PODCAST · business
REAL Talk With Sam Holcman
by Sam Holcman
R.E.A.L. - Realistic, Enabling, Actionable, Logical. Every day we hear jargon and see writing from so-called “experts,” and we don’t know what we should follow and what we should avoid. Published practices aren’t always best practices! Listen to episodes from Sam Holcman’s radio show, webinars, and podcasts, Real Talk with Sam Holcman. Each episode gets to the bottom of what business executives, managers, practitioners, and staff actually need to create innovative solutions that deliver- no utopia required. This business podcast provides practice-based insights into business transformation, enterprise architecture, business architecture, organizational transformation, and technology transformation based on real-world practices. We provide you with insights that can provide true value to organizations and individuals that face today’s and tomorrow’s competitive pressures and provide a usable takeaway from each program.
Episodes
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Is Enterprise Architecture Dead? Sam Holcman and Omar Gawad
The Analyst Architect and Real Talk With Sam Holcman: Is enterprise architecture still relevant in the age of AI, or is it dead? In the first episode of Making Architecture Matter, Samuel Holcman argues it matters more than ever, and that most of what passes for enterprise architecture today is...
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AI and Grey Beards
I began my career in 1972, and we were called Data Processing. What we were doing in 1972 was processing data. Today, we are called Information Technology, or the AI Division, or whatever. And do you know what we are doing today? Processing data. Any questions? Today I want to build on an article...
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EACOE - The Seven Key Differentiators
What has your team been able to hand to a business leader from your TOGAF or other enterprise architecture work, that they could read and make a strategic decision from, without an architect in the room to explain it?" That question almost always surfaces the gap EACOE is built to fill.
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Certified in EA or BA But Not Competent
Why Record Numbers of Enterprise Architects and Business Architects Are Still Failing Stakeholders The enterprise architecture and business architecture professions face a disturbing paradox. With certifications surpassing 100,000 worldwide and the architecture market valued at $1.44 billion, we...
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Rethinking enterprise AI: Why small models fit big organizations
The InfoWorld article “Small language models: Rethinking enterprise AI architecture” argues that as large language models (LLMs) hit limits of scale, cost, and risk, enterprises are shifting toward small language models (SLMs) that are faster, cheaper, and more private for well-defined…
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Ford’s New EV “Assembly Tree” - What It Means for Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture
Ford’s new electric truck program is being called its “Model T moment” – not because it’s just another vehicle, but because Ford is tearing up a century of manufacturing practice to build something fundamentally different. In doing so, they have replaced the traditional assembly line with what…
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A Manifesto for the Professionalization of Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture
Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture are at the same inflection point that software engineering has reached. When a field confuses vocabulary for competence, titles for capability, and exams for professional readiness, it creates a class of certified people who can describe the work...
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Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture Briefing - May 2026
Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Architecture (BA) have moved decisively toward the center of enterprise transformation in the last 30 days, especially as organizations try to operationalize AI at scale. Recent market and thought-leadership signals show a clear shift away from…
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From Semantic Hubs to Enterprise Augmented Intelligence™: The Missing Step in Agentic AI
In a recent CIO article, by Martin De Saulles, “How effective are semantic hubs in moving agentic AI forward?” the authors argue that semantics are now the backbone of enterprise AI, especially as organizations rush to deploy agentic AI systems at scale. They highlight a critical shift: the...
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Purchased Models, Off-the-Shelf Ontologies, and Why Everything Old Is New Again
This topic is one that should sound familiar to anyone who has been around enterprise architecture, transformation, or banking, as one example, for more than a few years: everything old is new again. The latest version of the old story is being told through “purchased models,” “off-the-shelf...
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Your AI Problem Is not Data Debt – It is Executive Relevance
There is a lot of noise right now about Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy, and one phrase you have probably heard is this: “Your AI strategy will fail if you do not fix your data debt.” Now, there is truth in that. Years of fragmented systems, inconsistent definitions, and patchwork reports...
