The ITPro Podcast

There was a time when an IT leader’s primary responsibility was managing tin, making sure that an organisation’s servers were kept up and running with little or no thought spared to how the rest of the business was using it. Those days are past now, and the modern CIO’s priorities have shifted. IT is now about business outcomes, and CIOs increasingly don’t care what their applications are running on, as long as they’re delivering value.In this IT Pro Podcast Special Edition, presented in association with Dell Technologies, we’ll look at the shift from a hardware-centric model to outcome-driven IT. We examine the business trends that have prompted this shift, the technologies that are enabling it, and what it could mean for the future of the data centre.

Getting hit with a large-scale cyber attack is a nightmare scenario for many IT leaders. Repairing the damage caused by hackers once they’ve infiltrated your system can be both expensive and time-consuming, and the post-breach fallout can be extremely challenging to deal with. But while the technical impact an attack like this can have is one thing, we often overlook the effect it has on the individuals who have to respond to it. Long nights, extreme pressure and high levels of stress are all hallmarks of real-world incident response, and for the teams mobilised to deal with a breach, the experience can often be traumatic.This week, the IT Pro Podcast sits down with Solarwinds CISO Tim Brown and CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna to dig into one of the most serious and wide ranging attacks of the decade. We find out what it was actually like in the days and weeks following the attack on its Orion platform last year, and how the company’s incident response teams coped with one of the most severe security events in its history. We also discuss what it was like for Ramakrishna joining the company in the immediate wake of the incident, and how he rebuilt trust in Solarwinds’ partners and resiliency in its IT.For more information on all of the issues we've spoken about this week, head over to https://bit.ly/ITPP-Solarwinds

This week marks the 100th episode of the IT Pro Podcast, and to celebrate the occasion, we’ve got a special bumper episode where we’ll be looking back over the last 100 years of technological development. We examine the inventions that have led up to the present day, the impact that they’ve had, and how current innovations may impact the future. Join us as we discuss the birth of Silicon Valley, the world’s first internet service providers and the explosion of mobile technology, along with much more. We’d also like to thank you for your continued support. We love bringing you these weekly podcasts, and we’re looking forward to the next hundred episodes. For more information on all of the topics we've spoken about today, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-100.

In a lot of cases, being an IT admin is as much about prioritisation as anything else, and the mantra ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is one that many technology professionals swear by. However, this approach leaves organisations at risk of having to suddenly fix critical errors with little notice.This is why many businesses have adopted observability, deepening the monitoring of their applications and infrastructure in order to detect potential issues before they become critical. In this week’s IT Pro Podcast episode, we speak to Greg Ouillon, CTO of New Relic, about why observability has become so popular, the challenges it addresses and why it’s being used for more than just IT maintenance.For more details on the topics discussed in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-observability.

The average smartphone tends to look fairly unassuming, but recently, foldable phones have injected a bit of diversity into the market. These eye-catching new devices include foldable screens, and are aimed at businesspeople and power users.But do foldable phones represent a genuine step forward for mobile technology, or are they simply a passing trend that will be swiftly forgotten? In this week’s episode, we dig into what makes foldable phones so unique, and look at whether or not they deserve a place in our pockets.Head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-foldable for more information on these topics and more.

In the business world, we often talk about ‘climbing the career ladder’ - and the unspoken implication is that everyone wants to eventually reach the top. In most organisations, this means ascending to some form of senior management or executive role, but what about those that would rather stay where they are?For many IT professionals, reaching a certain level of seniority results in graduating from managing technology to managing people, but the two roles require considerably different skillsets, and good technologists do not always make good leaders. In this week’s episode, we look at the question of whether IT teams should be managed by people with technical skills, as well as examining why technical staff end up with management responsibilities and asking whether it’s possible to stay out of senior management without sacrificing progression and compensation.Head over to https://bit.ly/ITPP-managers for more information on these topics.

