The ITPro Podcast

AI tools like copilots, chatbots, and agents have rapidly taken root in the workplace in the years since ChatGPT brought the technology into the mainstream. The initial promise was that AI would lighten the load and help workers carry out tasks without having to learn new skills. In reality, that’s not quite what happened.
Barriers to adoption have led to a growing AI skills gap in companies driven not by a lack of understanding of how to use the technology, but by a lack of understanding of how the technology works and what its weaknesses are.
On this week’s episode, Jane and Ross are joined by Greg Hanson, VP and head of EMEA North at Informatica from Salesforce, to discuss the impact this can have on companies and whether there is a straightforward way to overcome it.
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For many companies, AI is now a fact of life. A growing number of those that were running pilots have now moved to production, bringing agents and other forms of generative AI into force in their organizations.
Perhaps more exciting still, these projects are – finally – starting to demonstrate ROI.
In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association with SAP, Jane is joined by guest James Bates, head of industry and customer advisory at SAP UK and Ireland, to talk about AI investment, the importance of workforce skills, and how organizations can successfully scale their implementations.
Highlights
“AI largely to this point has been fantastic in terms of productivity use cases ... but if you think about the prospect of agentic AI and its ability to transform end-to-end processes, where actually you'll have agents really driving actions – albeit still orchestrated, I would stress, by people and people very much at the center of that decision-making kind of process – you’re right, there is definitely a lot of excitement about it.”
“If you think about the sorts of processes and data that SAP and SAP's customers are dealing with … nearly right isn't good enough in our world. Actually, it has to be 100% right, which is interesting if you start thinking about the nature of probabilistic systems versus deterministic. And of course, large language models are probabilistic, and we're having to try and understand how we solve some of those challenges when it comes to the nature of data within an SAP kind of landscape.”
“If we think about where customers are investing and working and deploying capabilities today, it's also in building some of the foundations around AI. So things like data, processes, skills, governance frameworks. And I often think actually that the organizations and customers that will win in the long term are those that are focused on building those initial foundations.”
There’s still time to register for SAP NOW AI Tour UKI – click here to join SAP in Birmingham.
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It’s been a summer of change in the UK. With Andy Burnham taking up residence in 10 Downing Street, the new prime minister has championed the government’s focus on a more decentralized approach to governing the UK – including a ‘Number 10 North’ in Manchester.
With a proposed shift of power away from London toward other regions, could this approach work in the UK tech sector?
In this week’s episode, we speak to Ben Bilsland, Head of Technology Industry at RSM UK, about the UK’s technology hubs and how a more regional focus could help the UK grow its technology sector.
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As we move further into autumn, conferences start to come thick and fast. This week was NetApp's annual Insight event, live from Las Vegas, where there was another chance to hear more about how smart storage, AI factories, and data readiness can empower enterprises.
However, it’s been a challenging year for NetApp, with growing concern over the ever-rising cost of hardware and the rapid expansion of agentic AI pulling safety concerns into focus.
ITPro’s news and analysis editor, Ross Kelly, joined the pod live from an unusually rainy Las Vegas to talk through NetApp’s announcements. NetApp Novus has AI factory bottlenecks in the crosshairs
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The data center has always been the backbone of enterprise operations, but in the age of AI, modern infrastructure has to evolve. And there are many challenges for enterprises when it comes to their legacy infrastructure and what they need to consider for a successful refresh.
In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, Bobby Hellard talks with Dell Technologies senior director of global speciality sales, KC Funk on the evolution of the modern data center.
From storage layers and AI readiness to security and the current threats data centers should prepare for, KC explains how Dell solutions like PowerStore can help.
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