The ITPro Podcast
The ITPro Podcast is a weekly show for technology professionals and business leaders. Each week hosts Rory Bathgate and Jane McCallion are joined by an expert guest to take a deep dive into the most important issues for the IT community. New episodes premiere every Friday. Visit itpro.com/uk/the-it-pro-podcast for more information, or follow ITPro on LinkedIn for regular updates.
10
February rundown: SaaS-pocalypse now?
<p>February is the shortest month, but you wouldn’t know it from the sheer amount of news that’s broken in just the past 26 days.</p><p>Amid growing fears of AI stealing jobs, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has claimed that firms are simply using the technology as an excuse for mass layoffs. Earlier this month, a series of Anthropic releases drove stocks down at a range of companies – all tied to fears that the SaaS model might be on its way out.</p><p>Also this month, Pure Storage has rebranded as Everpure – what’s behind this decision and...
Going all-in on digital sovereignty
<p>Digital sovereignty has quietly become one of the most urgent requirements in the tech sector. Once a matter for policy debate, this is now a critical business issue and as much a matter of resilience as one of compliance.</p><p>Indeed while we’ve spoken about the need for digital sovereignty before, recent geopolitical developments have cast the debate in far starker light. With European governments and businesses leaning heavily into digital sovereignty, it’s clear there’s an emerging race to secure critical workloads.</p><p>Just how important will digital sovereignty be in 2026?</p><p>In this e...
SPECIAL EDITION: Redefining risk management
<p>Risk management is a constant point of concern in the modern enterprise, with cybersecurity threats, compliance pressures, and financial leaps of faith all piling pressure on the teams who are forced to manage them. </p><p>But risk management can’t always be about bailing out the sinking ship. Sooner or later, businesses need to integrate their risk management systems and connect teams together via a centralized framework.</p><p>What are the benefits of overhauling risk management in this manner? And how can it be achieved?</p><p>In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association wi...
Classic episode: We need to talk about operational technology
<p>This episode was first published on 18 July 2025.</p><p>Cyber attacks can feel a layer detached from the real world. Yes, businesses frequently see IP stolen, get frozen out of systems, or have data wiped by malicious actors. But if you haven’t got your finger on the pulse, cyber attacks can also fail to register in your day to day.</p><p>But there are instances where cyber attacks come crashing into the lives of everyday people, and become impossible to ignore: when attackers go after critical infrastructure and operational technology. Breaches and malware attacks at power and wa...
The agentic identity crisis
<p>Identity controls in the enterprise have only become more complicated over the last few years.</p><p>Initially, the focus was on IoT devices, which were exploding in the enterprise environment. But recent years have brought an onslaught of AI tools and AI agents, all of which come with security and governance complications.</p><p>How can business leaders get a grip on the adoption of AI agents, particularly as these tools begin to communicate with one another and with third-party enterprise tools?</p><p>In this episode, Rory speaks to Shiven Ramji, president, Auth0 at Okta, to discuss...
January rundown: Amazon layoffs and the return of XPS
<p>January is supposed to be a month full of new starts and potential, in which we try to embrace resolutions or set out our plans for the year ahead.</p><p>But in the tech sector, it’s become something of an ominous month – the start of layoff season. January 2026 has been no different, with Amazon announcing 16,000 jobs cut in a plan that could see up to 30,000 cut by the end of May according to Reuters.</p><p>Earlier in the month, Dell made waves at CES 2026 with the news that it’s reviving the XPS laptop line, just one ye...
SPECIAL EDITION: Building a secure payments strategy
<p>Every business wants its payments to process smoothly. Simply put, if you’re introducing friction into your payment processes, you’re making it harder to drive revenue and dissuading users from becoming return customers.</p><p>One sector that knows this better than most is iGaming, which has to meet the demands of users around the world including mobile payments, virtual wallets, and cross-border social gaming payouts.</p><p>Delivering all this in near real-time, with adequate security and reliable infrastructure, is no small feat. How are these payment systems possible?</p><p>In this special edition of the ITPr...
SPECIAL EDITION: Mitigating bad bots
<p>One of the major challenges of today’s environments is the rising tide of bots, with generative AI driving a new era of the technology.</p><p>Bots have been a part of the internet since at least the 1990s but recent technological advancements have swollen their number exponentially. Some of these net dwellers are benign, others are malicious, and some sit somewhere in between. </p><p>But no matter what category they fall into, they can all cause problems for businesses. How much of an issue is this for businesses and what can they do to mitigate it? </p>...
Are hyperscalers backing out of Net Zero?
<p>The environmental impact of AI is a growing area of study and one that businesses must begin to seriously consider.</p><p>When you power a data center with coal, it’s obvious that it’s having a detrimental impact on the environment. But is a ‘green’ data center really green? And to what extent might the benefits of AI outweigh potential environmental negatives?</p><p>In this episode, Jane and Rory discuss the shifting sustainability targets of the world’s public cloud giants, as caused by AI, and what they’re doing to get back on track.</p><p>Read more...
CES 2026: The year of AI PCs?
<p>The tech sector started this year with a bang at CES 2026, the annual event that brings together over 140,000 attendees to share the latest innovations in consumer and business technology.</p><p>Unsurprisingly, at this year’s event AI was a primary focus – with more details on Nvidia and AMD’s latest hardware, alongside AI PC innovations by brands like Lenovo.</p><p>Alongside these headlines, however, we also saw a return to form by companies such as Dell, with the resurrection of the XPS laptop range.</p><p>What did we learn from CES about what to expect in busine...
