leader at World Wide Technology focused on hybrid cloud AI and high-performance architecture. He specializes in networking and storage within modern AI stacks, helping organizations design and scale infrastructure to support data-intensive, production-grade AI workloads.

Tore Sundelin is a product leader at NetApp focused on enterprise AI and data platforms. With 20+ years at Microsoft, Google and NetApp, he has built AI-powered products at global scale, including early machine learning capabilities in Microsoft Office. He specializes in turning complex data, governance and platform challenges into production-ready AI solutions.

The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions.

Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.

The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.

Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.