Heavy Strategy

Heavy Strategy

From technology to workplace culture, from geopolitical trends to economics, Heavy Strategy debates pivotal questions in enterprise IT. Hosts Johna Till Johnson & John Burke bring their technical expertise, analytical acumen, and contrasting viewpoints to discuss complex topics of interest to IT leaders. Frequently irreverent and always thought-provoking, these are the conversations you wish you could have at the leadership table. Tune in and join the think tank, where unanswered questions are better than unquestioned answers.

Episodes

HS111: When Someone Makes Your Cloud Service Go Poof!

September 2, 2025 • 38 mins
The modern enterprise is built on cloud, with most organizations using SaaS for their “horizontal” work horse layers, such as communications, conferencing, HR, and payroll. That makes the enterprise entirely dependent on the good-faith execution and good-will delivery of the cloud providers. Those providers have a huge economic incentive to reliably deliver software – but... Read more ».css-1t8gq41{border:none;background-image:none;background-color:transparent;box-shadow:none;color:#2F3133;cursor:pointer;font-size:inherit;padding:0;-webkit-text-decoration:inherit;text-decoration:inherit;width:-webkit-max-content;width:-moz-max-content;width:max-content;}.css-1t8gq41:hover,.css-1t8gq41:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:inherit;text-decoration:inherit;}
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HS110: Cryptocalypse Soon! The CRQCs Are Due Sooner Than We Thought

August 19, 2025 • 22 mins
Google now estimates that the specs for a Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer (CRQC), which can break conventional public key encryption in a useful amount of time, are lower than they had previously estimated…by 95%. Given the breadth and pace of advancement in quantum computing, this makes the advent of the CRQC likely to happen years... Read more »
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HS109: Is AI a Purchase or a Hire?

August 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Is adding AI to your environment a software purchase? Or is it more like hiring an employee? Heavy Strategy’s John Burke and Johna Johnson debate whether AI should be treated as just another application you buy and use, or be handled like an employee you’re bringing on staff (complete with background and reference checks, training... Read more »
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HS108: Keeping the (IT) House Clean to Avoid the Plague

July 22, 2025 • 23 mins
Whether it’s CNAME records pointing to dead endpoints or abandoned cloud storage buckets still mentioned in the makefile or Chef recipe, seemingly innocuous bits of infrastructure that don’t get cleaned up can turn into serious security threats. (Both of these examples are taken from real-life attacks, BTW). When and how and who within IT should... Read more » Read more
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HS107: Your (Late) New Years Resolution: Follow Your (Amended) Strategy

July 1, 2025 • 32 mins
Here we are, a bit more than halfway through the year. How’s your execution against your strategy going? Roiled by the economy? Disrupted by tariffs? Thrown off by staff retirements? If you built a proper technology strategy in the first place, driven by the business strategy, then no matter what is happening don’t ignore it,... Read more »
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HS106: Planning for the Epochalypse

June 17, 2025 • 28 mins
IT teams deal with technology lifecycle issues all the time–including Y2K, which enterprises across the world grappled with for years. The Epochalypse, or Year 2038 Problem, is similar. Specifically, some Linux systems’ date-time counters will go from positive to negative at a specific date in 2038, potentially wreaking havoc on embedded systems and any other... Read more » Read more
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HS105: How to Train Your Unicorn: Thoughts on Ops Architects

June 3, 2025 • 27 mins
You need someone to design your operations processes–or perhaps redesign them. That’s an Ops Architect. Should you take an ops person and train them up in architecture? Or an architect and train them up in operations? Do you even have that ops/engineer/architect organizational structure – and should you? Johna and John dive into this discussion... Read more » Read more
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HS104: How Long Should Your Planning Horizon Be?

May 20, 2025 • 28 mins
How far ahead should you plan, and what things belong in your strategic plan? Conventional wisdom holds that a 3-year planning horizon is “about right”–but in a period of rapid technical and geopolitical change (such as we’re arguably in right now) does that go too far out, particularly when agile methodologies recommend shorter action plans... Read more »
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HS103: Why IT Is Like Ultimate Frisbee

May 6, 2025 • 25 mins
It’s all well and good to develop a technology strategy, articulate and document the strategy, and agree (supposedly) on that strategy. But what do you do when one or more of the tech teams act in apparent opposition to the strategy? John and Johna discuss why this happens and what questions you need to ask... Read more »
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HS102: IT’s Role In AI (Sponsored)

April 29, 2025 • 40 mins
AI can impact an enterprise in several ways: making individuals more productive, making products and services more effective, and making it easier for customers and partners to do business. IT plays a critical role in enabling AI to have these impacts. On today’s sponsored Heavy Strategy, Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn explains how to locate AI use... Read more » Read more
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HS101: Time for a Cybersecurity Spring Cleaning?

