The AI FOMO Cure

Tom Stoneman: Hi, I’m Tom Stoneman and this is The Intelligent Enterprise where every two weeks we take a break from the chaos of enterprise life and get inside a big idea. By getting outside of it. Each episode, we meet an industry expert who helps us cut through the noise from all the updates and rollouts while exploring one of their favorite break time activities.

It might be over a coffee, a walk. Or even a game of ping pong, something that gives them some head space when they’re deep in a problem, although we try to avoid things like skydiving or whitewater rafting. Today I’m joined by regional Chief Technology Officer at Digitate. Efrin Ru Efrin is a true expert in the AIOps space, having worked in the IT industry for over 15 years.

His current role providing technical leadership to customers and partners keeps him ahead of emerging technologies and industry trends. That’s right. His job is literally being in front of ai.

Efrain Ruh: Many people are expecting that you gonna be able to automate pretty much everything and get rid of probably half of the people you are on, on your department.

That’s just not gonna happen, and we are not seeing anybody being complete success on that.

Tom Stoneman: In our conversation, we talk about what is at the heart of large enterprises implementing AI from integration with existing tools. To observability and transparency. We’ll also find out how Efrin uses getting outside as a tool to get some perspective when he’s deep in a problem.

Efrain Ruh: I love walking, especially here in California, with so much work. We spend so much in the office. So I’m really ha glad to have the opportunity so I can pump up my steps. ’cause the last couple of days my average steps are very low.

Tom Stoneman: Let’s get inside the future of enterprises by stepping outside of them.

Efrain Ruh: Thanks

Tom Stoneman: for for coming in ere.

Efrain Ruh: Thank you Tom. Thank you for the introduction and very happy to be here. I always enjoy coming here to the valley.

Tom Stoneman: We want to ask you what your favorite break time activity is. What do you like to do when you know you’re deep in a problem or you have something you need to solve?

Efrain Ruh: That’s a great question, Tom. I’m, let’s say an outdoors person. I really enjoy the outdoors and for me, the most effective activity when I need a clear my mind. Is to just go out and running. I don’t wear any headphones, so I just want to hear the sound of my, my steps, my breath, and that allows me to step away and to really focus on what I’m trying to think about, to process information and try to come up with those ideas that helped me basically move forward with these complicated issues that I normally have to deal with.

Tom Stoneman: I mean, the one thing that that I can’t do is jog. So we’re just gonna walk today. Yeah, we can. We can take a walk.

Efrain Ruh: That’d be great. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Stoneman: So let’s dive into what you do here. If you could describe for us in just a couple sentences what you do, what your role is.

Efrain Ruh: I am regional Chief Technology Officer for Digitate, so regional, because I focused entirely on the European region, so my responsibility is about.

Educating customers to help them understand how our products and solutions support them in their activities, how we can improve their day-to-day it operations with Ignio and what we offer. So my, my role is basically explain drive to customers step by step, why they’re going to face. During this IT transformation, how it’s gonna be the journey, what are the, my probably risk, but also the benefit they’re gonna experience.

So then easing their journey into this IT transformation.

Tom Stoneman: It’s an awesome role that you have. Real quick, what got you into technology in the first place?

Efrain Ruh: So I’m always excited about technology. So from a very early age, I was programming, so I used to steal my. Sister calculator Casio, and just started programming basic and then of age of 10, 12 years old, I was already taking courses and working on my Commodore 64.

I was also very inclined to understand how things work, and from then my role is been more of a troubleshooter, so I really enjoy taking complex situations and finding different solutions on it.

Tom Stoneman: So in your role, you’ve got a lot of opportunity to interact with leaders in the IT industry all around the globe.

What are some of the things that you’ve been hearing from them regarding implementing Ag Agent ai?

Efrain Ruh: So that’s a very interesting topic, Tom. See there’s a lot of noise in the market. Our customers get bombarded the media by vendors and hearing what other customers are doing. So they go into, typically we call fomo, fear of Missing Out.

So they’re really excited about this thing, but they don’t really understand it. They find themselves in a very. Tight spot trying to decide, okay, what is the thing I need to focus on and who is gonna be my partner?

Tom Stoneman: Efron’s role puts him at the heart of the conversation around intelligent automation. He’s out there in the real world talking to enterprise leaders, helping them make sense of what AI can actually do for them. Recently there have been three themes that come up in these conversations. Integration, observability, and ai decision transparency with more organizations than ever before are rolling out AI to help with their operations.

