Strategic Imperatives for Infrastructure Leaders in an AI-Enabled World

AI is transforming every layer of IT, but most infrastructure teams are still fighting fires with the same manual processes they used years ago. In this session from the Selector AI Summit for Network Leaders, William Collins from Itential shares hard-earned lessons from both enterprise and startup perspectives, breaking down why change is so difficult and how Model Context Protocol (MCP) can finally bridge the gap between intent, automation, and trust.

Through real-world stories and data-driven insights, William explores what’s holding organizations back, why human error and operational fatigue remain constant risks, and how MCP enables a practical path forward – one that standardizes automation, simplifies integration, and prepares infrastructure for agentic AI.

Key Takeaways for Infrastructure Leaders

• How to recognize status quo bias and overcome resistance to change.
• Why manual operations and human error still drive most outages.
• What diffusion of innovation reveals about AI and MCP adoption curves.
• How to break free from point-to-point integrations and slow RFP cycles.
• The path to modular, plug-and-play automation with standardized protocols.
• How MCP and agentic NetOps enable scalable, trusted autonomy.
• Why the future of infrastructure depends on alignment between innovation and business outcomes.