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You are Flying Atlas V Missions in a New Glenn World
I want to talk about legacy thinking. Not old thinking. Not wrong thinking. But thinking that was right - sometimes brilliantly right - and then calcified into doctrine. Look up at the sky. Something remarkable just happened in space. Blue Origin flew New Glenn - their massive, orbital-class…
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Why Poor Data Foundations Undermine AI Success
Organizations are learning a costly lesson: AI does not fail first because of the model; it fails because of the data foundation beneath it. More than half of generative AI projects were abandoned after proof of concept by the end of last year, largely because organizations lacked the data...
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Coffee Grinders - Certifiers - and Real Practitioners
Let us be honest - most Enterprise Architects and Business Architects start the day the same way. You roll out of bed, scroll through overnight emails, open at least six tabs of frameworks you will only partially read, warm up yesterday’s coffee because the meeting starts in five minutes, and...
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Process Visualization: A Best Practice Blueprint for Reworking Processes Before AI
CIOs are under intense pressure to harness AI to drive efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage - but as a recent CIO article states on reimagining business processes makes clear, the first step is not to “automate faster,” but to rethink how work actually happens before a single model…
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Palantir's Real Secret Sauce - Ontologies
If your AI and analytics investments still feel like disconnected projects instead of an enterprise capability, this episode of Real Talk with Sam Holcman shows how Palantir quietly turned ontologies into a strategic moat - and how the same ontology‑driven principles behind EACOE and BACOE can…
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The Ten Most Misunderstood Words in EA/BA
If you are a CIO, CTO, or Architecture Manager, you are already paying an “architecture tax” you never approved. It shows up as overlapping platforms, programs that cannot finish, and “strategic” projects that quietly die after burning millions. The surprising culprit: ten everyday EA/BA words…
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Ontology in AI: The Hidden Skill That Makes Architecture and Your Career Work
In both EACOE enterprise architecture and BACOE business architecture, ontology is the backbone: it tells us what kinds of things exist in the enterprise, how they relate, and how those meanings stay consistent as we automate, integrate, and apply AI. Today, that makes ontology not just a...
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Business Architecture - Belonging to a Club or Practicing a Discipline
Welcome to Real Talk with Sam Holcman - where we stop confusing activity with progress and start talking about how businesses actually work. Today I want to talk about something touchy in the Business Architecture world: the difference between belonging to a club and practicing a discipline....
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How to Help the CEO Understand Enterprise and Business Architecture - Without Losing Your Job
Many CEOs excel in vision, leadership, and financial acumen - yet remain only vaguely familiar with the disciplines of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Architecture (BA). They hear the words. They see the frameworks. But they do not always connect with the business value that drives...
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What Is In and Out In Enterprise Architecture (EA) In 2026 From Exams to Practice
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is shifting decisively from theory-heavy, exam-driven certification to demonstrated, practice-based competence that delivers measurable business outcomes. In: Practitioner-based paths that validate portfolios, scenarios, workshops, and demonstrable outcomes…
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Having A Lot of Data Is Not the Same as Having AI Ready Data
Organizations have been stockpiling data for years, expecting that one day it will become a strategic asset. With generative AI, that moment has arrived - but without disciplined data practices, the promise quickly turns into frustration. The differentiator is no longer access to powerful models;...
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LLMs Copyright Infringement as a Service
Let us start with the uncomfortable truth: large language models - ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and their peers - are built on a foundation that looks suspiciously like “copyright infringement as a service.” These systems could not exist without consuming massive quantities of…
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What is In and Out in Business Architecture (BA) in 2026: From Exams to Practitioner Certification
Business Architecture (BA) is undergoing the same transformation: away from framework-centric, multiple-choice exams and toward practitioner-based competence proven through real work, with BIZBOK/CBA®-style certification as a well-known example of the older model, not the only one.
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Why You Can't Modify What You Have Not Done: Absurdity of Theoretical and Book-Learned Architects
There is something absurd happening in enterprise architecture and business architecture today, and it is time we called it out. People are passing multiple-choice exams… or cramming through a sixteen-hundred-page framework manual, and then being told, Now, go modify it. Customize it for your...
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Still Doing Architecture Principles
Most EA principles sound good but do not change a single decision because they are not testable. To make them real, convert each principle into a SMART goal plus 1–3 hard metrics. Now you can wire that into governance (architecture reviews, portfolio decisions, roadmaps) and report progress...