I’m curious if Efrin still sees these three concerns coming up.

Efrain Ruh: It is an ongoing concern, especially when we talk about integration capabilities. Customers have a very diverse environment, so before they might, you know, I used to have one or two tools. Now you have. Uh, 16 different tools for monitoring. So when we look at this agent AI or automation solutions, you need to be able to interact with the existing environment.

So integration is definitely an area of concern because the complexity. So it’s very important when they look for, uh, a company or, or somebody that can help them overcome these challenges. On integration, then comes. Observability, especially when you’re gonna automate, you don’t wanna go blind. You wanna make sure that you are able to understand what these systems are doing.

You definitely, you don’t wanna run. On, uh, autopilot with your eyes closed, we still gonna have to keep eyes on the road. We are gonna still keep our, uh, hands on the wheel and be able to take action when required. So this same situation is happening when we deploy this type of agent ai or AI in general.

Tom Stoneman: And you mentioned before, you said, you know, fear of missing out. How does fear play into this? I mean, do you, do you find a lot of them are just reacting now or what’s maybe one or an example of something like that that’s happened?

Efrain Ruh: Yeah, so fear, uh, is something we can see a difference within. The attitude sometimes in this side of the, the world, like in the US and the attitude in the, in European countries, especially when I come from in Germany, there’s a lot of fear of being the first and fail.

Right. They feared of a lot of finger pointing, saying You didn’t do your homework, you didn’t do your planning, et cetera. So Germans in general, we like to plan, but then of course, too much planning, basically delays implementation. Some of these, uh, technologies required such a level of trying things out.

So you need to experiment a bit, of course with the proper guardrail. So this fear, um, makes organizations extremely slow.

Tom Stoneman: Got it. I also wanted to ask you, I know we were talking a little bit about the speed of implementation here in the United States versus Europe. Just give us a feel for the differences.

’cause it’s pretty

Efrain Ruh: drastic, right? It is, it is. Especially in the initial phases. It’s so critical. To get everybody’s buy-in when you’re coming with a new, uh, solution. There’s a lot of skepticism and all things around with cybersecurity and regulations like AI Act, I mean, the level of questions you get at pretty, pretty deep and, and very technical.

So we spend a lot of time discussing and try to reduce risk at the minimum. Whether it is risk of data coming out, that the customers not expect risks of something happening that they didn’t expect to happen. Risk of non-compliance for certain laws. So these, all these things, we have to go to a very specific process.

Customers already have groups and templates to go that I just went for a customer, uh, review where we had 60 different questions just to get through what we call an assessment for deployment for the SaaS solution. But once we overcome, let’s say these initial steps, then uh, we able to move a little bit faster.

It’s about always being the first. I mean, I remember there was one customer that was just slowing us down and he was telling me it’s efforting. I just don’t want to be the first to deploy SaaS. They always want somebody else to go first and see if it works. Then they will follow.

Tom Stoneman: What’s the number one objection then?

I mean, ’cause I don’t wanna be, first isn’t really an objection. That’s just, I just don’t wanna be first. Right, but what’s the, the objection? Once you’re past that?

Efrain Ruh: So one of the typical objections is when you’re connecting their systems to an external solution. There will be a little bit of data transfer and also a lack of control.

They’re going to solutions which are depending on somebody else, like a cloud vendor or a, a SaaS solution like ours. So we have to make sure that they understand that all the right credit route are deployed and all the security concerns, the architecture is made such a way which, uh, reduces extremely any type of risk of losing control over a or a solution.

Tom Stoneman: Let’s focus a little bit more on Ag Agentic ai. So, I mean, we all know Agentic AI is a key trend. It’s everywhere. Everybody’s talking about it, and it’s not just in IT operations, it’s everywhere. What other implementations

Efrain Ruh: are you seeing? Good question. See, let’s go back a little bit and I would say about two years ago.

Gene I, it was exploding. Everyone was interested in Gene I, and the funny thing I was going to a conferences is everyone was just like, gimme use cases. Gimme use cases. Because they, everyone wanted to implement Gene I, but they didn’t know for what. The technology looked amazing, but the implementation was kind a little bit.

