Podcast

Ep 125 – What’s up with Totogi: The power of vertical AI (Michael Walker)

September 29, 2025

This week’s guest

Michael Walker

Enterprise AI Deployment Strategy Totogi

MIT research shows that 95% of enterprise AI projects fail, and the culprit is likely the daunting task of managing business context. When AI doesn’t understand the full picture of your business, it makes poor decisions and delivers disappointing results that leave operators questioning whether AI can deliver real value.

In this “What’s up with Totogi?” episode, I’m talking with Michael Walker, who leads enterprise AI deployment strategy at Totogi. He’s focused on what we believe is the right approach for telcos: vertical AI, built specifically for telcos, that understands the industry and your business from day one. We dive into why most telcos are experiencing “context chaos” with their AI deployments, how Totogi’s ontology approach eliminates the guesswork, and how our BSS Magic can turbocharge ancient legacy systems without expensive migrations, data aggregation, or swap offs.

Listen now to hear:

How context engineering makes AI work at scale [05:00];
How Totogi’s ontology framework manages context across thousands of AI agents without operational chaos [07:49];
Why you don’t need data lake migrations to make BSS Magic work [10:24]; and
A customer example of building a complex sales agent in just four weeks [13:09].

Links and resources

Check out my blog, Context is EVERYTHING, to learn how context engineering can turn expensive demos into successful enterprise AI.
Read MIT’s report, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025, on why 95% of enterprise AI projects fail.
Learn about Totogi’s BSS Magic and its telco-specific ontology approach.
Watch our conversation from MWC25, where Michael and I discuss how BSS Magic uses AWS Bedrock to bring AI intelligence to legacy telecom systems, solving vendor interoperability challenges that have held telcos back for decades.
Check out how Totogi’s AI-powered BSS Magic reduced CloudSense’s TM Forum API certification from 26 months to four weeks.
Watch my interview with TelecomTV, where I discuss how Tier-one operators are using BSS Magic to achieve dramatic results with BSS Magic AI, including 15% faster sales quoting and reducing support tickets from five hours to 15 minutes.
Learn how multiple Tier 1 telecom operators are using Totogi’s BSS Magic to achieve 80% faster order processing and 75% cost reductions by deploying AI agents across existing legacy systems without costly replacements.
Find out more about Totogi by meeting with us at TelecomTV’s AI-Native Telco Forum in Düsseldorf, Germany on October 23-24. DM me on LinkedIn or X @TelcoDR to set up a time to meet.
Watch this Scandinavian mother explain why it’s “normal” to see babies nap outside in Sweden and the health benefits they believe it provides – leaving them outside in temperatures as low as −13 °F / −25 °C
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the episode transcript here.

Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

Guest bio

Michael Walker leads enterprise AI deployment strategy at Totogi. He has extensive experience deploying enterprise AI solutions across industries including telecommunications, enterprise technology, automotive, and oil and gas. At Totogi, Michael leads the company’s BSS Magic initiative, helping telecom operators adopt AI at scale by leveraging BSS Magic’s universal ontology layer to accelerate transformation and unlock new business value.

Follow DR

Have an idea for a Telco in 20 podcast guest or topic? Send it in!
Want to sponsor a podcast? Let us know
Follow Telco in 20 on X @TelcoIn20
Follow DR on X @TelcoDR

The Telco in 20 podcast is ranked in the top 5% of all podcasts globally by Listen Notes! 🎉 We’ve also won a 2024 MarComm Award, 2024 and 2025 Hermes Awards, and are recognized as a TeckNexus Top 12 Telco and Tech Podcast, Forrester Top 100 Channel Podcast and Feedspot Top 10 Telecom Podcast.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you leave us a review? It takes you seconds to do in your app and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. And I love reading your feedback and reviews!