UKAI, the trade body for more than 270 British AI businesses, is calling for a dedicated sovereign AI action plan to save the UK from dependency on foreign tech giants.

The trade body said it wants to see next week's budget include a plan for AI sovereignty amidst lingering geopolitical uncertainty and in the wake of recent cloud outages.

"Piecemeal funding announcements are tactical at best, and we need detailed strategy about how the country will build and design a new wave of AI tools to support critical national infrastructure," said Charlotte Wilson, head of enterprise at Check Point.

"This should be written into the defense budget, especially with geopolitical uncertainty and hostile foreign states bombarding the country with increasingly malicious attacks.”

The government has made a number of moves aimed at improving the UK's AI sector, including efforts toward greater sovereignty.

In summer 2024, it launched an AI Opportunities Action Plan, followed earlier this year by a £500 million Sovereign AI fund aimed at boosting support for domestic AI companies. A further £60 million for the program was pledged last week.

Earlier this summer, it unveiled an AI Hardware Plan designed to give a helping hand to home-grown AI chip firms. However, UKAI said that while all three are valuable initiatives, they need to be merged into one overarching strategy.

"On their own, they are building blocks. Joined up as a strategy, they would be transformative," said Flagg.

AI sovereignty in the spotlight

UKAI joins a number of industry associations calling for a more aligned approach to AI sovereignty. Just last week, a new industry taskforce, Project Sovereign AI Leadership (SAIL), called for a clear definition of sovereign AI.

This would entail creating a workload classification framework that grades sovereignty across each layer of the stack - infrastructure, including data centers, compute and networks, data, models and applications, and workloads.

In July this year, the Council for Science and Technology (CST) called on the government to develop a UK AI Sovereignty Plan, set up clear governance and coordination for AI sovereignty choices, and increase investment in long-term domestic AI capability.

“The stakes could not be higher. Without immediate action, Britain risks becoming a vassal state, dependent on countries that control the AI infrastructure our economy increasingly relies on. We have the entrepreneurs, the research and the talent to compete, but they are fragmented and disconnected," said UKAI CEO Tim Flagg.

“Businesses are calling for action and the government has signalled its intent, yet nothing concrete has followed. Next week’s Budget is the moment to act. We urge the Chancellor to fund a Sovereign AI strategy and secure the UK’s place as a world leader in AI, rather than leave our future in other countries’ hands.”

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Westcon-Comstor has teamed up with Palo Alto Networks to launch a new channel initiative aimed at accelerating growth for select Westcon partners across EMEA.

Announced at the distributor’s WestConnect event in Barcelona, the Partner Growth Circle has been designed to provide partners with structured business planning, enablement, and growth support to help them build and scale their Palo Alto Networks business.

Westcon-Comstor said it will work with participants to develop joint Palo Alto business plans tailored to priority solutions, target accounts, as well as agreed pipeline objectives, supported by coordinated sales and technical engagement.

In an announcement, Daniel Hurel, senior vice president of Westcon-Comstor’s Westcon EMEA go-to-market business, said demand for Palo Alto solutions has remained strong across the region as AI continues to reshape the cyber security landscape.

“The Partner Growth Circle is about helping partners translate that demand into scalable, repeatable business growth,” he explained.

“By bringing together joint business planning, technical enablement, demand generation and our wider value-added capabilities, we can help partners build stronger pipelines, expand customer relationships and develop more repeatable sources of revenue.”

Growth-focused partner benefits

Partners that successfully meet the targets laid out in their joint business plans will gain access to a host of exclusive Westcon-Comstor benefits, from tailored services workshops and certification support, to demand-generation funding.

They will also be able to utilize the distributor’s existing value-added capabilities – which include its Tech Xpert community, virtual demonstration environments via 3D Lab, as well as sales and pre-sales enablement.

Partner performance will be measured against their business plan and objectives, Westcon-Comstor said, with quarterly reviews designed to maintain a focus on execution and growth.