For many IT professionals, the decision to move from a permanent position to a contractor or consultant role has given them more flexibility, better earning potential and a healthier work-life balance. There are those, however, who use legal loopholes to prey on IT contractors, lining their own pockets by cheating both them and HMRC out of rightful earnings.In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we’re joined by James Poyser, InniAccounts CEO and founder of OffPayroll.org, to discuss the role that umbrella companies play in the IT industry, and why regulation is needed to stop unscrupulous umbrellas from dipping their hands into the cookie jar.For more information on these topics, check out https://bit.ly/ITPP-umbrella.

We all know how drastically COVID has up-ended normal working practices. Organisations had to radically rethink their strategies around digital business, remote working and much more. But after 18 months of breakneck digital transformation, what happens now?In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we’re looking at whether organisations should continue building on the efforts of the last year, or whether it’s time to step back and take a break from digital transformation.To learn more, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-stagnate.

In the modern world, digital skills are absolutely essential, but if you don’t have access to technology, developing those skills is easier said than done. We’ve covered the UK’s growing digital divide in previous episodes, but this week, we’re looking at how one MSP is partnering with London-based charity CC Foundation to help close this gap by providing young people with access to digital devices, mentoring and apprenticeship opportunities.This week, Totality Services co-founder Luis Navarro talks to us about his work with the charity, why he’s so passionate about the role of young people in the modern IT industry, and how organisations can help open the eyes of more kids to the possibilities of a career in tech.For more information on this subject, head over to https://bit.ly/ITPP-libraries.

The healthcare sector is under a great deal of pressure right now, but while the pandemic has been a challenging time, it’s also led to an explosion in the adoption of digital healthcare tools. IT transformation is having a profound effect on the industry, as new technologies are revolutionising not just how care is delivered, but also how clinicians can track and even predict potential problems.In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we talk to Diana Kennedy, CTO of global healthcare provider Bupa, about how the organisation is using a combination of data analysis, modern cloud architectures and API ecosystems to deliver personalised healthcare to its customers, and what recent technological developments could mean for the future of the industry.Head over to https://bit.ly/ITPP-health to find out more about all the topics we've discussed on this week's show.

From talking to our friends to getting through our daily workload, there’s very little in modern life that doesn’t depend on the internet in some capacity. But while that’s all very well for most of us, a significant number of people in the UK have little or no access to the internet, and this can be a major problem for issues like skills, employment and more.This problem has not gone unnoticed, however, and efforts are underway to help close this element of the digital divide. One potential technology that could offer a solution is 5G, and in this week’s episode, we’re joined by Cisco’s UK CTO Chintan Patel to discuss how this new technology can be deployed to help address the issue, some of the potential pitfalls, and why government and the private sector need to work together to ensure that in the rush for digital transformation, no-one is left behind.Check out https://bit.ly/ITPP-5G2 for more information on these topics.

Cricket may have something of an old-fashioned reputation, with its genteel attire and somewhat languid pace, but just like every other sport, it’s in the process of being revolutionised by increasing use of digital technologies and data. Nowhere is this more evident than in Australia, where cricket remains an almost universal passion.In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we talk to Michael Osborne, general manager of technology for Cricket Australia, to find out how the organisation - in collaboration with technology partner HCL - is using data to support volunteers, develop players and connect with fans of the game.For more information on the topics discussed in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-cricket.

On receiving the news that their planned apprenticeship had fallen through, most teenagers would probably sulk for a bit, and then start looking for jobs in a pub or a supermarket. What they probably wouldn’t do is decide to go it alone, opening up their own network maintenance company to help people boost their broadband.Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Sam O’Rourke did. He joins us this week to talk about what inspired him to launch his own company, the difficulties of starting a new business amidst COVID-19, and why he thinks college is the wrong way to get into technology.To find out more about these topics, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-East.

An inclusive workplace isn’t just about supporting people of different genders, sexual orientations or races. Almost 20% of the UK has some form of disability, and it’s important to make sure that our offices, applications and services are set up in a way that is accessible to these people.There are many reasons why this is a good idea; aside from being a legal requirement and a moral imperative, it can bring usability and productivity improvements for all your staff and customers, not just those with impairments. Joining us this week to discuss accessibility tech, digital inclusion and the benefits that it can bring to your organisation is Robin Christopherson, head of digital inclusion at UK charity AbilityNet.You can get in touch with AbilityNet by calling 0800 04 876 42, or emailing [email protected]. For links to everything we've spoken about in this episode, check out https://bit.ly/ITPP-accessibility.

