Santosh Kaveti Podcast Transcript
Santosh Kaveti joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
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Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Santos Kaveti, with over 18 years of experience as a technologist, entrepreneur, investor, and advisor.
Santos Kaveti is the CEO and founder of ProArch, a purpose-driven enterprise that accelerates value and increases resilience for its clients with consulting and technology services. Enabled by cloud, guided by data, fueled by apps, and secured by design. Santosh’s vision and leadership have propelled ProArch to become a dominant force in key industry verticals such as energy, healthcare, and life sciences and manufacturing, where he leverages his expertise in manufacturing process improvement, mentoring and consulting.
Well, good afternoon, Santosh. Welcome to the show.
Santosh Kaveti: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. I’m in Kansas City. You are in Atlanta today. We’re just an hour apart, so I appreciate you making the time. Traversing one time zone. And Santosh, let’s jump right into your first question.
With 18 plus years as a technologist, entrepreneur, investor, and advisor, you’ve undoubtedly faced failures. Could you share one failure or a lesson learned that changed your approach to building technology services or leading transformation?
Santosh Kaveti: Sure. As an entrepreneur, I always felt like I could have taken more risks.
I could have experimented more now, but it’s been a fantastic journey for me. Um, now the biggest lesson I’ve learned in this journey is that technology is a tool. It’s not a complete solution. See, early in my career, I was often too focused on the elegance of the technology itself and not enough on the people and the business processes.
It was meant to serve. For example, I remember one specific instance that really brought this home for me. In the early days of ProArch, we were working with a large manufacturing client. We built this incredibly sophisticated data analytics platform for them. On paper, it was perfect, technically, very elegant, powerful, and it could provide all these amazing insights if you know how to use it.
We’re really proud of it. But when we deployed it, that option was almost zero. The plant floor managers, the very people we thought would benefit the most, saw it as a threat or a huge obstacle. They felt it was overly complex. They didn’t have the skillset to use it with a distraction from their core work, and they weren’t consulted and as in the process, and that’s the key.
So we had to build this powerful engine. But we had completely forgotten to build the roads and even teach anyone how to drive if, if they can use that analogy like building a stadium, you know, and, and not having the roads and infrastructure for people to really get there. That failure was a pivotal moment for me and my team.
It taught us that our job isn’t just to be technologists, it’s to be change agents. We have to be part. Psychologists, we have to be part business strategist. We have to be part ethnographers. So now our approach is completely different. We start, we always start with why the business problem. And we almost always build with our clients and not for them.
We embed our teams with theirs and co-create. The way we measure our success is not by the software we shape, or the consumption or the billable hours, but the business outcomes we deliver for our customers. And that’s what really means a lot to us and our teams. See, ultimately this lesson is one of humility, right?
I mean, I believe honestly that the smartest people in the room are usually the ones who live and breathe business every day. Our job should be, and it is to empower them. And that’s the lesson, you know, we as a team, carry with us in everything we do.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Love the story. I really do as an entrepreneur.
You know, you shared one of the biggest lessons, uh, a couple really, but the big one, uh, I took away is technology’s a tool, not a complete solution. And your story on deploying, uh, that solution, um, kind of fell flat and you explained a part of that. You know, you can’t just be a technologist. You need to be a change agent.
There’s a lot of communication, preparation, and you have to start with the why, the business problem, right? And really love that story. And Santos at ProArch, you describe your services as enabled by cloud, guided by data, fueled by apps, and secured by design. How do you coordinate these four dimensions in practice, especially in verticals like energy or manufacturing, where legacy tech, maybe OT, right?
And it converge.
Santosh Kaveti: Yeah, Brian, I’m, I’m, oh my God, that’s, that’s our core DNA, that’s the, that’s the core of our philosophy. We see those four dimensions as the key components of a digital transformation engine. So the cloud is horsepower. It provides a scalable, resilient foundation. Data is like fuel.
It’s a raw material that we turn into intelligence, and our job is to deliver trusted outcomes to data. And as you know, apps are the vehicles that, that, that’s how people interact with the data and the processes. And last but not least, security is the, the steering and the braking system, right? It cannot be bolt on.
It has to be engineered right from the beginning. With everything else. So you can’t just have one. These are not silos. You can’t just bolt on stuff. You, you know, it’s like building a powerful engine with no fuel is useless. So for us, all of these are integrated and, and one part enables the other. That’s how we suite. And now in industries like energy and manufacturing, this gets really, interesting because. You have the convergence of IT and OT. See, for decades, these two worlds were separate. Now, the IT world was about application, business applications and data. And the OT world, was it about physical missionary, you know, um, industrial controls, IOT systems that were never designed to be connected to the internet.
