The ITPro Podcast

This episode was first broadcast on 22 March 2024.

As technological innovations happen, it can be easy to forget that even the most complex systems rely on large networks of basic infrastructure to operate. At the most fundamental level, all tech products rely on effective data storage 

But this is easier said than done. Each byte of data has to be stored somewhere, on a rack, disk, tape, or flash device. As the world embraces h...

What do you do when you want to get your enterprise data into a usable format? And how can you make better use of the data you already use, through the likes of analytics, AI, and even quantum computing?

All these questions and more have been front and center at SAS Innovate 2025, the data and analytics veteran’s annual conference held in Orlando, Florida.

As the week has pressed on, what have we learned about SAS’ view of its place ...

RSAC Conference 2025 has been full on, with cybersecurity experts from all over the world descending on San Francisco to share trends, data, and announcements.

This year, ITPro has been providing both remote and on the ground coverage from the event, across talks covering topics such as AI security and threat actor methodology.

In this episode, Jane speaks to Rory about some of his RSAC coverage and key takeaways from the event.

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April has been a busy month for tech news – we recorded this episode with a week left in the month, but there’s already so much to discuss.

A major upset in the international database for tracking vulnerabilities had some in the cybersecurity field stunned – until a last minute U-turn.

Elsewhere, AWS is the latest hyperscaler to roll back on data center plans, but what does this mean for the market?

In this episode Jane and Rory speak...

We’ve spent the past few years discussing large language models, the huge AI models that power a lot of the generative AI tools that have dominated the headlines.

But small language models are also possible – and rapidly growing in popularity.

What benefits do these tiny AI models offer, and how much use will they get in the coming months and years, and how do they differ from other lightweight, ‘low latency’ models?

In this episode,...

Las Vegas has been taken over by Google Cloud this week, with Google Cloud Next 2025 in full flow.

There have already been a number of headline grabbing announcements: we've seen the launch of a powerful new AI accelerator chip by the name of Ironwood, huge updates to Google Cloud's security capabilities, and new agentic AI development kits for enterprises. But there's been much, much more on top.

In this episode, Ross Kelly, news a...

When something goes wrong with IT at work, chances are you’ll be asked to submit a service ticket. This is a tale as old as time – see a problem, submit a ticket, wait for the service desk to come to your help.

But all this could be set for change. Advances in technology have opened the door to software problems being detected and remediated automatically, while internal learning platforms could also provide employees with the infor...

The rule that your AI is only as good as your data is now well understood, with businesses all over the world looking to modernize their data sources and infrastructure to make the most of AI products and services. 

But something that can be easily lost in these discussions is consideration of the exact format your data exists in at rest. Unstructured data is especially important for AI and knowing where it fits into your AI st...

March is very nearly at an end and it’s been quite a month for diverging views in the industry.

Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft, has spoken out against the tech sector’s apparent fixation on achieving AGI while comparing the potential for AI to the rise of Excel spreadsheets in business. The Microsoft chief has turned his attention to the material benefits of AI, as we enter a crunch year for AI developers.

Elsewhere this month, UK t...

Computer systems that can autonomously work on menial tasks have been the promise of technologists – and science fiction authors – for decades. While we’ve dabbled with the likes of robotic process automation and machine learning in the past, the arrival of advanced AI software has put these lofty ambitions back on the table.

According to AI developers, new tools known as AI agents will free up workers as never before, with the abil...

How much has your company invested in AI? Are you finding it a revolutionary technology, or still waiting for the promised gains to materialize?

As businesses seek to unlock productivity gains from AI, investment in the technology has continued to rise. All across the world, firms are buying AI products, undergoing digital transformation in preparation, or even fine-tuning AI to suit their bespoke use cases.

But how much of this is g...

International Women’s Day is here, a time for all those who care about women’s equality to celebrate the achievements of women both contemporary and historical and to focus on gender equality in our society.

The tech sector still has a sizable gender divide, with only around one quarter of all tech roles held by women. Tech leaders need to enter into open dialogue over how to make tech careers more attractive to women and to empowe...

February is the shortest month of the year – but that hasn’t stopped this month from being packed full of dramatic tech news.

Microsoft has made waves with Majorana 1, a first of its kind quantum chip that the tech giant says could open the door to usable quantum computers in years, not decades as previously thought.

Elsewhere this month, Sam Altman made a series of public rebukes of Elon Musk, following an offer by a Musk-led consor...

The cybersecurity landscape gets more complicated every year, with emerging technologies such as AI and the shifting geopolitical landscape bringing extra chaos to any CISO’s desk.

Though automated defense systems are a welcome feather in cap for any company, it’s not just the good guys who have access to the latest tools. Off-the-shelf frameworks to launch attacks are becoming more common and businesses can’t rely on any single ser...

Years after first identifying the potential risks of AI systems, world leaders are having to balance concerns with an acknowledgment of the gains achievable through certain AI systems and nowhere is this more true than the EU.

The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris has seen a number of high-profile announcements made on EU AI investments, on both a continental and regional basis. But it’s also highlighted the distance th...

As the dust settles on DeepSeek, we’ve had the chance to see who walked away from the impact it had on the stock market unscathed.

Apple and Meta did not undergo the same rapid stock shocks as Nvidia, Microsoft, and others in the immediate aftermath of the DeepSeek R1 launch – the latter has actually seen a healthy surge in the past few weeks. 

Why is this? And who actually wins thanks to DeepSeek?

In this episode, Rory s...

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen, so the saying goes, and that is certainly true of the final week of January 2025 with the widespread impact of DeepSeek.

To say the Chinese large language model has caused an upset in the market would be an understatement. Within days of its release, it wiped more than a trillion dollars off the US stock market, and sent big tech into a public spiral.

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