Data is taking on an increasingly important role within organisations around the world, but IT leaders have traditionally struggled to make staff truly understandable or engage with analytics and business intelligence. There are many options for how to approach this particular challenge, but for Nationwide’s business intelligence team, the answer lies in building a culture of self-service data consumption.This week, we’re talking to the leader of Nationwide’s business intelligence solutions Centre of Excellence, Richard Speigal, to find out how data literacy programmes and a federated model are helping the organisation’s staff to adopt data specialisations within their own teams - as well as how BI divisions can embed some of these practices into their own workflows.For more information on all these topics and more, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-BI.

Organisations all over the world are currently grappling with the challenges of how to adapt their culture to a new hybrid-first model. While many potential solutions have been posited, one organisation is taking a somewhat different approach; distributed HR platform Remote.com has turned to virtual reality technology to unite its employees, not just for meetings and brainstorms, but for social and team-building events.This week, we’re joined by Remote’s director of people, Nadia Vatalidis, to explain how the company’s using VR to bring its workforce together without having to rely on video calls. We discuss some of the challenges of rolling out VR collaboration across a business, as well as the advantages it has brought.For links to everything we've discussed in this week's show, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-VR2.

Cloud is no longer an emerging trend; it’s now been a fixture of business IT for more than a decade. But with the home working revolution firmly cementing SaaS and IaaS tools as a cornerstone of today’s IT strategy, what’s next for cloud computing?This week, we’re joined by Tim Hancock, head of cloud and managed service at UK tech consultancy BJSS, to discuss how the cloud is going to evolve over the coming years, and how prepared UK businesses are to take advantage of these new evolutions.For links to all the topics discussed in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-next.

When it launched Windows 10, Microsoft promised us the “last Windows”. Six years later, however, the company has reconsidered its position and brought out Windows 11. With its latest operating system promising a new look, an overhauled app store and new cloud integrations, we finally know what the new successor to Windows 10 has in store for users. Join us in this bonus episode of the IT Pro Podcast to discuss all things Windows 11, including key features, what it has to offer businesses, and whether even diehard Mac and Linux users might be tempted to give it a spin.Head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-Win11 for more information.

The growing field of AI development has brought us many wonderful advances, but one of the areas in which it’s becoming most visible is customer service. Chatbots have now become so ubiquitous that it’s often difficult to get through to a real person at all.However, while chatbots are faster and more convenient than a human operator in theory, the reality is often somewhat less than ideal. In this episode, we’re exploring why chatbots can be so frustrating to interact with, how to make them more useful, and the role they’ll play in future of customer experience.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-bots for links to all the topics we've mentioned in this week's episode.

For many years, the tech industry has been complaining about a shortage of technical skills in areas from cloud platforms to container architectures. But while the tech skills gap remains a persistent concern, there is another skills shortage that’s being overlooked by businesses.The UK is falling behind in its level of ‘human-centric’ business skills, according to a new report, including HR and communications. As organisations seek to outfit themselves for a largely uncharted world of hybrid working, we’re joined by Anthony Tattersall, head of EMEA at online training provider Coursera, to examine whether we’re in danger of putting too much focus on STEM skills, and how companies can avoid over-correcting.Check out http://bit.ly/ITPP-skill for links to everything we've discussed in this week's episode.

Hacking, ransomware attacks and other forms of cybercrime have become a fact of life in the modern age, but while the rates of these attacks have drastically increased, the ability of law enforcement to bring the perpetrators to justice seems to be lagging behind somewhat. Even when suspects are caught, it’s rare for cases to result in convictions.There are a number of factors that contribute to this, including the sophistication of modern anonymisation tools, police resource constraints and jurisdictional difficulties. In this week’s episode, we’re joined by Jake Moore, ESET cyber security specialist and former digital forensic investigator, to discuss why this is such a problem, and how police can work with the security industry to help solve it.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-convict for more details about all the topics we've referenced in today's episode.