Additionally, the distributor will deploy its Intelligent Demand (iD) analytics-led sales and marketing program, which uses predictive data analysis to help partners identify the most promising opportunities.

“It is a focused approach built around shared commitments and measurable progress, and the next step in our collaboration with Palo Alto Networks,” Hurel added.

Expanded EMEA collaboration

The launch of Partner Growth Circle marks the latest phase of a long-standing partnership between Westcon-Comstor and Palo Alto Networks, with the pair’s existing distribution agreement spanning multiple markets across EMEA.

Previous collaborations also include SASEvolution, which packages Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SASE solution with Westcon’s managed services to provide channel partners with market-ready security solutions.

Commenting on the pair’s latest offering, Palo Alto Networks’ vice president of EMEA ecosystems Patricia Murphy said The Partner Growth Circle will equip partners with the structure, enablement, and resources they need to scale effectively in the era of AI.

“By aligning our products and services with Westcon-Comstor’s deep channel expertise, we are creating a clear path for our mutual partners to accelerate growth, expand their technical capabilities, and deliver exceptional value to our joint customers,” she said.

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Anthropic is set to go public in late November at a valuation of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. The higher end of the range would make it the biggest initial public offering (IPO) ever, beating SpaceX’s $1.8 trillion public debut in June. The Claude creator filed its much-awaited IPO prospectus on Monday 26 October, giving investors and tech leaders a peek into its financials, especially its dependencies.

The document, also known as an S-1, highlights a reliance on a limited number of customers for its revenue. Nearly half (47%) of sales in 2025 were routed through its cloud partners, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google. Meanwhile, each of its two biggest customers, who remained unnamed, accounted for 12% of revenue last year.

Some progress is being made to reduce this dependence. While 48% of revenue between January and September this year came through its cloud providers, the five biggest customers accounted for approximately 25% of revenue for the nine-month period. No single customer had a share greater than 10%.

The company noted in its filing: “We anticipate that we will continue to derive a significant portion of our revenue from a limited number of customers for the foreseeable future, and in some cases, the portion of our revenue attributable to certain customers may increase in the future.”

The IPO prospectus has raised questions about an overreliance on AI models and vendors – and the risks this brings for enterprises.

“It’s a reminder that the model, the vendor and the route you access it through can all change for reasons outside your control,” cautions Jan Karstens, CTO at AI-powered SAP automation platform Avantra. For example, enterprises that have built their critical business processes around one AI supplier could face operational disruption, even if it’s temporary.

“We’ve already seen what that looks like. When Anthropic was ordered to block foreign nationals from its top models this summer, the only way to comply in time was to switch them off for everyone. Teams that had already assumed any model or vendor could disappear overnight barely noticed. Everyone else had to scramble,” says Karstens.

Charles Radclyffe, CEO of SaaS enterprise provider EA Global AI adds: “The interesting thing about the reported Anthropic numbers is that they're not just a story about one AI company. They're a reminder that concentration risk runs through the AI ecosystem, and enterprises need to understand where those dependencies sit.”

Earlier this year, automation platform Zapier polled 500 US executives and found that 47% of enterprises would stop functioning properly if their primary AI vendor were to shut off its service tomorrow. Just over a quarter (27%) indicated they were reliant on AI vendors for nearly all of their business operations.

Question vendors’ own dependencies

Part of the problem is that enterprises focus too much on model performance, when they should be questioning their AI service’s supply chain.

“If a provider depends heavily on a small number of cloud platforms, strategic partners or major customers, changes in those relationships can ultimately affect enterprise users through pricing, availability, product direction, or service levels,” says Radclyffe.

So, what does he think CIOs should be doing? Asking companies supplying the AI services about their own critical dependencies, how workloads are delivered, the knock-on effect if key commercial relationships change, and what notice customers receive before major model changes. “AI procurement needs to become a resilience conversation,” he stresses.

