Edward Calvesbert VP of Product for IBM WatsonX on Enterprise AI, Data Strategy and Real-World Scale

In this episode of Software Leaders Uncensored, Steve Taplin sits down with Edward Calvesbert, VP of Product Management for IBM WatsonX, to discuss what’s real, what’s hype, and what’s breaking inside enterprise AI today. Edward explains how Watson evolved into WatsonX, why 95% of enterprise AI projects are failing, and why strong data foundations and semantic layers matter more than the model itself. He breaks down the difference between demos and production AI, the emerging reality of agentic voice systems, and how text-to-SQL and conversational BI are the current innovation frontier. Edward also shares candid insights on governance, legacy data, vendor lock-in, productivity with GenAI coding tools, and what it really takes to go from prototype to enterprise-ready at global scale.