April 22, 2025 • 31 mins
Most organizations have a long list of security holes in the form of unpatched systems and other known but unresolved vulnerabilities. Is it time to hit the big PAUSE button and fix, patch, or mitigate all of that before we resume deploying new systems (and their accompanying risks)? Join us as we tear into whether... Read more »
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HS100: Lead Without Lying: The (Radical) Strategy of Honesty

April 8, 2025 • 41 mins
Is it actually possible to run a team without lying? Steven Gaffney, author of the book, “Just Be Honest”, joins Johna and John to talk about why being honest is harder than it sounds–and how (and why) to do it anyway. Steven spends his career advising science and technology leaders about how to be more... Read more »
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HS099: From CLI to CFO: Translating Complex Network Data into Clear Strategic and Financial Insights (Sponsored)

April 1, 2025 • 34 mins
IT and network leaders need more than uptime—they need to know what their networks cost, what they deliver, and how future changes will impact the business. That’s where Netos comes in. CEO and founder Richard Foster joins Johna and John in a lively discussion to explore how Netos turns complex operational data into clear financial... Read more »
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HS098: Just Following Orders?

March 25, 2025 • 33 mins
What do you do when your colleagues or senior leaders ask you to do something illegal? It’s hardly hypothetical; recent years have seen high-profile firings and convictions of CIOs and CISOs who’ve been ordered to break the law. John and Johna discuss steps that tech leaders can take if they’re put on the spot. Episode... Read more »
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HS097: Build A Strategy, Not Just A Project Plan

March 11, 2025 • 30 mins
IT teams too often wrap a strategy statement around a basket of projects already in progress or known to be coming, rather than defining a strategy and then letting it spawn, guide, or absorb projects. On today’s Heavy Strategy we discuss whether IT teams have any alternative to this approach, given how much gets “thrown... Read more »
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HS096: Corporate Foresight and How to Get It

February 25, 2025 • 40 mins
Someone needs to be scanning the horizon for the threats and opportunities that are distant for now–and they need to be able to turn that foresight into action. We welcome John Miranda of Intel for a lively discussion of how to look ahead, how to get folks to pay attention to the alerts you raise,... Read more »
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HS095: The Journey to a Self-Healing Network: Intelligence, Agents, and Complexity (Sponsored)

February 18, 2025 • 37 mins
Can AI and automation create a truly autonomous network, one that’s self-diagnosing and self-healing? Join Vitria CTO and Founder Dale Skeen and industry analyst Charlotte Patrick in this sponsored episode of Heavy Strategy to discuss the challenges–and limitations–of using AI to create autonomous networking. This discussion covers the “intelligence architecture” required to implement automation, and ....
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HS094: How Risky Is Your Organization’s AI Strategy?

February 11, 2025 • 24 mins
AI Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to generate output that the creators and users of those models didn’t intend; for example, harassment, instructions on how to make a bomb, or facilitating cybercrime. Researchers have created the HarmBench framework to measure how easily an AI can be weaponized. Recently these researchers trumpeted the finding... Read more » Read more
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HS093: Strategic Trust-Building Among Ops, Engineering, Architecture – and Leadership

January 28, 2025 • 36 mins
Billy Joel had it right: It’s a matter of trust. Too often Operations, Engineering, and Architecture teams don’t trust one another–and nobody trusts leadership (and vice versa!). Special guest (and PacketPushers host) Scott Robohn joins us to talk about how to build trust, and the special role of an Operations Architect. Episode Guest: Scott Robohn, ... Read more » Read more
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HS092: Make a Plan…and Change It!

January 14, 2025 • 31 mins
It’s better to plan for your IT strategy than not. But sometimes circumstances arise such that the plan, no matter how well conceived, just doesn’t work any more. On today’s Heavy Strategy, we explore how and why you should change a plan in the context of IT and business objectives. Sometimes this means small changes... Read more » Read more
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