The ITPro Podcast

One of the most commonly-touted benefits of AI is its ability to cut down toil and give workers more time to focus on valuable tasks.
Few professionals could arguably benefit from this more than teachers, who spend many of their evenings and weekend hours completing paperwork and carrying out marking.
How is AI already being used to free up time for teachers, and what can we learn from exemplar organizations leading the way on this path?
In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association with AWS, Jane and Rory are joined by Scott Hayden, head of teaching, learning and digital at Basingstoke College of Technology, to explore how the college has deployed AI to support its teaching staff.
Read more:
Basingstoke College of Technology
Perform Partners
Helping BCoT Secure $25K Credits to Accelerate AI Growth: How OGVA Enables Innovation in Further Education

Fraud has evolved leaps and bounds in the past few years, with new technology and more digitally-native businesses than ever providing the ideal attack surface for fraudsters.
As attackers look to lure in business professionals with new tech such as deepfakes and AI scams, enterprise cybersecurity teams and cybersecurity vendors are faced with the task of combatting cyber fraud more effectively.
How can we combat this new frontier of cyber fraud?
In this episode, Jane is joined by Paul Weathersby, chief product officer, Identity, Fraud & Financial Crime Compliance at Experian, to explore the increasing sophistication of cyber crime and fraud campaigns.

Women are still greatly underrepresented in STEM. The latest figures from the Women Tech Network show women only make up around 26-27% of the STEM workforce and the organization estimates that at the current rate of change, it will be nearly 123 years before the economic gender gap is closed.
It’s International Women’s Day 2026 – and the rate of women hired in tech continues to lag far behind that of men. As hiring teams turn to AI tools to automatically field candidates, we’re at something of a crossroads – do we fix the bias inherent in hiring? Or simply replicate it at scale with similarly biased AI tools?
In this episode, Jane are Rory are joined by Clare Hickie, EMEA CTO at Workday, to discuss how businesses can engage in bias-free talent acquisition in the age of AI.

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.
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.
Also this month, Pure Storage has rebranded as Everpure – what’s behind this decision and what does it say about the company’s strategy going forward?
In this episode, Jane and Rory welcome back Ross Kelly, ITPro’s news and analysis editor, to explore some of February’s biggest stories.
Read more:
Sam Altman just said what everyone is thinking about AI layoffs
Why Anthropic sent software stocks into freefall
Anthropic says Claude Code can help streamline 'cost-prohibitive' COBOL modernization, but IBM says it's not that simple
What might cause the 'AI bubble' to burst – and what impact would that have on the business world?
Pure Storage snaps up 1touch in data management pivot

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.
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.
Just how important will digital sovereignty be in 2026?
In this episode, Jane and Rory discuss all things digital sovereignty – how it’s being realized, the scale of the transformation, and how we could see things play out.
Read more:
Sovereign infrastructure spend to triple in Europe as fifth of workloads stay local
What is a sovereign cloud?
Sovereign cloud services are now the “bare minimum” expected by customers, and hyperscalers are scrambling to meet demand
What the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud means for enterprises
What the new Microsoft Sovereign Cloud push means for European customers
CIOs wrestle with Europe's new digital sovereignty approach
Can the UK achieve AI sovereignty?