Boomi highlights business thought leaders, the trends they see, and the cool things their organizations are doing. We also get their hot takes on pizza integrations.
Carlos Iturria initially took a cautious, wait-and-see attitude when generative artificial intelligence first burst onto the scene in late 2022. Over the years, he had seen many tech advancements that were supposed to change everything – and then didn’t.
“I’ve been in technology for a long time and know what it can and cannot do,” Iturria said. “So, I was a skeptic. But then I recognized the potential when I began seeing things where I couldn’t believe my eyes. Now, we’re implementing agentic AI in ways that are very accurate and can help businesses.”
Iturria is the Chief Architect and Chief Technology Officer at Synapsewerx, an Australia-based data and AI consulting firm founded in early 2024. The business is riding the growing AI wave by showing clients how to get the most from agents.
His career, spanning over 20 years, has focused on designing reliable, secure, and scalable technology solutions to achieve successful outcomes. Synapsewerx assists organizations in navigating the fast-moving evolution of AI by pulling back the curtain on what the “agentic” future can mean for them.
“There’s a lot of the hype that we are hearing right now that AI can do everything,” he said. “It cannot. But you can train a model that is the brain of an AI agent to do a very specific task – and do it well.”
A native of Mexico, Iturria has lived in Australia for two decades. He took time to discuss what he’s seeing with AI, the importance of data and integration, and the Synapsewerx-Boomi partnership. Portions of our conversation were lightly edited for length and clarity.
How do you explain to people what you do?
Carlos Iturria: It’s about finding ways to solve problems. I chose technology as a career because it’s a way to solve or reduce challenges. It’s why I’ve become obsessed with automation. I spent many years working at Oracle and then Salesforce because it was all about how we could automate business flows that ultimately fix problems. Now, with AI, I can go beyond whatever I was able to do in the past.
Can you talk more about the level of accuracy you’re seeing with AI?
Carlos Iturria: It comes back to the idea of black boxes, which is a traditional way of operating in IT. We’ve always had black boxes. But now those black boxes have a brain inside. You can train them to do very specific tasks and accomplish them with enough accuracy. I hear people say: “Is it 100% accurate?” Then I ask them: “Is a human 100% accurate?” I think it’s a fine line when an AI agent can achieve the same level of accuracy that a human can – or higher. When that’s the case, then we’re in business. We can start providing those mini-brains inside these black boxes and make them part of a bigger orchestration of steps. That’s the definition of agentic AI.
Tell us more about Synapsewerx.
Carlos Iturria: We want to be an AI agent boutique. That’s been our North Star from the beginning. I talk to a lot of technology leaders, especially in the data world, which has been my space for the last 20 years. I tell everybody that you have to see the future of integration as an agentic AI workflow whether we like it or not. This is where we’ll be 18 months from now.
How do you see the role of integration with AI?
Carlos Iturria: If you do it well, integration should be boring and not even be seen. It’s about moving data from one application to another or putting data from applications in front of a human so that they can do their job. No one should even have to think about integration. You just open your laptop, and the data you need is in front of you. But the future of integration is also moving data from applications to AI agents that simulate humans and then back to humans. Having that ability to integrate with an AI agent capable of doing a simple task that a human would do allows us to try things that in the past were not possible. For instance, you may have a customer success team of 20 people for hundreds or thousands of clients. You cannot hyper-personalize one-to-one attention to all of them. But we can do that with agentic AI, providing the same, or a very close, service to an end user as a human does. That’s very powerful. Never in my experience did I imagine I would be able to do this.
Why do Synapsewerx and Boomi work well together?
Carlos Iturria: We want it to be technology agnostic. In my 10-plus years at Oracle, the answer to any question had to be Oracle, whether it was the right answer or not. When I moved to MuleSoft, the answer had to be MuleSoft or Salesforce, whether or not it was the right thing. We want the flexibility to analyze, scan the market, and be conscious of what technology cycles are the right ones. Being technology-agnostic gives us that freedom. We’re a big Boomi partner because that’s the vision of Boomi with AI. It’s great working with a technology vendor that aligns so well with the way you see the future. Boomi also blows me away with data management. With AI, creating golden records with trusted data and synchronizing them in systems will be important. You want to trust your data before you feed it into your agentic workflow.
Synapsewerx talks about achieving “meaningful” AI outcomes. What does that mean?
Carlos Iturria: Our CEO, Malcolm Ingram, has built many companies and has only one rule. We have to deliver well. We want to be on a journey with customers and show them the art of the possible with AI. The word came from one of our customers. A board member said, “We have to do something meaningful with AI. We don’t know how to get started. And we have 18 months to do it.” AI shouldn’t be like digital transformation, where you never finish. There’s a different way of achieving your business objectives quickly with AI. To me, that’s the definition of meaningful.
How did you come to live in Australia?
Carlos Iturria: My wife and I were working for Accenture. We never meant to be here that long. It was supposed to be just an implementation project for six months. We would work on that, quick and easy, and then come back home. But it was just extended and extended and extended. And now, we’re still here!
Be honest. It’s because you like the cool accents.
Carlos Iturria: That’s funny because, at the beginning, I couldn’t understand a single word. But after a while, you get used to it.
We saved a fun question for last. What’s your favorite pizza integration?
Carlos Iturria: It’s basically Domino’s and Pizza Hut in Mexico. The first time I went to Italy and ate a traditional pizza, I was like, “This is heaven.” When I came to Australia, I saw a lot of people from Italy. They produce different types of authentic pizzas here. I fell in love with what’s called the four quarters. Each quarter is different. Maybe one is seafood pizza, one is meat lover’s pizza, one is Margherita pizza, and the other is traditional Hawaiian pizza. You can have a little bit of everything.
Up Close With Carlos Iturria
Role: Chief Architect and CTO of Synapsewerx
Home: Melbourne, Australia
Family: Wife Priscila; sons Leo (14), Alejandro (12), and Daniel (5)
Education: Bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey
Career: His software technology experience includes roles at Salesforce and MuleSoft, Oracle, Unico Computer Systems, Accenture, TransUnion, and GE
Want to read more about some of the many thought leaders we’ve interviewed? Check out our aggregated Boomi Profiles page.