Episodes

  • HPE Discover Barcelona: What’s the business benefit of supercomputers?

    HPE Discover Barcelona: What’s the business benefit of supercomputers?
    Nov 22 2024
    HPE’s annual European conference took place this week in Barcelona and the company’s focus is still firmly on AI. This is bolstered by its supercomputing credentials – El Capitan, the latest supercomputer to come online in the US, was awarded the title of fastest supercomputer just a day before the conference kicked off.

    In this episode, Jane sits down with Gerald Kleyn, vice president of customer solutions for HPC and AI at Hewlett Packard Enterprise at HPE Discover Barcelona 2024 to discuss what the real-world impact of these high-performance machines is and whether they hold any benefits for the average IT department.

    Read more:
    • What is HPC really for?
    • AI’s thirsty secret
    • Inside Lumi, one of the world’s greenest supercomputers
    • HPE’s AI and supercomputing journey continues with new Cray and Slingshot hardware
    • El Capitan powers up, becomes fastest supercomputer in the world
    • HPE Discover Barcelona 2024: All the news and updates live
    • Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful and sustainable supercomputer, is now up and running
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    19 mins
  • What DORA means for business

    What DORA means for business
    Nov 15 2024
    What does it mean to be secure in your sector? While every organization has its own cyber security policies, numerous pieces of legislation also set out minimum requirements for security that firms must reach or else be held accountable through fines.

    The EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act – which came into force in 2023 and applies from 17 January 2025 – aims to do just this for financial entities within the region.

    But what does being DORA-ready mean in practice? And how will the legislation add to the responsibilities of IT professionals?

    In this episode, Jane and Rory speak to John Stevenson, Technical Director at Skybox, to better understand the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act and what it means for businesses.

    Read more:
    • What is the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)?
    • DORA and why resilience (once again) matters to the board
    • ‘Borderline irresponsible’ attitude to third party risks must change, says expert
    • Supply chain attacks are still plaguing enterprises – here's why
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    29 mins
  • October Rundown: Is the four-day week generally achievable?

    October Rundown: Is the four-day week generally achievable?
    Nov 8 2024
    It's that time of year when the clocks change and the nights draw in, the familiar starts to take on a new aspect as the shadows lengthen, and in the world of IT, trends that have been taken for granted are also starting to take on a new shape.

    As countries battle productivity problems, can they replicate the success of Iceland's four-day working week? Elsewhere, developers have started to question just how useful AI coding tools really are, and OpenAI has had another successful funding round – but is interest in the company starting to wain?

    In this episode, Jane is once again joined by Ross Kelly, ITPro’s news and analysis editor, to unpack the most interesting news that October brought.

    Read more:

    • New four-day week trial kicks off for workers across UK
    • Iceland’s four-day working week trials have been a roaring success – economic growth spiked, workers were happier, and burnout plummeted
    • The benefits of a four-day week in tech
    • UK's four-day week trial ends, leads to reduced burnout and sick days
    • OpenAI just raised $6.6bn in funding, but it drove a hard bargain – investors will be stopped from funding rivals
    • OpenAI could go bankrupt in 12 months if it doesn’t raise some serious cash – but is the Microsoft-backed AI giant too big to fail?
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    28 mins
  • Halloween special: Cybersecurity horror stories

    Halloween special: Cybersecurity horror stories
    Nov 1 2024
    It’s All Hallows’ Day, and we’ve still got Halloween on the brain. It’s that time of year when we tell the scariest stories we can – and for those in tech, there are none scarier than that of major cybersecurity incidents.

    In this episode, Rory and Jane talk to Solomon Klappholz, ITPro’s cybersecurity reporter, about some of the spookiest cyber incidents of 2024 and what businesses can learn from these ghoulish tales.

    Footnotes
    • CrowdStrike CEO confirms update "defect" as the source of mass disruption
    • Millions of devices bricked and $5.4 billion in losses: The cost of the CrowdStrike outage continues to mount
    • The National Public Data breach exposed nearly three billion users – now the company has filed for bankruptcy
    • National Public Data breach: Lawsuit claims failed to protect billions of personal records
    • 23andMe's disastrous data breach just landed it a regulatory probe
    • 23andMe data breach response has been a public relations disaster as it blames customers for data breach
    • The 23andMe data breach is getting messier by the day
    • World Economic Forum warns of growing ‘cyber insecurity’ amid heightened threat landscape

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    Show more Show less
    26 mins
  • SPECIAL EDITION: A pragmatist’s guide to AI

    SPECIAL EDITION: A pragmatist’s guide to AI
    Oct 30 2024
    Every organization has to prepare for the future to the best extent possible, whether that means modernizing one’s infrastructure or adopting cutting-edge technologies like AI.

