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
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Dreamforce 2025: What's an agentic OS?
San Francisco has played host this week to one of the biggest tech conferences of the year, Salesforce Dreamforce. The stalwart event has seamlessly transformed from being all about cloud for the best part of 20 years to being heavily AI focused in the past two years.What can we learn from the pronouncements – and contradictions – being delivered on stage this year?In this episode Jane speaks to Rory, who has been on the ground this week reporting from Salesforce Dreamforce 2025.Highlights"This year is part two of the hard turn into AI agents. Ross wrote a great piece last year on how Agentforce is kind of intended to be Salesforce's Chat GPT moment. So this is Salesforce's dedicated AI agents platform – platform kind of undersells how extensive it is. It's not just like a marketplace for agents, for example. It's kind of a marketplace, slash fabric, slash agent builder.""Slack is more and more becoming the front end for interacting with your Salesforce data. So CRM data from Salesforce will now be directly accessible in Slack. You can pull data through from Tableau, from HR, IT from sales, by just invoking it through agents"Footnotes"Do not sacrifice your entry-level jobs" says UK Salesforce CEOSlack is now the key to Salesforce's agentic AI plansMarc Benioff is bullish about Salesforce's agentic AI leadSalesforce just launched a new catch-all platform to build enterprise AI agents
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Are AI PCs becoming the norm?
The rise in popularity of generative AI has been centered largely around cloud AI, with popular chatbots and models accessed via API or dedicated websites. But with the right hardware, AI models can also be run on-device – and PC manufacturers are rushing to fill this niche.AI PCs are quickly becoming the norm for new product lineups, with specialized hardware to run certain AI processes on-device, alongside integrated AI assistant software.But what are the main benefits of this technology to businesses – and how far can we expect AI to transform the PC?In this episode, Jane and Rory are joined by Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner, to explore the impact of AI on PCs and how it’s already being deployed at the edge.What is an NPU and what can they do for your business?Dell says Windows 11 migration is a prime opportunity to overhaul ageing PC fleets – and AI devices are in the spotlightAI PCs will ‘become the norm’ by 2029 as enterprise and consumer demand surgesAI PCs are becoming a no-brainer for IT decision makersAI PCs are paying dividends for HP as firm reports sales surge“It’s almost mind boggling” – Dell is betting big on AI PCs, but customers are less enthusiastic
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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