Bringing them together is a huge challenge, but it’s also where the biggest opportunity. I mean, our approach is to act as the bridge between these two worlds. You know, first, you know, we are a security first mindset. Um, it’s amazing how over the time we were able to bring our teams together, um, and, and weave them into one.
Single thinking mindset. We apply a zero-trust security model to the OT environment. We assume that, that a breach is always possible. So we verify every connection and limit access at every point. Okay. Second, our job is to help really turn the OT data in, uh, you know, into a strategic asset. That’s where there, there’s a real value, so.
Simple. Once you are able to connect these two systems, you are actually able to provide true predictive maintenance or analytics. Even prescriptive, I must say. ’cause if you ask a question, Hey, um, this particular turbine, based on the data I’m getting from all the sensors, um, needs maintenance. Well, that’s one part of the question.
But to go back and look at what kind of insurance does it have, what kind of warranty do we have, do we have parts in the inventory system? You’re really crossing OT and IT worlds. So that’s what we do is bridge these two to be able to take it all the way and say, yep, you need to schedule a maintenance window out.
There’s a, you know, uh, an Tuesday or whatever it is. And yes, we have inventories, and this is what we need to happen. You can go all the way there. So that’s what our, that’s what our job is, quite frankly. Hope it makes sense.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Um, really appreciate your four core services are the tenets of digital transformation, the digital transformation engine, so to speak.
As you mentioned, uh, the convergence of OT and it is certainly a challenge. Uh, I’ve lived that as well as you know, um, and you went through a couple of those, uh, examples, but many opportunities to make things better with this convergence and your expertise certainly is helping businesses achieve their goals.
So I appreciate that Santosh. And Santosh, in your recent conversations you’ve warned about shadow AI adoption and the risk of it OT convergence, particularly in critical infrastructure. What are the most surprising vulnerable vulnerabilities you see and how should organizations prepare to guard against them?
Santosh Kaveti: That’s an interesting question because it’s really emerging, especially with AI as new vulnerabilities are coming out. Um, most recently I was. Reading and research paper from Microsoft where they’ve discovered that even though the, the, the, the chats, the, the encryption between LLMs is, uh, the data between the, the flows through the LLMs is completely encrypted.
Just by looking at the metadata, you can accurately guess what you know the user is talking about. Um, so it’s an emerging landscape, but. I think we need to start with basics. The most surprising one for me actually isn’t a piece of malware or a technical flaw. It’s a culturally blind spot. We’re so focused on external threats that a lot of times we’re missing massive risks that are hiding in plain sight, right inside our own organizations.
One, as I’ve been talking about, shadow ai, it’s like a chosen horse. I remember a recent IBM study found that 80% of the workforce use AI employees are smart. They’re using public AI tools to be more productive. We have to ask the question why, but in the process, of course, they’re pasting. You know, sensitive corporate data, strategic documents, financial information, and it’s massive, unintentional data leak driven by good intentions, by the way, so.
Well, how do you, you can, you can’t just simply unblock it. I mean, there are ways to restrict it. There are ways to monitor now. I think we now, especially, you know, uh, we live in the Microsoft, we are a Microsoft partner. Um, Microsoft does provide really good tools and, and to be able to detect shadow AI usage.
But you have to learn how to embrace and educate, and honestly, you have to, to not look at your corporate policies or security governance as a blocker. As an enabler, make the secure path the easy path. Educate employees on why it’s important to use enterprise grade AI tools that are properly governed and that goes long way.
The second is just unblocked backdoor of it. OT convergence. Um. IT systems are typically modernized. They’re regularly patched, but in our experience, what we’ve seen is OT systems are not, A lot of times there are decades old proprietary and they’re not patched, and that means they’re inherently vulnerable, and now that companies are beginning to connect them together.
You provide a direct pathway for an attacker from, you know, these connections between IT and OT systems. So you really need to look at your OT infrastructure again with the zero trust mindset. You have to segment your networks and continuously monitor for any unusual activity. And there are a good number of security tools now available to do that.
Uh, we, we, we particular, for example, we use defender, uh, Microsoft Defender, suite, and Purview should extensively. Uh, but what’s what, where you should start with is first to have the visibility. What I’ve learned is that most. Manufacturing companies or energy companies lack visibility in their OT networks.
True visibility. What kind of footprint do I really have and where are they in terms of their security maturity? And just from being able to say, am I ready to even connect and use the data? There’s a baseline security that you need to bring everything to and, and just that itself goes long way. And finally, all of this will come down to building a culture of security.
