The level to which firms are already using AI varies according to technological maturity, strategic focus, and on an industry by industry basis.

But what’s clear is that from the smallest to the largest businesses, the landscape is already shifting. We’ve spoken about AI agents on the podcast before – the promise of autonomous AI activity – but it’s only now that businesses are beginning to put more faith in these tools.

How is AI already being used to improve business processes? And what will progress in the sector look like?

In this episode, Rory speaks to Oliver Parker, VPAI GTM at Google Cloud, to explore some of the practical ways AI is changing organizations from startups to the enterprise.

Read more:

• The UK government is teaming up with Google Cloud to kill public sector legacy tech
• Google Cloud announces new data residency flexibility for UK firms, accelerator for regional startups
• Enterprises are worried about agentic AI security risks – Gartner says the answer is just adding more AI agents
• How effective are AI agents?
• IT leaders are less AI-ready than they were a year ago, says Cisco report

This episode was first broadcast on 20 September 2024.

When people talk about the environmental impacts of data centers, normally the discussion focuses on energy usage. It’s something we’ve talked about at several points this year already, with reference to growing efforts to house AI workloads in green data centers that run on renewable energy to reduce their carbon impact.

But while we can generate nearly limitless amounts of green energy, there is a decidedly finite amount of water in the world – and unfortunately, most data centers need vast amounts of fresh water to cool hardware. 

Without care, big tech could push already drought-stricken communities to breaking point.

In this episode, Jane and Rory unpack the growing problem of data center water use, how operators can tackle this, and how it will exacerbate environmental tensions in the near future.

Read more:

• Data center water consumption is spiraling out of control
• Google data centre soaks up a third of Oregon city's water supply
• What is a green data center and why are they attracting big investment?
• Data center waste energy to heat homes in 'UK-first' scheme
• OVHcloud just open sourced its data center liquid cooling system — here’s why
• AWS plans to be 'water positive' by 2030
• Microsoft lays out water-positive plans for next decade

If you’re looking to adopt AI right now, you’ll likely have heard the term ‘AI agents’. These systems can complete complex tasks autonomously, without user input.

But no doubt some of the audience will be thinking: “haven’t we heard this before?” Indeed, robotic process automation and software robots have been available since the turn of the century, completing multi-step, repetitive tasks for businesses without human oversight.

How have we evolved from robots to agents? And how can both be used by businesses to boost their productivity?

In this episode, in association with UiPath, Jane and Rory are joined by Edward Challis, head of AI strategy at UiPath, to discuss the foundational role robotic process automation has played in getting us to advances such as AI agents, and how both fit together in the modern enterprise.

June has been another busy month for IT and technology news. Whether it’s new naming conventions for cybercriminal groups, Britain’s big tech potential, and national security concerns over lost government devices, we’ve got a lot to unpick. 

ITPro’s news editor Ross Kelly and reviews editor Bobby Hellard step in for Jane and Rory this week to chew that fat on some of the biggest IT news stories of June.

AI reasoning models have emerged in the past year as a beacon of hope for large language models (LLMs), with AI developers such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic selling them as the go-to solution for solving the most complex business problems. 

However, a new research paper by Apple has cast significant doubts on the efficacy of reasoning models, going as far as to suggest that when a problem is too complex, they simply give up. What's going on here? And does it mean reasoning models are fundamentally flawed? 

In this episode, Rory Bathgate speaks to ITPro's news and analysis editor Ross Kelly to explain some of the report's key findings and what it means for the future of AI development.

Any modern enterprise generates reams of data, which can be difficult to correctly store, process, and use without the right approach.

This has become even more important in the face of AI. Before any leader can begin implementing AI across their workflow, they must first ensure they’ve prepared data at the right scale – and across its entire lifecycle.

Data integration, in which data from across a business is combined into a single stream, can be a huge help here. But where do you start with this? And where do open data formats fit into this mix?

In this episode, in association with Informatica, Jane and Rory are joined by Eric Ho, senior director product management at Informatica, to discuss data integration at scale and explore the evolution of open table formats for modern data architectures and data warehousing.

