What happens when a CTO and a CIO of a worldwide technology company sit together to talk about AI? That is the starting point of today’s episode, where I am accompanied by Jeremy Ung, CTO in Blackline, and Sumit Johar, the CIO of the company. Instead of having to chase the hype, we focus on what AI really means for the decision, governance and business results of executive decisions. Both leaders are open about how their partnership fades the traditional lines between the product and IT, and why the board requires answers about topics that were once deep in the technological stack.
Jeremy and Sumit explain why AI is not just a SaaS subscription and why expectations have changed so dramatically. For decades, technology was considered predictably, a rules -based engine that followed instructions without errors. Ai feels different because it speaks, reasons and sometimes makes mistakes. That human -like experience is what excites employees, but it is also what makes them restless. This is where education and governance come in, help teams learn how to ask for, verify and trace AI output before they make critical decisions. We also investigate how AI agents start to work in tools such as SharePoint and E -mail, so that new compliance and security questions are called that CIOs and CTOs have to answer together.
The conversation is about AI -Wild growth, a problem that reflects the SaaS explosion from ten years ago. With new AI tools that pop up every week, companies risk overlapping investments and fragmented initiatives. Sumit shares how Blackline uses two board councils to keep projects on line. They are devoted to risks, drawing voices of legal, security and privacy. The other is aimed at transformation, evaluating or requesting new AI options are useful, or that they duplicate what already exists. The signal that proliferation roots, he says, is when requests for tools suddenly jump from a few every month to a dozen.
We also tackle the build versus buy dilemma. Budgets are not magically raised just because AI is hot. Jeremy argues that building is only useful when it strengthens the core advantage of a company. Everything else must be purchased, integrated and flexible, so that organizations can run as the AI landscape changes. Both leaders emphasize that trust, auditability and value delivery must be in the center of each investment decision.
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