AI Initiatives: Demand, Challenges and Architecture

In this episode of the Snowpal Polyglot Software Development Podcast, Dave Trier, VP of Product at ModelOp, joins host Krish Palaniappan to explore the growing pains of enterprise AI adoption. While demand for AI — especially generative AI — is exploding across business units, most organizations still struggle to get these initiatives into production. The reason? It’s not the tech. It’s the trust.

Dave shares hard-won insights from years of working with Fortune 500 enterprises on AI lifecycle management. He breaks down the most common roadblocks — from disjointed teams to governance gaps — and outlines a pragmatic path forward: define the use case, build modular architecture, and establish a consistent governance framework that every stakeholder can trust.

They also dive into the technical side of scalable AI, including:

• How to design a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architecture
• Choosing the right foundation models and vector databases
• Orchestrators, guardrails, and the future of conversational UIs
• The difference between AI agents and agentic AI systems
  

Whether you’re an AI leader, architect, or executive sponsor, this episode offers actionable insights for navigating the risks — reputational, financial, and regulatory — that come with AI at scale.

🎧 Listen now to learn how trust, governance, and cross-functional alignment are the keys to turning AI hype into AI impact.