#922 How To Understand & Optimize Agentic AI Workforces with Promise Theory with Tony Davis & Dr. Mark Burgess
This theory explains how AI agents can make promises and build trust… with other agents.
Today, we're talking to Doctor Mark Burgess, the originator of Promise Theory, and Tony Davis, Senior Director of Agentic Strategy at A&I Solutions. We discuss why command-and-control fails with autonomous AI agents, how agents respond to peer rejection instead of human disapproval, and why Promise Theory is the backbone of governing agentic workforces at scale.
All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!
Thank you to A&I Solutions for sponsoring this episode. To learn more, check out their website here.
About Tony Davis
Tony Davis serves as Sr. Director of Agentic Strategy for A&I Solutions, with over 30 years leading Fortune 100 IT Operations. He works directly with clients to design strategies that combine NetOps, Infrastructure, and AIOps technologies from multiple solution vendors using a proprietary methodology that results in an accurate indicator of the customer experience by business service and workflow. These relative indicators become the foundation for the continuous improvement of your business services.
About Mark Burgess
Mark Burgess is a theoretician and practitioner in the area of information systems, whose work has focused largely on distributed information infrastructure. He wrote an early popular book on C programming, which is now open and available through the Free Software Foundation. He was an early contributor to the Free Software Foundation in 1993 with CFEngine, which remains GPL. He is known particularly for his work on Configuration Management and Promise Theory. He was the principal Founder of CFEngine, co-founder at Aljabr, and is now the founder of ChiTek-i. He is Emeritus Professor of Network and System Administration from Oslo University College. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and papers on topics from Physics, Networks and Systems, to fiction. He also writes a blog on issues of science and IT industry concerns. Today, he works as an advisor on science and technology matters all over the world.
About A&I Solutions
A&I Solutions is a leading information technology software & services provider focused on the Broadcom portfolio of products. We offer advanced & integrated solutions to help modern businesses simplify tech challenges and maximize business growth. From intelligently-designed software to expert IT services, we provide the most comprehensive tools and resources to master all aspects of the digital life cycle across mainframe, distributed, virtual, and cloud platforms.
About Scout-itAI
Scout-itAI is a governed event intelligence platform powered by an agentic workforce of specialized AI agents that continuously monitor, predict, and improve service health. Grounded in Promise Theory, each agent makes explicit, verifiable commitments about what it will observe, analyze, and optimize — creating transparency, accountability, and measurable trust across the system. By aligning autonomous agent decisions to business outcomes through our patented Reliability Path Index (RPI), Scout-itAI transforms complex IT signals into disciplined, outcome-driven action — enabling organizations to prevent, predict, and resolve issues with precision and speed.