Karstens believes asking model makers about their critical dependencies is reasonable, but he cautions against acting on their responses alone. He’d “be mildly nervous about concentration among my direct AI vendors. I’d answer that with my own visibility and multiple suppliers, not with questionnaires.”

CIOs need to “start from the assumption that any model, vendor or access path can be withdrawn without warning,” he adds. “They should build governance that doesn’t depend on any one of them staying in place. Periodic audits and vendor assurances after the fact aren’t enough when the [AI] market moves fast.”

Be wary about vendor lock-in

A key takeaway from Anthropic’s S-1 is that consumption-based, or per-token, revenue made up 83% of revenue in the first six months of 2026. However, many of its main customers are not locked into long-term contracts.

AI model makers are pushing hard for customers to agree to contracts to secure multi-year revenue visibility amid fierce competition. If enterprises find themselves signing contracts, then they need to ensure they agree to “meaningful exit rights, portability provisions, and the ability to export not just data but the prompts, workflows and evaluations that support business processes,” advises Radclyffe.

Karstens agrees. “Vendors like Anthropic are moving deeper into everyday work, with documents, slides and projects now living inside the AI tool itself. If that continues, data portability will become a real issue for CIOs in the next 12 to 24 months.”

The Zapier study also surveyed senior executives about AI vendor lock-in. Just over eight in 10 (81%) admitted they were at least slightly nervous about being locked into contracts, with 29% very concerned. Almost half (46%) were worried about data migration and an overreliance on a single vendor. Sudden price hikes were a concern for 41%, while another major worry for 37% was having a single point of failure.

Ideally, enterprises should avoid finding themselves in a situation where these worries come to fruition by ensuring they have a practical alternative to turn to if costs rise, there’s a change in circumstances, or unexpected events.

Radclyffe sums it up perfectly: “There's nothing unusual about [vendor] concentration in a fast-growing technology market. The risk comes when enterprises don't understand how dependent they've become until they're forced to make a change.”

Previder has announced the acquisition of London-based managed service provider (MSP) Wanstor, as the Dutch IT solutions provider continues its international expansion.

The deal marks the company’s entry into the UK market, building on its established presence in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

Previder, a part of the Odin Group, specializes in helping organizations build, manage, and secure their IT environments, offering expertise across cloud, infrastructure, cyber security, digital workplaces, data, and AI.

The firm employs 650 IT specialists and operates its own data centers located in the Netherlands.

Founded in 2002, Wanstor provides a range of IT services across cyber security, cloud, data, and AI, backed by 24/7 service desk support. The company has around 200 employees on its books.

Previder said Wanstor’s services target three key areas: enhancing the user experience, ensuring the responsible adoption of AI technologies, as well as strengthening security and digital resilience.

In an announcement, Odin Group CEO Arno Witvliet described UK MSP’s services and wider vision as “closely aligned” with Previder’s.

“We share the belief that technology creates real value when organisations can use it securely, reliably and with a clear purpose,” he said. “Wanstor’s presence and expertise provide us with a strong foundation in the UK and create significant opportunities for us to grow together.”

International growth ambitions

The Wanstor acquisition is the latest phase of Previder’s international growth plans and further expands its reach across North-West Europe following its recent purchase of Belgian IT service provider AppSys ICT Group. Last year, the MSP also snapped up Belgian IT firm Assyst Europe.

By extending its operations to the UK, the company is looking to create a broader international platform for sharing expertise and strengthening support through local teams.

The MSP said Wanstor’s established UK market presence, combined with its local expertise and existing customer relationships, will provide a solid platform for growth in the region while retaining a local service delivery model.

For Wanstor, company CEO Francesca White said the acquisition represents “an exciting next step” for the business that will help create fresh opportunities for its own future growth.

“We will retain the local commitment and customer intimacy that define our organization, while gaining access to a broader pool of knowledge, capacity and expertise across the group,” she explained.

“This gives us a stronger foundation to develop our services and help customers respond to evolving technology, security and operational need.”