One of the most persistent goals in business IT over the past twenty years has been to reach the mythical nirvana of the ‘paperless office’ - a utopia in which paper-based workflows are ditched in favour of digitising documents and records. However, despite the continuing sophistication of scanning and digital document management technology, this goal remains elusive.But why does paper still hold sway over elements of modern business? This week, we’re looking at why the idea of a paperless office remains so attractive, the practical considerations holding it back, and the reasons why a truly paperless office is likely to remain a pipe dream.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-paper for more information on the topic in this episode.

Space exploration is currently in the midst of a renaissance, with more and more private companies and national governments launching test flights, satellites and probes. Just recently, scientists generated oxygen on Mars, and flew a remote helicopter over its surface. But what will these advances in space exploration mean for those of us stuck here on earth? The space race of the 60s led to many innovations that we still use today – including LASIK, cordless vacuums and even OpenStack – so what technology could the race for Mars bring us? This week, we’re joined by Paul Kostek, advisory systems engineer with Base2 Solutions and IEEE senior member, to find out what developments the future of space travel could bring us.For more details on the topics discussed in this episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-space.

For the past decade, we’ve been assured that biometric security is the future, and that soon we’ll be able to do away with traditional forms of identification and authentication in favour of using our faces, fingerprints and even voices. However, while biometric technology is certainly more common than it was in 2010, the promised revolution hasn’t quite materialised. We still have to rely on PINs and passwords for many of our transactions (both financial and otherwise) and biometric authentication is still largely limited to mobile devices. So what’s next for the technology? In this episode, we talk to Steven Furnell, senior IEEE member and professor of cyber security at the University of Nottingham, about where biometric security is going.For links to everything we've spoken about in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-biometrics.

More and more employees now use their own personal devices for work, and 2020 saw a particular spike in this behaviour. But what many people don’t know is that your employer is legally entitled to monitor your activity on any device that you use to do your job.This raises a number of thorny issues, such as where the line is between security and surveillance, and whether it’s a violation of employee’s privacy to keep tabs on what they’re doing with their phone or PC. In this week’s episode, we speak to Kevin Curran, senior IEEE member and professor of cybersecurity at Ulster University, to get his take on these issues, as well as just how much safety this approach offers.To learn more about these topics, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-spy.

The pandemic has forced all of us online in ways we haven’t been previously, and that applies to hackers and cyber criminals just as much as it does to regular people. Over the past year, threat actors have adjusted their tactics in order to exploit our new patterns of behaviour, which makes defenders’ jobs all the more difficult. In this week’s IT Pro Podcast, we talk to James Bynoe, head of information security at eBay Classifieds Group, to find out how he’s protecting his organisation’s sizeable network of staff and customers against these evolving threats.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-different for links to more information.

After a year of forced remote working, lockdown restrictions are finally starting to ease, and organisations are starting to plan their return to the office. But once physical workspaces reopen, will we even want to go back - or has the last year given us a taste for the benefits of working from home?In this episode, we speak to IT Pro staff writer Sabina Weston to discuss our experiences of remote working, the impact of generational differences on attitudes to office culture, and whether or not we’re looking forward to being back in the office. For more information on all of the topics covered in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-office.

Silicon Valley’s community of leaders are frequently hailed as visionaries, and while it’s hard to argue with the fact that the innovation’s they’ve produced have changed the world, the qualities that make them so unique aren’t always positive ones.In the first episode, we examined some of the better aspects of Silicon Valley CEOs, but this week, we take a look at the negative elements of the common Silicon Valley CEO mindset. We also discuss the key learnings that CEOs and business leaders can take away from their Silicon Valley counterparts.To find out more about all of the topics covered in this week's episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-CEO2.

Whatever your thoughts on the products that come out of Silicon Valley, it’s hard to argue with its impact. The region is frequently hailed as a cradle of innovation, and the companies within it are frequently set the agenda for the rest of the world’s technological development. But it’s often said a company is nothing without a leader, so what is it that makes the CEOs of these organisations so successful?In the first episode of this two-part special, we’ll be talking about the qualities that make a good Silicon Valley CEO, looking at some of the best-known figures within its history and digging into what made them unique. If you want to hear more, tune in next week, where we’ll be examining some of the less positive aspects of Silicon Valley leadership, as well as discussing what the business community can learn from Silicon Valley’s examples – both good and bad.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-CEO1 for more information on everything we've spoken about in today's show.

