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 China
• E-ink is on-trend and I'm all for it
• ReMarkable Paper Pro review: The e-ink color tablet that lets you think
• The ReMarkable Paper Pro Move gives you e-ink in a pocketable package – but it's not without fault
• Supernote A5 X2 Manta review: A premium e-ink tablet that's still somewhat Spartan
• The Amazon Kindle Scribe is no bullet journal – it is, in fact, a fairly basic E Ink tablet

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.

"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 CEO
• Slack is now the key to Salesforce's agentic AI plans
• Marc Benioff is bullish about Salesforce's agentic AI lead
• Salesforce just launched a new catch-all platform to build enterprise AI agents

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 spotlight
• AI PCs will ‘become the norm’ by 2029 as enterprise and consumer demand surges
• AI PCs are becoming a no-brainer for IT decision makers
• AI 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

As developers have embraced AI to a greater degree, many have hailed the rise of so called vibe coding, in which broad prompts are given to AI models to produce refined code that's actionable and in many cases deployable.

But vibe coding also comes with risks, because by its very nature it's more of a hands-off activity. It decreases the degree to which developers can explain what their code is doing, and may lead to them overlooking vulnerabilities.

How serious is this risk, and what are the potential benefits of vibe coding in the future?

In this episode, Rory speaks to Simon Black, director of evangelism at Mendix, to unpack what vibe coding is and why it comes with such high risks.

In modern businesses, your data is your value. This is not a new concept, but it can be a struggle to understand where to start when it comes to harnessing your data effectively.

Unstructured data, which can be generated in massive quantities before it ever produces value, can be especially difficult to handle. But if this task is completed correctly, businesses can future-proof their operations and lay the groundwork for future AI deployments.

What solutions are available to turn unstructured data into machine-readable content? And how does this feed into implementing in-demand tools such as AI agents?

In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association with Hyland, Rory and John explore how businesses can harness their structured and unstructured data to generate value and enable AI tools.

Read more:

• Structured vs unstructured data management
• A quarter of firms still don’t have a formal data strategy – and it’s hampering AI adoption
• Data quality worries are holding back AI adoption among manufacturers, despite optimism over its growth potential
• AI is causing a data storage crisis for enterprises

The UK has immense AI potential, according to some of the biggest names in tech, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang having described the region as being in a “Goldilocks circumstance” due to its strong AI ecosystem and rich academic history.

This month, the US tech ecosystem made its first significant contribution to recognizing this reality with tens of billions invested in the UK ecosystem.

Will it pay off? And what does this investment mean in practical terms?

In this episode, Rory welcomes back Ross Kelly, ITPro’s news and analysis editor, to unpack this bumper investment in the UK tech ecosystem.

Read more:

• Google opens doors on UK data center ahead of Trump visit
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says UK ties are 'stronger than ever' as tech giant pledges $30bn investment
• UK to host largest European GPU cluster under £11 billion Nvidia investment plans
• Is the ‘British firm’ at the heart of Britain’s AI plans actually British?
• UK is going to be ‘AI superpower’, says Nvidia boss as he invests £500m
• ‘This is the largest AI ecosystem in the world without its own infrastructure’: Jensen Huang thinks the UK has immense AI potential – but it still has a lot of work to do

Identity management in security has been a difficult issue for many years, but the arrival of AI and AI agents has only complicated this picture. 

In addition to human and machine identities, cybersecurity professionals now have to handle potentially 1000s of AI agent identities across MCP and API endpoints. 

How can businesses handle all of these complications while maintaining their cybersecurity?

In this episode, Rory speaks to Art Gilliland, CEO of cybersecurity firm Delinea, to discuss the thorny issue of identity attacks, and how IT leaders can get a grip on digital identities.

Artificial intelligence has made data more useful and accessible to businesses than ever, but if businesses want to get the most from their data they have to get it in a fit state to use.

There’s a significant disconnect between IT specialists, CEOs, and other parts of the business when it comes to understanding what this means and how ready they are, however. 

Research from Informatica found 69% of IT teams rate their data quality as excellent or very good, barely half of business leaders say the same at 51%. The same survey found 57% of business professionals and 30% of IT workers don’t know what it means for data to be ‘AI ready’.

In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, in association with Informatica, we explore what data excellence is, why it’s important to companies, and how they can achieve it.

The flow of data is core to businesses all around the world – how much can be transmitted, and at what speed, is a fundamental aspect of IT systems ranging from cloud computing to the frontier of AI models.

In data centers, the tech sector is focused on reducing latency, improving bandwidth, and reducing energy consumption to improve AI performance and lower operating costs. But achieving these goals by shifting about current technology can only go so far.

Increasingly, firms are looking to cutting-edge technologies and approach such as all-photonics networks, which use photons for all processes including data transfer and storage, rather than electronic components. How close are we to achieving this technology? And how could it benefit every business.

In this episode, Rory is joined Chris Wright, SVP global engineering and CTO at Red Hat, to discuss the potential benefits of all-photonics networks and how they could upend current network architecture.

Digital sovereignty is an issue that has been bubbling away in the background of IT for some time but doesn’t often see the limelight. In this episode of the ITPro Podcast, we’ve decided to change that.

From sovereign clouds to AI, Jane McCallion and Ross Kelly dig into what digital sovereignty is, how it’s being used, and its relationship with AI, cloud, and national data regulations.

“The World Economic Forum describes digital sovereignty as the ability to have control over your own digital destiny andI think that's a really great way of describing it. And when you look at how the EU has positioned itself in recent years, that certainly is the key focus there – it's all about … maintaining control.”

“You can't understate the impact of regulatory compliance in the EU – that's the huge driving factor, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Google Cloud, they wouldn't be bending over backwards if they didn't know the risks there. And for individual organizations as well as customers of these providers, they're the ones that are pushing for this because they're conscious of their compliance as well.”

• Sovereign cloud services are now the “bare minimum” expected by customers, and hyperscalers are scrambling to meet demand
• What the new Microsoft Sovereign Cloud push means for European customers
• AWS says only Europeans will run its European Sovereign Cloud service
• What is a sovereign cloud?
• SAP wants to take data sovereignty to the next level with new 'on-site' infrastructure options
• HPE launches exclusive sovereign cloud offering for the channel