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How to Get Your Enterprise Ready for Agentic AI
This Broadcast is a review and analysis of the Jan 22, 2026 - by Koenraad Schelfaut and Andrew Long CIO Article titled How to get your enterprise architecture ready for agentic AI. This article misses the central - and fatal - flaw in its reasoning: it assumes that enterprise data is reliable...
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The Real Cost of Standing Still
“If you are worried about the cost of going for it, just calculate the cost of staying where you are." We have all been there - staring at an opportunity that feels just out of reach. Maybe it is the next career move, a new certification, launching that business idea, or stepping up into...
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The Key Enterprise Architect and Business Architect Survival Skill for 2026: Critical Ignoring
We are living in an age of endless low‑quality information and recycled self-declared “best practices.” Framework tourists. Certification logos with no delivery record. 1,600‑page manuals that need another 800 pages just to implement, and most recently, another rambling set of explanations on the...
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LinkedIn Posters: An Analysis of Internet Personas
In a world of infinite content and finite attention, the real competitive advantage is not posting more – it is choosing better who you listen to. In this episode, Sam Holcman breaks down 39 distinct online personas that dominate LinkedIn, Twitter, and professional communities - from the...
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AI Fabrications, Context, and LLMs
The scientist who helped invent core building blocks of modern AI just walked away from Meta - with a blunt verdict: Large Language Models (LLMs) are a dead end. In this episode of Real Talk, Sam Holcman unpacks why LLMs are fundamentally flawed as a foundation for serious enterprise...
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Practitioner Certification Transformation: from Multiple Choice Exams to Demonstrated Competency
To the EA and BA Community: SAP’s leadership in the Certification Community is moving them from Multiple Choice Exams to Demonstrated Competency. We in the EA and BA Community are next, moving EA and BA Certification from Multiple Choice Exams to Demonstrated Competency. Enterprise Architecture…
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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
This episode walks through 200+ methodologies, tools, frameworks, and technologies that were once sold as the future” - and are now forgotten, marginalized, or quietly replaced. Sam Holcman, who started his career in 1972 when it was all called “Data Processing” (spoiler: we are still just...
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The 47 Second Enterprise: Why EACOE and BACOE Design for Human Attention
Shrinking attention spans are not a myth; they are a measurable reality, and EACOE and BACOE are the only EA and BA organizations whose methods are engineered around that reality rather than fighting it or ignoring it.
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Yes, you CAN begin Enterprise Architecture or Business Architecture Next Monday Morning
In this episode of Real Talk with Sam Holcman, we sit down with Mohammed Khalil, a Senior Enterprise and Business Architect who has implemented Enterprise Architecture across multiple industries worldwide. Mohammed walks through how he applied the EACOE methodology at one of Canada’s largest...
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What Makes a Great Enterprise Architect or Business Architect
A great enterprise architect and business architect is defined by mindset, behaviors, and outcomes in the real organization, not by the ability to pass a multiple‑choice exam. Listen in for valuable parameters to think about.
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Irrational Exuberance and the AI Mania: Are We Living Through a Bubble?
Welcome to Real Talk with Sam Holcman, where we connect ideas, innovation, and intelligent decision-making. Today’s reflection: irrational exuberance - a phrase coined by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan in 1996 and revisited today through the lens of the AI revolution. Greenspan’s…
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Why TOGAF® Needs a Refresh
TOGAF® is talked about and used, but an increasing number of major practitioners and researchers argue that it misses several critical ingredients for modern, outcome‑driven enterprise architecture. In the age of EA 5.0, these critical ingredients are lacking. This broadcast will outline these...
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When Software Eats Itself
Today’s Broadcast. Billions were wasted, companies bankrupted, and governments embarrassed - all because of something we take for granted: software. This article is based on an outstanding article titled “Why Software Fails” by Robert N. Charette, in IEEE Spectrum, December 2025. You have…
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EA and BA Advice – How Can You Determine How To Best Spend your Time and Money
When evaluating Enterprise Architecture (EA) or Business Architecture (BA) advice, focus on whether the person, book, website, or post can demonstrate real decisions changed, risks reduced, or value created - not just fluency in frameworks and jargon. The most dependable advisors and materials…
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Agentic AI, EA 5.0, and EACOE
Agentic AI is accelerating all the trends that EA 5.0 and EACOE have been arguing for years: architecture must be business-led, continuously adaptive, and tightly connected to how work actually gets done. In this environment, the EA role does not disappear; it shifts toward orchestrating agents,...
