The five questions every enterprise CTO asks before signing on AI Hive

"Eighteen months of enterprise discovery calls, five questions keep recurring. Worth surfacing because they shape how AI Hive (and probably most enterprise AI platforms) need to be built.

Question one - 'Where does our data go?'

Not 'is it secure?' - does it leave the network? Which country?

How it's addressed: on-premise / air-gapped deployment options. Data never leaves the client's infrastructure unless they explicitly configure it to.

Question two - 'What happens when the model changes?'

Buyers have been burned by vendor lock-in before.

How it's addressed: model-agnostic architecture. Workflows can swap LLMs without rewriting.

Question three - 'Who do we call when it breaks at 2am?'

Not a ticketing system - a named human.

How it's addressed: dedicated technical account manager + SLA, not a portal.

Question four - 'How do we know it's doing what we think it's doing?'

'The AI decided' is not a legal answer in regulated industries.

How it's addressed: Governance Dashboard + full decision audit trail.

Question five - 'What does our team need to do to keep this running?'

Sustainability beats features.

How it's addressed: 90-day knowledge transfer, second champion workflow, ongoing maintenance docs.

What would you add to this list from your own enterprise conversations?"