Read more:

• Structured vs unstructured data management
• Only a handful of generative AI projects make it into production – here’s why
• A quarter of firms still don’t have a formal data strategy – and it’s hampering AI adoption
• What is Delta Lake in Databricks?
• Why your business needs data protection policies

In the fast-changing world of cybersecurity, IT leaders have to keep up with evolving threats and new technologies to stay ahead of attackers.

With nation states lending a hand to threat groups with more pointed aims than ever before, alongside the double-edged sword of greater AI adoption in cybersecurity, there’s never been a more worrying – and exciting – time to specialize in the field.

This episode was recorded live at RSAC conference in San Francisco by Scott Becker, director of Webinar programs at ActualTech Media and Alan Liska, threat intelligence analyst and ‘ransomware sommelier’ at Recorded Future. 

Together, the pair discuss the future of the sector, how threats like ransomware compare to emerging concerns such as quantum decryption, and why AI is the topic on everyone’s agenda.

Any modern enterprise generates reams of data, which can be difficult to correctly store, process, and use without the right approach.

This has become even more important in the face of AI. Before any leader can begin implementing AI across their workflow, they must first ensure they’ve prepared data at the right scale – and across its entire lifecycle.

Data integration, in which data from across a business is combined into a single stream, can be a huge help here. But where do you start with this? And where do open data formats fit into this mix?

In this episode, in association with Informatica, Jane and Rory are joined by Eric Ho, senior director product management at Informatica, to discuss data integration at scale and explore the evolution of Open Table Formats for modern data architectures and data warehousing.

We’re past the peak cloud hype of the 2010s and now well into the era of cloud maturity. But even as businesses have come to terms with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud models, new considerations have arisen, such as the growing push for cloud sovereignty and regional data center demand.

AI has put additional pressure on firms to figure out exactly what they’re running in the cloud – as agentic AI drives organizations to consider ‘always on’ workloads and whether this is feasible in a public cloud model.

How can leaders navigate this changing cloud landscape and what is on the horizon?

In this episode, Rory speaks to Alex Grimshaw, CTO at Microsoft Azure UK, to explore what he sees as the key trends for the cloud and how AI will shape it in the coming years.

May has been a busy month for news in the IT world, with cyber attacks hitting retailers across the UK and Microsoft laying off over 800 developers.

In this episode of the ITPro Podcast, Jane is joined by news and analysis editor Ross Kelly to discuss three of the most significant news stories of the past month and wish Java a happy 30th birthday.

“A significant portion of [the redundancies] are in Washington state, in the US, the heartland of Microsoft headquarters. It comes at quite an interesting period for Microsoft – they've been performing well, they’re really bullish on their AI investments at the moment. But again, another round of layoffs and it must be really demoralizing for people not only at Microsoft … but across the tech industry to see this still continuing.”

“[For] developers and engineers specifically, I think the writing has been on the wall. We've spoken about this a couple of times over the last year, when you look at big figures in the tech industry like Marc Benioff specifically on agentic AI talking about the fact that they might not have to hire any engineers in the second half of 2025 … you have to wonder where they're all going to go.”

“Last week, on the 21st M&S said hackers were able to essentially access systems by social engineering techniques at a third party contractor, [which] allowed them to circumvent M&S defenses and caused an absolute disaster, and again, it underlines the dangers of an increasingly interconnected software supply chain.”

“[Java’s] a programming language that's had remarkable longevity, still very popular. We covered something on this last year around the fact that … its popularity is still there very much. It's having somewhat of a renaissance, so to speak, in terms of organizations really scrambling to get Java developers.”

Microsoft workers face a fresh round of layoffs – here’s who could be impacted

Microsoft expects 1.3 billion AI agents to be in operation by 2028 – here’s how it plans to get them working together

‘Developers will need to adapt’: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reveals the scale of AI-generated code use

Agentic AI is coming for customer service jobs

CrowdStrike layoffs to hit 500 staff as firm targets strategic AI shift

More than a third of UK tech leaders admit they’ve cut staff in favor of AI – but now they regret making hasty redundancies

Why DragonForce is growing in prominence – with retailer attacks boosting its reputation

M&S confirms customer personal data was stolen in recent attack

Everything we know about the Co-op cyber attack so far

‘It’s far from showing its age’: Java might’ve just turned 30, but it’s still going strong and here to stay