    In every sector, leaders are faced with the task of keeping their business up-to-date and competitive by integrating AI workloads within their environment. But getting a project underway and ensuring it delivers sufficient ROI can be a challenge.

    In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association with Dell Technologies, Jane speaks with Steve Young, SVP and MD for Dell Technologies in the UK, to explain how businesses can adopt AI smoothly and ensure their route to integration works in their own best interests.

    Read more:
    • Find out more about Dell Technologies Forum Live and register
    • What is hybrid cloud?
    • What is multi-cloud?
    • Dell doubles down on Nvidia partnership with ‘AI factories’ and models at the edge
    Show more Show less
    40 mins
  • Classic episode: Putting privacy-enhancing technologies to use

    Classic episode: Putting privacy-enhancing technologies to use
    Oct 25 2024
    This episode was first broadcast 4 August 2023.

    As the economy has become increasingly dependent on data, companies have sought to make more profit from mining user actions such as through loyalty schemes or social media interactions.

    But individual rights also have to be respected, and businesses have to follow strict data protection procedures.

    Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are one method for companies to securely search through data to derive value – for example, a bank could search through customer data to expose fraudulent activity without putting the personal information of all the customers involved at risk.

    This episode, Rory and Jane are joined by Ellison Anne Williams, CEO and founder of privacy-enhancing technology company Enveil, to discuss the dos and don’ts of data use, and how organizations can make use of PETs for enhanced data mining.

    For more information, read the show notes here.
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    29 mins
  • How to sell cybersecurity without the FUD, ft. Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing

    How to sell cybersecurity without the FUD, ft. Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing
    Oct 18 2024
    It’s not every day that cybersecurity marketing professionals get to speak to one another, compare notes, and come up with innovative solutions for getting their voices heard.

    Despite being a cornerstone of the tech industry, cybersecurity is in need of constant marketing on its behalf. Developers need individuals willing to enter the boardroom to advocate for their product and cybersecurity marketers have to arm themselves with the right storytelling skills to get their message across.

    The Cybersecurity Marketing Society describes itself as a community for cybersecurity marketers to network, share skills, and learn from one another – but what does this mean in practical terms?

    In this episode, Jane and Rory speak to Gianna Whitver, co-founder & CEO at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, and Maria Velasquez, co-founder & chief growth officer at the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, to discuss their work in the sector and the realities of running a podcast all about cybersecurity marketing.

    Read more:
    • https://cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com/
    • https://cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com/podcast/
    • How AI is transforming businesses in the tech channel
    • Mandiant exec thinks AI could boost diversity in cybersecurity
    • Security and marketing are the top software spending priorities for 2023
    Show more Show less
    27 mins
  • Enabling cloud migration at scale

    Enabling cloud migration at scale
    Oct 11 2024
    To fully embrace the benefits of the cloud, businesses have to distribute existing workloads across hybrid and/or multi-cloud environments. While the benefits of this digital transformation are undeniable, it’s not a process without its challenges.

    This can be particularly true for firms with sprawling environments, perhaps as the result of mergers and acquisitions over the years, or those looking to get data in the right shape to be used for machine learning or AI.

    How can businesses reconcile these problems at scale? And what are the specific steps to success when it comes to cloud consolidation?

    In this episode, Rory speaks to Rajesh Naidu, SVP, chief architect, and head of data platform & data management at Expedia, to discuss the challenges of cloud migration and how converging workloads can help with AI adoption.

    Read more:

    • How Expedia Group used platform convergence to harness the efficiency of generative AI
    • How to prepare and prioritize workloads for cloud migration
    • “The tech guys want to move to the cloud, the finance people want the savings”: IT leaders feel ‘rushed’ to the cloud – here’s why slow and steady wins the race
    • Consolidate to simplify application security: Why this is a business imperative
    • Why 'shadow SaaS' is becoming a major blind spot for enterprise security teams
    • Structured vs unstructured data management
    • What is machine learning and why is it important?
    • What is generative AI?
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    35 mins