From AI-driven industry consolidation to high-profile cloud outages, this conversation goes beyond the obvious and into the uncomfortable truths CIOs and CloudOps leaders are wrestling with right now. Fernando Labastida and Jimmy Jobe, Co-Founder and CEO of Verge Technologies, share an operator’s view on why AI demand is accelerating vendor consolidation, how cloud outages damage more than revenue, why the cost of change is often the biggest blocker to innovation, and why intelligent automation and multi-cloud resilience will define winning enterprises in 2026 and beyond.