Over the course of its 110-year history, IBM has been at the cutting edge of a number of advancements, including inventing mainframes, kick-starting the PC revolution and birthing the first AI to beat humans in chess. It’s a storied history, but what does the company do these days?The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot. In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we look at how IBM’s various divisions work together, what its priorities are over the next few years, and why it should bring back its company songs.For more details on everything we've spoken about, visit http://bit.ly/ITPP-IBM.

Data collection has become a social and political hot potato in recent years, with social networks and tech providers under fire for aggressive data harvesting tactics. However, not all data collection is based on mining people’s information. In fact, some of the most useful datasets companies can use to feed their decision making has nothing to do with individuals, and are publicly available online.In this IT Pro Podcast Special Edition, we talk to Or Lenchner, CEO of web data collection platform Bright Data, to explore how companies can do better than just collecting personal details, why ethical considerations still need to be taken into account for any data-gathering operation, and the advantages that looking at the right kinds of data can bring.

Ask any tech company, and they’ll tell you that diversity is a major priority for them. Nevertheless, when it comes to technical teams, there are still many women who find themselves becoming the first female employee to join a division full of men. This week, we’re speaking to Cloudera senior solutions engineer Ana Gillan about her experience as the first woman in Europe to join one of the company’s technical teams. We discuss what it’s like to be a trailblazer, the importance of self-confidence, and why ping-pong tables and free beer may actually be hurting your company’s diversity efforts.To learn more about this topic and many more, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-WIT.

When you stop to think about it, satellite TV is an astonishing technical achievement - a communications relay in orbit around the planet which allows us to beam live footage from across the world directly into our homes. While this is a staggering accomplishment, however, there’s more to running a satellite television network than the satellites themselves.In this week’s episode, we sit down with Peter Simpson, CTO of UK satellite network Freesat, to discuss the challenges involved, how to balance the technical requirements of broadcast TV and on-demand streaming, and why data is so essential for the continued success of the industry.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-Telly for more information on all the topics we've spoken about in this week's episode.

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology.” From Robocop to the Six Million Dollar Man, popular fiction has fantasised for years about the potential possibilities of augmenting human capabilities with technology to make us faster, stronger and more intelligent. Recent improvements in fields like robotics, prosthetics and artificial intelligence have brought that dream closer than ever to being a reality - but what does human augmentation really mean? Where do we draw the line between tools and augmentations? And what function - if any - can they serve in a practical business context? In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we look at the emerging field of augmentation tech, the biohacking and transhumanist subcultures, and how close we really are to brain chips and bionic eyeballs.For more information on all the topics we've spoken about, check out http://bit.ly/ITPP-Human.

The tech skills gap is something that gets brought up again and again, as organisations lament their struggles to find talented developers, engineers and security professionals. The problem, so they claim, is that there just aren’t enough potential employees in the industry to meet demand for these positions.But are companies struggling to fill roles because there aren’t enough qualified candidates, or does the real reason have more to do with hiring practises, company culture and attitudes towards certifications? This week, we’re taking a look at the supposed causes of the skills gap, and why companies are thinking about tech skills in the wrong way. To find out more about this and other issues, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-skills.

Floppy disks. Fax machines. Cassette tapes. All are commonly thought of as obsolete technology, but are they really that outdated, or have their applications and use-cases simply become more niche? In this episode, we take a look at the concept of obsolescence, asking what truly qualifies a technology as being past its sell-by date and exploring why some of the oldest technology out there still has a place in modern business.For more information about the topics in this week's episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-obsolete.

Software is eating the world, and the developers who build it have been called ‘the new kingmakers’ – but creating a truly engaged dev team is about much more than just finding people who are able to hammer out code. The best development organisations are made up of brilliant, passionate individuals for whom programming isn’t just a job, but a craft.In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we’re joined by Eben Upton, founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, to discuss whether old devs can learn new tricks, how Raspberry Pi’s development team has grown beyond his expectations, and why the best developers are the ones that make your decisions for you. For more insight into everything we've spoken about in this episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-craft.

