Enterprise IT systems have expanded into vast, highly distributed environments that encompass cloud infrastructure, applications, data platforms, and increasingly AI-driven workloads. Observability tools have facilitated the collection of metrics, logs, and traces, yet understanding system failures and responding quickly remains a challenge. As complexity rises, the industry is exploring beyond dashboards and alerts toward agentic AI systems that can analyze operational data, minimize toil, and take corrective action when issues occur.
SolarWinds provides solutions to monitor, understand, and resolve issues within complex, distributed systems. Initially established as a leader in network and infrastructure monitoring, the company has adapted to support modern applications, cloud environments, containers, and AI workloads, with a growing emphasis on reducing operational labor.
Krishna Sai is the Chief Technology Officer at SolarWinds. He appears on the show with Sean Falconer to discuss SolarWinds’ approach to observability in the AI era, the design of agentic systems for critical environments, the impact of AI-assisted programming on engineering workflows, and the importance of creating platforms where humans and autonomous agents collaborate for future operations.
Full Disclosure: This episode is sponsored by SolarWinds.
Sean has been an academic, startup founder, and Googler, with published works spanning topics from AI to quantum computing. Currently, he is an AI Entrepreneur in Residence at Confluent, focusing on AI strategy and thought leadership. Connect with Sean on LinkedIn.
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