So now when we go to Agen ai, then we are getting a little more into concrete use cases. Automation enhancing, optimizing processes, et cetera. So that is now is becoming a little bit more concrete what we can do with this kind of solutions. And we see a lot of potential on different areas. Not only IT, customers are looking at optimizing the supply chain, they’re optimizing procurement process, automating, ordering procedures, optimizing customer uh, support, et cetera.

So there is a lot of potential on these solutions. What we trying to figure out is what is the best way to deploy in a safe and controlled manner where we have all these parameters that we talked before, good integration, observability, and control.

Tom Stoneman: So if you were to take that and apply it to all the different people that you.

Meet and talk to every day. What’s the one thing you’ve learned about, you know, either about solutions or in general that you think more enterprise leaders should understand?

Efrain Ruh: Yeah, I think it’s, I, it’s very important for enterprise leaders. To fully understand what this technology is capable of. Many people are expecting that you gonna be able to automate pretty much everything and get rid of probably half of the people you are on on your department.

That is not gonna happen, and we are not seeing anybody being complete success on that. So we have to take a step back and say. What is the one thing we can do safely with this kind of solution and then start implementing that and then start growing slowly. I had a discussion with their customer the other day.

They, they actually look at it by value streams and they already looking at what is the actual benefit that they’re looking at so they can truly prioritize. I said, okay, if I deploy this on this area, I could have a huge impact on sales. And if you look at that, then you can really prioritize and organize yourself and say, okay, this is important.

This might be trending here, but then this is what actually gonna get more value. And that is something that is really gonna help the whole organization to move forward.

Tom Stoneman: This is a perennial challenge for any organization to keep your cool, ignore what trends are saying, and focus on what will bring value to your organization. It’s easier said than done, right? On the one hand, you’ve got a group who are gripped by fomo. Fear of missing out. Who are desperate to get something new launched.

And on the other, you’ve got teams that are clinging to legacy systems because it’s been their job to keep everything from breaking. And the bigger the organization, the harder it gets

Efrain Ruh: process are so established. And to be able to change the process, it requires a lot of talking. And then you basically not only talking to one person, you’re talking to multiple departments and then.

Trying to get multiple people aligned on one goal, that’s one of the hardest things uh, you have to do. So definitely starts with having the proper sponsorship. So if you come from the top, let’s say I’m talking to A-C-T-O-C-I-O and say this is the way to go. So everyone has to follow doing a little bit bon up.

It’s very challenging because, you know, everyone’s gonna ask, you know, what is it in for me? Is it a benefit? Or I’m doing something that, because now probably my, my job is gonna disappear. I’m in danger. So you have to think about this and then focus on saying, uh, this is gonna allow us to do more. This is actually gonna simplify your work.

You’re gonna be able to scale up and do more, um, complex situation. And the idea is that we want our company to grow. We, it’s not that we just gonna cut costs, we’re gonna actually build more things. We are gonna sell more services. We’re gonna reach more customers with pretty much the same amount of people that we have now.

So that should be the focus.

Tom Stoneman: Efran, you want, you want to go and take a walk?

Efrain Ruh: Yeah, let’s sure. Let’s, uh, walk. I love walking, especially here in California. It’s a great weather. So very nice park here. You guys have.

Tom Stoneman: Perfect time of year. Um, but it’s always the perfect time of year here ’cause every day is about the same during the summer.

So

Efrain Ruh: yeah. And then one issue I have to me, when we, I I love to at least make 10,000 steps a day. When I go jogging, I let go minimum five to seven K. So I have my route. But you know how it is. With so much work, we spend so much in the office. So I’m really glad to have the opportunity so I can pump up my steps.

’cause the last couple of days my average steps are very low.

Tom Stoneman: So how do you keep track of your steps? You just have a phone pedometer.

Efrain Ruh: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m, I’m always, I mean, as soon as wake up, I put my Apple watch on. I have my phone with me, so I’m crazy about stats. Um, V max, I’m looking at my pulse, I’m looking at my steps.

I love to do a lot of sport. I play flag football like two times a week. So that is something that is really keeps me up and it just keep me pumping. So I’m always tracking my, my statistics and make sure that I’m always, uh, on track and closing all my rings, like they say.

Tom Stoneman: Well, I’m glad you like to walk because I can’t really run anymore.

As I mentioned with my knee, uh, yeah, we’ll walk today. No, but I do try to keep track of my steps. Too. I don’t always get to 10,000, but I try to hit about seven, you know, so that’s, yeah. Yeah. It’s super important.