For the past several years, advances in fields such as 5G, IoT, autonomous vehicles and AI processing have promised to unlock major new innovations for civic planning and public sector management. Technology vendors and local governments alike have laid out visions for glittering, high-tech utopias where next-generation systems manage everything from traffic flow to collecting the bins.For the past year, however, COVID has reduced cities up and down the country to veritable ghost towns, stripped of their usual hustle and bustle. In a post-pandemic world, can the same ideas be turned to making COVID-safe cities, or is the dream of the smart city no longer feasible? This week we’re joined by staff writer Keumars Afifi-Sabet to talk about the future of smart cities.For more information on the topics covered in this week's episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-dream.

On 31 December 2020, the UK’s Brexit transition period came to a close, taking us firmly out of the EU. Many issues have been raised over the flow of goods between Britain and its former partners, but the flow of data is a different matter altogether. Data has become an intrinsic part of modern business and with previous rules on international data transfers now at risk of irrelevancy, many organisations are considering how they can adjust their data practises to avoid falling foul of regulators.With many elements of international data law still up in the air pending various legal cases and policy decisions, we’re joined by Bart Willemsen, VP at Gartner specialising in privacy, to discuss the current regulatory environment and how businesses can prepare themselves for any changes that might be on the way.For more information on everything we're spoken about in this episode, head over to http://bit.ly/ITPP-Transfer.

Healthcare has always been a vital industry, but for obvious reasons, it’s more important now than it’s ever been. Hospitals are being faced with an environment in which they must do all they can to limit physical contact, and technology is playing a key role in making that possible. On top of the COVID-19 crisis, however, healthcare organisations still have to grapple with everyday IT challenges like improving operational efficiency and maintaining their security.To discuss these issues, and how the healthcare sector is using technology to tackle them, we’re joined this week by Craig York, CTO on Milton Keynes University Hospital Foundation Trust, and member of the IT Pro Panel.For more information, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-healthcare.

Migrating to a new technology is always challenging, but it's even more daunting when your estate includes 2,000 engineers, 10,000 applications and 50 million lines of code. That was the challenge faced by FinTech powerhouse Bloomberg when it made the transition from JavaScript to TypeScript, but with the migration process now well underway, the organisation is reaping big benefits in the hygiene and maintainability of its codebase.This week, we're joined by Thomas Chetwin, the co-chair of Bloomberg's JavaScript guild, to learn more about why the company made the switch, the challenges it faced during the process and why everyone should be using TypeScript.To find out more, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-TypeScript.

Of all the sectors impacted by the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the air travel industry has been among the hardest hit. With international travel highly restricted and video conferences set to supplant a large amount of business meetings for the foreseeable future, the airline industry is having to re-assess its flight path.Rather than sitting on its hands, however, the industry has been using this downtime to spin up a number of digital transformation initiatives, in the hope that when it does re-emerge, its operations will be more efficient, more cost-effective and more environmentally friendly. Joining us this week to discuss the sector’s plans is Pascal Buchner, CIO of the International Air Transport Association.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-Air for more information on everything we've spoken about in this episode.

For those of us who don’t get excited over teraflops and motherboard specifications, hardware is just something that we use to get our jobs done, and up until last year, most of us probably didn’t think too much about the devices we use at work. COVID-19, however, threw all of that into sharp relief, as mass remote working suddenly made having the right hardware setup a crucial enabler.Laptops, webcams and headsets were suddenly a hot commodity, and moving to a non-office environment exposed the cracks in many organisations’ client-device strategy. In this episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we take a look at how we use devices, the impact of the pandemic, and what we’ve learned about our own hardware preferences.Head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-Hardware for links to everything we've spoken about in this episode.