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No I Will Not Peg My Biz on AI!
No I Will Not Peg My Biz on AI!
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Data Center Growth – Good or a Waste
"One day, people will realize the DATA BELONGS TO ME" – remember that quote from the inventor of the internet and the web. We do not need larger data centers – we need better data, in an organized manner. It begins with a classification system that organizes stuff – data. Think a library – the...
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To-Be Models and As-Is Models – Which Always Comes First
Developing an as-is model before a to-be model seems logical on the surface - understand where you are, then define where you want to go. Yet, in practice, this approach can unintentionally trap organizations with the limitations of their current reality. The deeper issue is not one of modeling...
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Thought Leader – Thought Mimicker – Cult Follower: Who are you actually hearing?
A thought leader is an authority figure recognized for their expertise in a specific field, often leading discussions and sharing insights that influence their industry. They are known for their ability to innovate and drive change, and they have a significant impact on their community....
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Data for AI - Building New Age Architecture
Data drives Artificial Intelligence - not the other way around. It is the foundation upon which AI systems are built and the fuel that determines how powerful, accurate, and innovative they can become. The phrase “Data for AI” captures this reality: without high-quality, strategic data, AI cannot...
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AI and REAL Enterprise Architecture
AI, driven by hype cycles, is disrupting and in many ways undermining the value of REAL (Realistic, Enabling, Actionable, Logical) Enterprise Architecture - turning a professional discipline into yet another fleeting trend much like previous waves of tool-centric or automation-driven approaches....
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Why Real Enterprise Architects and Business Architects Ignore the AI Hype Machine
AI is everywhere - on every page, in every boardroom pitch, and across every trend report. But as any seasoned leader and practitioners know, what creates lasting competitive edge is not the technology buzzword of the moment. It is having an operating model that empowers smart choices, no matter...
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Prompt Engineering or Prompt Manipulation - A Critical Look at How We Shape AI Responses
The term “prompt engineering” has become popular in recent years to describe the process of carefully designing inputs - known as prompts - for large language models (LLMs). The phrase suggests that prompting is a deliberate, technical process similar to real engineering disciplines such as civil...
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The Executive and CIO’s and Your Risks of Over-Reliance on AI in Enterprise Architecture
Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been touted to result in dramatic increases in productivity and consistency throughout Enterprise Architecture practices. However, our experience with our clients demonstrates that excessive dependence on AI-driven support - particularly…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
R.E.A.L. - Realistic, Enabling, Actionable, Logical. Every day we hear jargon and see writing from so-called “experts,” and we don’t know what we should follow and what we should avoid. Published practices aren’t always best practices!
Listen to episodes from Sam Holcman’s radio show, webinars, and podcasts, Real Talk with Sam Holcman. Each episode gets to the bottom of what business executives, managers, practitioners, and staff actually need to create innovative solutions that deliver- no utopia required.
This business podcast provides practice-based insights into business transformation, enterprise architecture, business architecture, organizational transformation, and technology transformation based on real-world practices. We provide you with insights that can provide true value to organizations and individuals that face today’s and tomorrow’s competitive pressures and provide a usable takeaway from each program.
HOSTED BY
Sam Holcman
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does REAL Talk With Sam Holcman have?
REAL Talk With Sam Holcman currently has 253 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is REAL Talk With Sam Holcman about?
R.E.A.L. - Realistic, Enabling, Actionable, Logical. Every day we hear jargon and see writing from so-called “experts,” and we don’t know what we should follow and what we should avoid. Published practices aren’t always best practices! Listen to episodes from Sam Holcman’s radio show, webinars, and...
How often does REAL Talk With Sam Holcman release new episodes?
REAL Talk With Sam Holcman publishes regularly with 253 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to REAL Talk With Sam Holcman?
You can listen to REAL Talk With Sam Holcman on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts REAL Talk With Sam Holcman?
REAL Talk With Sam Holcman is created and hosted by Sam Holcman.
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