The ITPro Podcast is a weekly show for technology professionals and business leaders. Each week hosts Bobby Hellard 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/the-it-pro-podcast for more information, or follow ITPro on LinkedIn for regular updates.
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October 16, 202623 min
Have agents, copilots, and chatbots made life harder?
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. Related content Enterprises are ‘paralyzed by a lack of understanding’ with AI adoption – and there's one key factor that decides success Why AI adoption is a people problem, not a technology problem More from ITPro Visit ITPro.com Subscribe to the ITPro Newsletter Find us on YouTube
October 14, 202614 min
SPECIAL EDITION: Scaling, ROI, and what’s next for workplace AI
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 . Related content Special agents: the changing face of AI in business and how it’s driving ROI Download SAP’s The Value of AI report now
October 9, 202628 min
What UK tech can learn from a decentralized government
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. More from ITPro Visit ITPro.com Subscribe to the ITPro Newsletter Find us on YouTube Related content UK government targets 'sovereign AI' gains with new £500 million startup funding scheme
October 2, 202619 min
NetApp Insight 2026: Can Novus and Keystone break the AI bottlenecks?
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 I can’t believe we’re still talking about AI data readiness NetApp CEO George Kurian: AI adoption
September 30, 202636 min
SPECIAL EDITION: What enterprises need from a modern data center
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. Three business benefits of Dell Private Cloud
September 25, 202620 min
Rogue AI and unionization at Meta
The month of September is usually about the first flourishes of Autumn, but thanks to a cohort of AI companies, everyone is seeing red. Multiple reports of rogue AI agents hacking companies across the internet have led to calls to slow down the research and development of the technology. And, in an even more unbelievable turn of events, Meta is open to unionization across its workforce… On this week’s episode of the ITPro Podcast, Bobby Hellard, Scott Bekker, and Ross Kelly look at the recent spate of AI agent hacks and Meta’s deal with Prospect. Meta and prospect partnership Spanish gov hacked by AI agents Anthropic rogue AI agents
September 18, 202617 min
Dreamforce 2026 and the dangers of AI
AI safety has dominated the public discourse over the last month, with executives and founders of some of the most popular AI companies sounding the alarm themselves. And the topic was a key talking point at Salesforce’s annual event Dreamforce. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff was joined on stage by Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, with both discussing the current state of AI and also Salesforce’s own AI offerings. ITPro’s news and analysis editor Ross Kelly joined the pod live from San Francisco to talk AI safety, Claudforce, Koa, and all things Salesforce Dreamforce. Highlights Nvidia_Koa SaaSpocalypse Dreamforce 2026
September 11, 202621 min
AI's operational blind spots
Businesses continue to embrace generative AI at a rapid pace. From copilots and chatbots to autonomous agents, an exciting world of new technology is opening up. The race to adopt these AI tools isn't without its perils, though. The mantra "garbage in, garbage out" is even more poignant when these systems come into play, with the potential for a cycle of bad data presenting a real risk to organizations. On this week's episode, Tim Pfaelzer, SVP and GM EMEA at Veeam, discusses operational blind spots, what they mean for businesses, and how they can balance their desire for a technical edge with data governance. IT leaders are facing major work device blind spots – and it's putting security at risk | IT Pro AI-assisted software development means security teams need an ‘engineering-first’ mindset | IT Pro
September 9, 202618 min
SPECIAL EDITION: TD SYNNEX talks about attaching services to products
In this special edition of the ITPro Podcast, host Bobby Hellard speaks with Stephen Ennis, VP Services EMEA at TD SYNNEX, about why attaching services to technology products has become a strategic imperative across the channel. Episode Highlights Outcome-driven solutions: Shifting from standalone product sales toward complete business outcomes that meet modern customer expectations. The services value cycle: Leveraging TD SYNNEX's framework across pre-deployment training, deployment integration, white-label 24/7 managed support, and circular IT end-of-life recycling. Predictable revenue: Building long-term customer relationships and driving recurring revenue by filling skills and service capability gaps. SPECIAL EDITION: TD SYNNEX talks MSP Evolve™ The Attach Imperative (Image credit: Getty Images)
September 4, 202620 min
Agents on the frontline: How Box is using AI to supercharge cybersecurity
Findings from Box’s State of AI in the Enterprise survey show 83% of enterprises are now running agents in some capacity. These bots are enabling teams to drive productivity and efficiency, but as with any new technology, smooth integration can be a challenge - and security risk. Recent agent-related incidents in the tech industry have sparked concerns about long-term security implications. In this week’s episode of the ITPro Podcast, Ross Kelly and Bobby Hellard speak with Box CISO Heather Ceylan to discuss how Box is using agents internally, and how enterprises can adopt the technology in a safe and secure manner. Highlights “I think for security teams, we can finally, you know, start having the capacity to outpace these attackers. So we've got five core areas of investment for agents for our security team in particular that we've invested in over probably the last year, and we're starting to measure ROI on those right now. “So the first one is in the SOC. I think that's probably the most obvious choice where we've got a lot of operational work. We see the same kinds of incidents. We're automating the triage, we're automating the enrichment, the log correlation, things like that that take a lot of human effort. “But there's still human judgment in the end in terms of what gets escalated to be an incident and what doesn't.” “We're not going to be able to move fast enough. So, we have agents kind of built throughout our software development process, doing those security design and architecture reviews, and if you think about it, it’s way more powerful than a human can be because those agents don't just necessarily call out design flaws; they can enforce fixes for those flaws.” “Things are changing quickly. Sometimes it feels like you take two steps forward and then you read something in the news and you're like, oh my gosh, we need to rethink everything. “So I think a lot of security teams are really feeling that now and getting a little bit of fatigue from that.“ “One of the things that we're trying to carry across all of these that I wasn't really thinking about a year ago, but I'm thinking a lot about now is having that multi-model approach. “We're not in a place where most of the work we do, we can't be reliant on a single model. If you look at vulnerability discovery, we're moving away from being tied to any one specific vendor or any one specific model because you're going to get better results when you take a multi-model approach.” Links AI is getting better at security – and it's doing it faster than expected Top security teams use AI agents, says Hack The Box AI is changing team structures in cybersecurity and creating new roles – here are the jobs in hot demand Can AI fight AI? Where the security gap still exists in cybersecurity, and how MSPs can help
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