The last 12 months have been something of a struggle, but with the strange and miserable year that was 2020 now behind us, it’s time to look forward at what 2021 has in store. As the dust settles and life begins to return to normal, we’re going to have to reckon with the ramifications of the momentous events 2020 brought, including the election of a new president, the continuation of remote working, and the effects of Brexit – whatever those may be.We’re sure to see some significant shifts throughout the IT world and 2021 is likely to hold a lot of upheaval. In this episode, we take a look at the year to come, make our predictions for what themes and trends it will bring, and share what we’re most looking forward to. To find out more about the topics we've spoken about in this episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-lookahead

It’s not overstating matters to say that this year has been the most eventful and unusual in the history of IT. As the COVID-19 pandemic developed and spread, cloud technology was thrust to the forefront, providing the infrastructure to allow business to continue while workers isolated themselves in their homes and, in many ways, saving the day.Aside from the pandemic and its manifold impacts, however, this year has been extremely eventful in other ways. We saw a flurry of high-profile corporate acquisitions, a series of government IT blunders and one of the most tumultuous US elections in living memory. In this special Christmas episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we take a look back over the year just gone and talk about what made it so eventful. For links to all of the stories we've spoken about in today's episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-lookback.

Silicon Valley has long been the US tech industry’s ‘shining city on a hill’, building a seemingly unassailable reputation as the heartland of IT innovation. In recent weeks, however, HPE and Oracle have become the latest in a growing list of companies to announce that they will be moving their official headquarters out of the valley and into Texas.But what does this mean for the west coast techno-utopia? Why are these companies suddenly getting cold feet, and will there be more to follow? In this episode, we look at the so-called Silicon Valley exodus, the possible reasons behind it, and whether Silicon Valley’s glory days are soon to be behind it.For more information on all the topics we've talked about in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-sunset.

The internet has been one of the most revolutionary technologies of our age, and most agree that the transformation it’s brought to our society has been beneficial. Social media – one of the more recent arrivals on the scene – has also generally been a good thing, allowing us to connect with friends and family across the world, find people who have similar interests to us, and rapidly share jokes, memes and information.This latter element, however, has slowly turned from a benefit into a problem. Disinformation and what might be termed “fake news” is seeping in everywhere, making it difficult to know what and who to believe.In this week’s episode of the IT Pro Podcast, we speak to Andy Patel, a researcher with cyber security firm F-Secure, about what disinformation is, how it spreads and the negative effects it could have on businesses.To learn more about all of the topics we've discussed this week, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-disinfo.

Data can be a huge enabler of transformation and efficiency for every sector, and healthcare is no different. However, there can be some significant challenges when it comes to implementing a complete data strategy when it comes to health and medicine, particularly within the framework of the NHS.This is why the Bradford Institute for Health Research established the Connected Yorkshire programme, in an effort to create a data-sharing platform to speed up research and improve community health throughout the region. This week, we're joined by Connected Yorkshire programme manager Kuldeep Sohal to find out more about Connected Yorkshire's work, the challenges involved with managing data at scale, and how a robust data strategy can help supercharge health and social care.To find out more about the topics we've discussed in this episode, head to https://bit.ly/ITPP-Connected.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on all of us, but one of the most drastic changes has been to business IT. Digital transformation and remote collaboration have been catapulted to the top of CIOs’ priority list, and companies have found themselves supporting scores of remote workers. But with a vaccine tantalisingly close to rollout, how will these trends evolve once it’s safe to go back to the office? Joining us this week to discuss the potential long-term impact of COVID on the UK’s cloud market is Frank Jennings, commercial & cloud Lawyer at Wallace LLP.Check out https://bit.ly/ITPP-COVIDcloud for links to everything we've spoken about in today's show.

2020 has been a challenging year, to say the least; businesses around the world have had their plans upended, and been forced to enact dramatic shifts to home working and digital-first business models. However, there are valuable lessons that can be learned from the last six months, and with lockdowns set to continue, now is the perfect time for business leaders to examine how they can use these to better prepare for any uncertainty that the future might hold.In this IT Pro Podcast Special Edition, presented in association with O2, we’ll discuss the unexpected challenges that businesses have had to face over the last six months and look at how organisations can apply the principles of agility, flexibility and digital thinking that have seen them through the current crisis to their forward planning.