Efrain Ruh: Especially when I’m on holidays and holidays. I do like to work a lot, you know, new towns, new new cities and et cetera.

Tom Stoneman: Yeah. And you’re, you’re in north Germany, right?

Efrain Ruh: Yeah. So I’m on, let’s say the west side of Germany, little bit less center north. I’m very close to Amsterdam. I’m very close to Belgium, and it’s very. Flat area. So walk is not an issue. We have a lot of parks, we got a lot of forests, so we can go to, that’s gorgeous

Tom Stoneman: there.

Yeah. You got those, those cool cities with the cobblestone, uh, a little hard to walk on. Right. You know? But when you go over to Belgium, yeah.

Efrain Ruh: Yeah. And we are very close to the Rhine River. So along the Rhine River, you have beautiful bath all along the way where you can take long walks or ride your bike.

In general, people are very outdoors as long as the weather permits. We don’t have the best weathers. I mean, like you guys here in California. So we have to be a bit flexible because one day it could be sunny the other day could be rainy, windy, et cetera. What do you do in the winter? Do you still go out or you just We still go out.

Yeah, you still go out? Just put a, like I said, it’s not bad weather. It is just a bad dress. That’s not the saying that we have. I mean, I used to even go in snow. It just go jogging. That’s great.

Tom Stoneman: We’ve got a bonus question. This one is a little bit more, it’s about your vision, right? So what’s the one thing that you believe that AI will allow us to do that has never been done before? Something completely different.

Efrain Ruh: That’s a great question. So I think one of the things I see definitely in the short term is gonna be the proliferation of, let’s say coaches personal coaching.

So probably each one of us will have the personal coach, whether is for sports or. For the work we do or for, um, career development. So, um, an AI Power Companion that we can always reach out that it knows us pretty well because understands what we want, uh, what we do, and, you know, our experience and the jobs we have done, and then understands what are the gaps and help us to close those gaps.

So I think in general, AI is gonna help us to. Um, things better and faster over time. What else we can do? I think it is a little bit hard to see, but. Honestly, the sky’s the limit. There are typically technologies that look fancy. We see that in sometimes cars, and then we end up crawling back because the original way to work was perfectly okay.

So we just have to avoid over-engineering solutions and focus on the things that truly add value. The other challenge that we’re seeing is, uh, and you see in all the big companies, is that. AI is consuming a lot of power. So, um, that’s a trade off. So the more AI we bring, the more power we have to produce, uh, and then there’s power is left for other things.

So there has to be a proper added value. It cannot be a nice tool to chat and, and pay jokes about it. You talk to Siri? No. Tell me a joke, Siri. I mean, that looks fine, but doesn’t add any value. So it has to really add value to make sure they said, okay, now I’m doing a trade off. Um, we need to produce more energy.

But then we are actually getting, um, more benefit. We are producing medicine faster. We are able to scale up people a lot faster than before. Um, so now is nobody’s left behind.

Tom Stoneman: Thank goodness for GPUs, right? Yes. Well, I love, I love the idea of, of the personal coaches. I mean that sounds patentable actually.

Good idea there. Efran, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you, you joining us, and really appreciate you taking a walk that really made the day special.

Efrain Ruh: Yeah. Thank you, Tom. Thank you. We did well. We both getting much better stats now on our watch after today. Yeah. I think we,

Tom Stoneman: we didn’t hit 10 K, but we, we maybe hit five.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s pretty good. All right. Well, thanks again, Reen.

I am not walking on the beautiful cobbled stones of Germany or along the Rhine River, but I am in Santa Clara, California, where it’s summer almost every day. So inspired by Efron, I’m going to go on another walk. What stands out to me from our conversation is this paradox of being slow to move and driving this rush to move fast.

The fear of missing out. Fomo. It shows up again and again, and it makes sense. Large organizations have a lot at stake tools, data processes, both their own and their customers. Not to mention data breaches, algorithmic bias, and even operational issues like ai, hallucinations and overreliance. These are all significant threats.

Artificial intelligence poses to businesses. In the end though re’s point is that it’s not all about risk, it’s about value. What’s actually going to move the needle for your business? And hey, if you’re not sure how to answer that. Maybe try getting some fresh air.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Intelligent Enterprise, a podcast where we get inside big ideas by getting outside of them. I’ve been your host, Tom Stoneman. Make sure you’re following the podcast and leave a comment or review wherever you get your shows.