And it just can’t be it department or security department. Everyone from CEO to somebody on the plant floor. They have to feel a sense of shared responsibility for protecting the organization. And that’s the only way to truly be resilient, in my opinion.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I
Santosh Kaveti: hope it
Brian Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, just to highlight a couple things here, um, this new emerging landscape is this mass adoption, uh, and use of ai, but not securing the data or not looking at those security gaps.
You know, malware you mentioned is a cultural blind spot. There’re massive risks in plain sight, obviously. So, what I, what I really liked about what you said is make the the path easy, but make it secure. Right. Uh, I think that was important. Um, and the importance of compliance, security, patching, monitoring, that’s, that’s so important in this day and age for sure.
So I appreciate the insights. And Santosh, the last question of the day, looking ahead maybe five or 10 years, how do you envision enterprise technology evolving, especially around ai data cloud and human talent? What should leaders be doing now to prepare their organizations, their talent and their cultures for what’s next?
Santosh Kaveti: Oh, we’re witnessing, you know, a transformational paradigm shift, um, across the world. Every role, every function. From top to bottom, you know, um, is, is changing and will that change will be the catalyst. Um, and the pace of change will increase and will be drastically different. Uh, every role we will be drastically different, but I believe the next decade will be defined by the shift from experimental AI to embedded AI.
AI is going to become invisible, woven into very fabric of the enterprise, and the biggest challenge, in my opinion, won’t be the technology itself. It will be about the talent and culture and the adaptability. I think we’ll move from generative AI over. This is already happening to agent. And to autonomous AI agent.
Okay. The next step I believe will be the will be to give AI the keys and let it drive. The second rise, in my opinion, will be vertical ai. I think generic one size fits all models will be replaced by highly specialized AI that is trained on industry specific data. As an example, we built a, a healthcare compliance AI engine that healthcare companies can use proactively and reactively all the way from CISO to somebody, um, who’s, who’s a, is a practitioner to say, Hey.
Where did the violation happen? Almost in the near real time from compliance perspective. And if there’s a change in the compliance, how, how to propagate that through the entire workflows and entire applications and entire IT footprint. That’s what can happen. Vertical ai. And the third, the biggest transformation that I’m expecting is to move to the edge, uh, and uses SLMs as opposed to LLMs.
We call this, you know, artificial intelligence of things, instead of sending all the data to the cloud for analysis, the analysis will happen right on the device. Um, I think the hardware evolution and the AI evolution will, will lead to this a camera, for example, a camera on the factory floor that spots defects in real time as opposed to spotting the defects happening somewhere else as part of the analysis. Right. So how do we, how do we prepare for all of this?
Santosh Kaveti: Well, first, get your data house in the order. Second, shift your talent strategy from just credentials to skills. Third, develop a strong AI governance framework. If you don’t have a governance framework, that’s gonna be a very big problem for you, in my opinion.
I believe the future belongs to leaders who can build a symbiotic relationship between the human talent and the AI we will end up having. For example, every uh, agent or every AI workflow is given an ID just as, as a human and will be given permissions just as humans. We have to try to work with AI agents.
Of course, preferably with the human in the loop concept, and that’s where the symbiotic relationship comes, which means that all of us will have to retrain ourselves, our roles will change, the workflows will be reimagined. I know right now many industries are trying to bolt on AI to their current workflows.
In my opinion, that’s not the right way to do it. AI offers an opportunity to reimagine your workflow across your PayPal functions apps, and that’s what I call AI native AI enabled is you’re just trying to use it. AI to gain some efficiency, is AI native, is where do I really see the opportunity to transform the way we really work?
And that’s where I think all this technology will take us to. So, I’m super excited at the same time. I’m super nervous as well, because all this means that security is gonna be a, a, you know, big deal. Compliance will become a big deal for, for most organizations.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, appreciate that. Um, and I like talking to guests about.
You know what they predict in the future. You know, nobody has a crystal ball, but, but based on your experience and what you’re seeing, I just love to hear that, uh, you know, you talked about this transformation paradigm shift. This massive change will be a catalyst. Launching us into that next decade, which will be moving into really embedded AI.
There’ll be, everything will be agentic. Um, but the key, talent, the culture and adaptability is important. And as you mentioned, you need, you’re gonna need to have good leaders that can build those symbiotic relationships between human talent and ai. And I think that’s so important. So, I really appreciate the insights and Santosh, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Santosh Kaveti: Same here. Thank you so much for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Santosh Kaveti Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
