This week I read a great article from Jenna Sargent (here) on how low-code tools can be used to eliminate Shadow IT. The point was simple, if the IT department doesn’t provide individuals with the right tools they need, then traditionally we would have seen users searching for the right tool for themselves and using unsanctioned apps. This situation can lead to security, data leak, etc risks. The new model emerging is to facilitate users with low-code tools and say that if the current set of apps doesn’t give you the workflow that best fits your role, create your own.

So congratulations, you’ve migrated what workloads you can to a secure production-ready cloud and have built a hybrid cloud architecture between that and your non-cloud apps and data. You’ve just got on the cloud bus, next stop optimisation.

These days you can stick a CPU on just about anything to make it ‘smart’. You’ve probably heard about Smart NICs, Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) or Computational Storage as concepts, but these technologies are being rapidly developed and will be let loose on the mainstream market soon. So, what’s it all about?

Strong customer relationships have become a critical business priority according to the results of the first report in a four-part series following the eighth annual Logicalis Global CIO Survey. The pandemic has emphasised the importance of digital transformation, particularly creating online experiences for customers as sophisticated as in-person. For CIOs, this has meant rethinking their business strategies. Continuing to shift from day-to-day management, CIOs prioritise innovation, business adaptability, and customer experience more than anything else.

In the age when I have to communicate with my kids via social media to get their attention, it’s no surprise that social engineering bore our most contemporary digital threat, phishing, as the lure for the high-profile cybersecurity threat of ransomware.

What is it and how do we get started? Whilst Observability is a current buzzword, I was reminded of Control Theory lectures many years ago. At that stage it referred to knowing the internal state of a system from observing the outcome. It relied on the systems being linear and deterministic. But our connected world is anything but linear or deterministic. It is hugely interconnected in complex meshes, processes like those involved in online purchasing, run independently but are interdependent, and AI will result in non-deterministic outcomes. My old understanding of the term does not work in this new world.

We find ourselves in unprecedented times. As the Covid pandemic begins to wind down, we are seeing manufacturing, logistics and supply chain issues manifesting themselves across all aspects of our lives. In the IT industry shortages of integrated circuits (silicon chips) are resulting in some very long product lead times, which in turn are impacting our customers abilities to deliver - digitisation projects that are being accelerated in part due to Covid.

The initial pivot towards remote working, as the world underwent its most recent digital transformation due to the pandemic, took an average of 11 days according to a survey from McKinsey. In pre-pandemic times, executives suggest that a transition on such a scale would have taken up to a year, indicating an acceleration of 40x.

One thing we’ve all learnt from the pandemic is that working 9 to 5 in an office isn’t how it has to be. We can be equally productive working from home with flexibility in our hours and a much better work/life balance. One thing that I certainly missed though are those little off-topic chats with people, where ideas are sparked, that air of creativity is hard to reproduce when your day consists of back-to-back video calls.