Tech means Business

The economic downturn is turning the screws on public sector funding right across the world. In the UK and Ireland that's no different, with smaller budgets, a demand for more open, easily accessible services and, of course, the expectation that everything is to be delivered safely. Many government departments, authorities and taxpayer funded organisations look to outsourcing ‘non-core or enabling...

Data centers are crucial to the operations of businesses and individuals in today’s world. The hardware in these installations is responsible for many aspects of everyday life and global commerce. But like every device, each piece of technology in a DC needs resources to build, run, and often, cool. To commemorate Earth Month, in this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast, we talk to two majo...

There are no avenues that cybersecurity bad actors won't pursue - emails, software supply chain poisoning, networking, and hardware. For data center operators, and anyone who uses data center applications and services, keeping the systems that run in today's DCs is of paramount importance. In 2023, even hardware manufacturers have to be hyper-vigilant about cybersecurity. With attacks on the inter...

One of those areas of the modern enterprise that's crying out for digital transformation has to be agreement management: the process by which organizations can do business together. The reason why agreements are in need of some technological muscle is down to their number, and the different layers of approval typically required in participating companies. How can the IT function help speed up agre...

In light of the latest reports from the NCSC and ACSC (National [New Zealand] and Australian Cyber Security Centre) on best practice, companies and organisations in the region are looking to amend their everyday work processes. But many smaller outfits (think fewer than 100 people) have no dedicated IT team. In many cases, these will turn to their MSP (Managed Service Provider) for advice and, ult...

The collected data at the modern organization's fingertips is truly immense in scale but also in possibility. Predictions of every company being "a data company" have been proven to be pretty accurate. But why then are so few organizations making the most of the information they have access to literally at their fingertips? The answer lies in what has to happen to data before it can be queried, an...

As the world digitizes at breakneck speed, companies and organizations are under pressure not only to produce products & services of high quality but also to do so efficiently and in ecologically-sound ways. The new Dell PowerEdge server range produces the type of compute built for accelerating digital transformation but does it power-efficiently. Even the manufacturing and design of the range hav...

Until companies and organizations get large enough to run their own dedicated cybersecurity function, many use the services of an MSP (managed service provider) to help protect them from the increasing number of attacks that happen each year. Getting external help certainly works in dynamic computing environments, where companies are changing between on-premise, multi-, and hybrid-cloud deployment...

With public spending cuts and a greater awareness of obtaining best value for money, the public sector in the UK has to get the best possible value it can from its IT provision. The answer may be, to some degree at least, making more use of cloud technologies. But it's not as simple as a lift-and-shift process for IT leaders in the sector. There are multiple considerations: data integrity, securit...

Even relatively modern cybersecurity concepts and access management technologies like PAM are beginning to falter confronted with hybrid- and multi-cloud environments. How can today's privilege access management cope with multiple SaaS and IaaS apps and services, other than grant or deny blanket access? We talk to Scott Hesford, the Director of Solutions Engineering, Asia Pacific at BeyondTrust, a...

Making a few purchases on an online marketplace site seems simple: a few clicks here and there, a payment card, and then sit back and wait for delivery. But under the hood, the complexity is astounding. Marketplace operators not only have to send and receive funds in multiple currencies, but they also have to do it quickly, and they need to do it reliably. It's that surety that keeps good vendors...

Retail businesses involve a great deal more today than setting up premises and organizing wholesalers. The technology needed to run an omnichannel retail outfit has to be secure, powerful, reliable, and most of all, focused on quality customer experiences. With shoppers today used to the "big label" quality of experience, smaller companies are facing significant challenges to raise their own stand...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with BeyondTrust. Many of the security tools we use to protect ourselves and our organizations came into existence at a time before "the cloud" was a thing and certainly before hybrid working practices. Can we use the same tools in a different way, or do we need a new toolset? Or a whole new approach? These questions and more are the subjects for discussion...

Every piece of malware, every phishing email, reaches its potential victim via the network, the means by which the organization communicates internally and with the outside world. So who better to protect the company than the people who install and specialize in communications networks? That's the premise of this episode of the Tech Means Business podcast when we're joined by Jonathan Magnell from...

The next generation of AI in the workplace is decision intelligence: the practical application of machine language in commercial settings. Applying AI in the workplace has, to date, being a slow process and one that involves a lot of resources. But that's all about to change. Peak AI is the company that's driving decision intelligence in organizations, turning the typical 18 month wait between que...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with DocuSign. Many companies today are worried about the environmental impact their activities are having on the well-being of the planet. And every business cares about costs, too! So how come, years after the concept was first mooted, we're still not at a place where we all work in so-called paperless offices. Such a concept is clearly a win on both count...

From a background in software programming, today's guest Sydney-based Leon Friend specialised in cyber security, landing at ConnectWise a few years ago. Keen listeners will know the company from a previous episode of the Tech Means Business podcast: ConnectWise’s local remit is to help ANZ's MSPs (managed service providers) protect their many clients from the dangers that lurk on the internet in t...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with AppDynamics. The full IT stack has become highly complex in recent years, and parsing logfiles and relying on the nmaps of this world just don't cut it any more. Getting full visibility into everything that's going on everywhere (including use of cloud services) is a tall order, especially when finding sys admins and cybersecurity pros with the required...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with OutSystems. The big talk in enterprise software development circles is around low-code taking some of the hard work out of the development process. But there are solutions out there that are for both "citizen" and "traditional" developers. OutSystems has evolved that paradigm with high-performance low-code. Our Tech Means Business podcast guest is Richa...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with ConnectWise. Many businesses today use the services of an MSP (managed service provider) to handle all the day-to-day IT needs of the company: provisioning email accounts, ensuring connectivity, setting up new clients, and so on. Many MSPs are also responsible for their clients' cybersecurity – an increasingly important role given the rise in the preval...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with Euronet. Financial institutions with any history at all are renowned for being slow to offer the types of digital banking services that many of us demand. After all, in 2022, should it be quite so challenging to take and send FOREX payments on an e-commerce site? It's here that the REN service from Euronet can help out by offering modern, digitally-nati...

Welcome back to part two of this podcast series, in which we're talking all things automation for supply chain, logistics, warehousing and distribution distribution companies. In a double-bill of podcasts, the Tech Means Business podcast talks to a company specializing in automating digital and physical systems in this sector. Dematic provides the type of 360-degree examination and refinement of s...

Pressures on the supply chain and logistics have been growing strongly since the advent of online shopping. Today everyone expects the type of customer experience provided by the tech giants: on tap, and it is (or should be) on its way. But operational issues like limited real estate and a squeeze on employment have made finding efficiencies and cost savings a do-or-die exercise for many in distri...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with Dematic. When supply chain and distribution companies decide to digitise and robotise their systems to any degree, it's wise for them to partner with a company that knows its stuff. In this second part of a two-parter with Dematic UK, the Tech Means Business podcast looks at the best ways and places to approach modernisation & automation projects. Back-...

This podcast is produced in conjunction with Dematic. Rising costs are making margins tighter in all manner of supply chain companies, especially in distribution and warehousing. Huge demand for services has also driven prices down, and companies are trying to out-compete one another in a market where alternative services are a mouse click (or screen tap) away. It's here that automation technologi...