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I have been thinking a lot about one theme over the past few weeks.

We are not seeing isolated innovations anymore. We are seeing shifts in how entire systems are built, operated, and scaled.

Let me start with something that surprised me.

Mainframes.

I had a conversation with Matt Whitbourne from BMC Software on The Ravit Show, and one thing became very clear. The mainframe is not going anywhere. It is evolving.

The real question enterprises are asking is simple, but not easy:

How do you transform the mainframe without breaking what already works?

A few things stood out to me:

• Transformation is no longer optional. It is expected

• Cyber resilience is now a board-level priority

• Mainframe data is becoming critical for AI and analytics

• Automation is helping teams move faster without risking stability

What I appreciated most was the balance.

Enterprises want innovation.
But they also need reliability.

And the mainframe sits right in the middle of that tension.

Now contrast that with something more modern.

Last year, I attended Qlik Connect. I went in expecting a conference. I walked out with direction. That rarely happens. Most events give you information. This one gave clarity. You start seeing where data and AI are actually going, not just what people are saying on slides. You get early signals, real use cases, and conversations that stay with you.

Here are 10 reasons why I believe everyone in Data and AI should be there, and why I am going again:

What stood out to me most was this:

You are not just listening. You are building.
You are not just networking. You are learning how others are actually doing the work.
You are not just hearing about AI. You are seeing what production really looks like

I am going again this year. With higher expectations.

Then I was at New Relic Advance

And this is where things started to feel different. For years, we have invested in observability. Dashboards, alerts, signals. But when something breaks, teams still scramble.

That gap between knowing and fixing has always been there.

What New Relic introduced with their SRE Agent felt like a step toward closing that gap.

Not just systems that tell you what is wrong. But systems that help you act. That shift matters.

Because the future is not more dashboards. It is systems that participate in operations.

And hearing customers talk about it made it real. This is not a distant idea. It is already starting.

And then there is what I saw at NVIDIA GTC by DDN Team.

Everyone is talking about AI factories.

But most people still think it means more GPUs.

That is not it.

In my conversation with Alex Bouzari from DDN, the idea became much clearer.

An AI factory is a system.

Data flows efficiently
Models are trained and deployed faster
Outcomes are measurable

The bottleneck is not models anymore.

It is data.

How it moves
How it is processed
How quickly it can be turned into something useful

And then there is the next layer.

Physical AI.

We are moving from systems that generate outputs to systems that interact with the real world. Robotics, simulation, real-time decisions.

That changes everything. Infrastructure, latency, reliability.

The AI Factory Tour is launching at GTC then rolling on over to a city near you. Step inside an immersive AI Factory experience engineered to show how enterprise AI is built for measurable ROI.

If I step back and connect all of this, one thing stands out.

Whether it is mainframes, observability, or AI infrastructure
The shift is the same

We are moving from systems that support work
To systems that actively participate in work

That is a big change.

And it is happening faster than most people realize.

More soon.

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Best,

Ravit Jain

Founder & Host of The Ravit Show