Classic episode: Can better connectivity boost rural business?
This episode was first published on 10 January 2025.Anyone who works outside of a major city, or has ever tried to get work done while on a trip to a more rural location, knows that rural connectivity can be patchy. Despite the UK’s high population density and relative lack of difficult terrain, rural connectivity remains an uneven picture. Many rural businesses are still struggling to receive fiber optic cables, let alone leverage 5G signals to keep up with the demands of modern business.Is UK connectivity improving? And how far have we still got to go?In this episode, Jane and Rory speak to David Happy, non-executive director at JET Connectivity and non-executive chairman for transport at Wales Fiber, and Colin Wood, innovation lead at Dorset Council, to better understand the state of rural connectivity in the UK.Read more:UK rural businesses set for broadband improvementsInvest 2035: the UK's modern industrial strategyUK gov has ramped up broadband roll-outs to tackle 'hard-to-reach' areas in 2023BT and OneWeb succeed in "game changer" satellite connection trialThe battle for space broadband dominance is hotting upUK government to run Starlink trials in Snowdonia, Lake District
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Inside a cloud outage
The end of October was punctuated with a series of major cloud outages, first at AWS and then at Microsoft, bringing a wide range of websites and business applications offline.In the previous episode, we spoke about this in a reactive sense – the immediate customers impacted and the likely causes.But it's also important to break the problem down at a strategic and technical level. Just how do outages at this scale occur – and what’s it like as an insider, fighting to bring services back online?In this episode Rory speaks to James Kretchmar, SVP & CTO of the cloud technology division at Akamai Technologies, to get an insider’s perspective on cloud outages and how businesses can navigate these incidents.Read more:Amazon Web Services outage live: Hundreds of apps including Slack, mobile carriers, banking services downThe AWS outage brought much of the web to its knees: Here's how it happened, who it affected, and how much it might costThe Microsoft Azure outage explained: What happened, who was impacted, and what can we learn from it?Australia internet banking outage blamed on DDoS mitigation serviceWhy the CrowdStrike outage was a wakeup call for developer teams
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SPECIAL EDITION: The trillion dollar services opportunity
The global services market is expected to grow at 8% compound annual growth between now and 2028, representing a $1.7 trillion opportunity.But partners looking to seize on this opportunity face a slew of challenges. Establishing a services offering for customers demanding the scale of the cloud and complex technologies like AI is difficult without the right service provider, for example.Whether you're already offering cutting edge IT services or just scaling within your region, it's a huge benefit to get a helping hand with pre-sales, managed services, and ongoing support.What does this look like in practice, and who can partners turn to? In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association with TD Synnex, Jane and Rory speak to Stephen Ennis, VP of Technology Acceleration at TD Synnex.
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October rundown: AWS chaos and supercomputers surging
It’s Halloween! And what better way to mark the day than discuss one of the biggest horror stories of October?We are of course referring to the AWS outage, which on 20 October took down some incredibly notable websites and caused global disruption. It’s the latest, most severe example of why data centers are considered critical infrastructure – and acts as a stark reminder to IT administrators that even big tech can fall foul of technical errors.Of course, October hasn’t just been defined by negative stories. At the end of the month, the US Department of Energy has revealed a slew of supercomputer announcements. What are they for, and when can they be expected to be up and running?In this episode, Jane and Rory once again welcome Ross Kelly, ITPro’s news and analysis editor, to the show to discuss the biggest developments of the month.
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Has business hardware peaked?
Business software is evolving faster than ever before, with advancements such as AI spurring developers to introduce new ways of working and interacting with the software layer.But by and large, business hardware has stayed much the same for the past decade. With a few notable exceptions, the laptops, desktops, and portables we use for work today are simply evolved versions of what we were using in 2015.Is this set to change? And what could the hardware of the future look like?In this episode Rory speaks to Bobby Hellard, ITPro’s reviews editor, to explore some of the latest advances in business hardware and ask – is this the best it gets?Read more:The Huawei MateBook Fold Ultimate Edition is a unique take on what it means to be a laptop – but good luck getting it outside of ChinaE-ink is on-trend and I'm all for itReMarkable Paper Pro review: The e-ink color tablet that lets you thinkThe ReMarkable Paper Pro Move gives you e-ink in a pocketable package – but it's not without faultSupernote A5 X2 Manta review: A premium e-ink tablet that's still somewhat SpartanThe Amazon Kindle Scribe is no bullet journal – it is, in fact, a fairly basic E Ink tablet
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.
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