Clearwater acted as exclusive sell-side advisor to Wanstor. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 staff, equivalent to more than a quarter of its total workforce as the company looks to further reduce headcount.

That figure comes via sources in multiple reports, but Microsoft has confirmed the looming job cuts in a memo to staff, since published online.

The reduction comes as Microsoft invests further in AI and amid wider job losses in the industry. Earlier this year, Microsoft laid off 4,800 staff following a voluntary retirement offer in the spring.

Microsoft reports its quarterly results later this week.

Leaving by choice

As many as 60,000 workers are eligible to opt for the “voluntary exit” offer, sources told CNBC, out of a total global headcount of 223,000. It’s worth noting that the 60,000 figure represents those eligible, not the number expected to take up the offer.

Indeed, one publication reported that Microsoft predicts a smaller proportion of staff to take up the deal than a voluntary retirement offer earlier this year. That offer was accepted by around 30% of those approached by the tech giant.

Another source told Reuters that the buyout offer would be applicable across a wide range of business divisions, including AI experiences, Copilot, finance, gaming, Windows + Devices and more, but not marketing, commercial business, or security.

In a memo published online, Microsoft's chief people officer Amy Coleman said that employees offered the buyout span teams in Canada, India, the UK and the US, at experience level 70 and below.

This is based on an internal system for grading staff. Level 70 refers to senior positions such as a general manager or partner-level technical leader, according to one social media post.

Coleman added that the voluntary exit offer was time limited, with CNBC noting that it would expire by early December.

"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support," Coleman wrote in the memo.

"It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs."

Microsoft offered that aforementioned voluntary retirement program in April to 7% of American employees, followed by layoffs of 4,800 staff in July. Last year also saw multiple rounds of layoffs at the company.

Cuts everywhere

Microsoft isn't the only tech company continuing to reduce headcount. A host of major tech companies have announced layoffs across 2026 so far. In May, Cloudflare revealed plans to cut 1,000 roles, equivalent to around 20% of its workforce.

Oracle also announced 21,000 jobs would be axed in June, pinning the blame on AI. Last year also saw sweeping cuts at Dell Technologies, Salesforce, IBM, and Intel.

Much of this has been pinned on AI, though analysts have suggested the technology isn't ready to start taking over human roles yet, if ever.

A study by Oxford Economics earlier this year suggested evidence of an AI-inspired shake-up of jobs is "patchy" at best, with job losses really down to wider economic forces.

Some companies have said just that, with Atlassian saying last year's cuts to customer service have nothing to do with AI, and Amazon's 14,000 cuts pinned on reducing bureaucracy.

Microsoft’s motivation behind the voluntary exit scheme is also reportedly due to AI-related costs. Reports from Reuters, for example, suggest the company aims to reduce costs amid heavy spending on AI infrastructure.

Capital expenditures for the next quarter are expected to top $50 billion.

ITPro approached Microsoft for confirmation and comment, but did not receive a response by time of publication.

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Cisco has expanded available incentives in its 360 Partner Program, as well as making Cisco IQ generally available for partners as part of its mission to continue to deliver the support its channel ecosystem needs.

Details of the new offerings and updates were announced at the firm’s Partner Summit in Vancouver, Canada, today, but ITPro attended a pre-brief before the main event.

“Cisco didn’t wake up and realize that partners matter,” exclaimed Tim Coogan, senior vice president, global partner sales, told journalists during the pre-brief call last week.

That being said, Cisco understands that partners need to move “first and fast,” especially in the AI era, where threats have intensified, and traditional models of supporting customers are no longer fit for purpose.

Changes to the 360 program include dedicated paths for advisors, developers, and distributors, so they can be recognized for the valuable role they play. In addition, Cisco has introduced Partner Value Indexes (PVIs) for advisors and developers, with a dedicated Distributor PVI coming by Spring 2027.

Additional cross-sell bonuses were also unveiled in addition to a Cisco IQ adoption incentive.

Change is necessary for continued success

The 360 program was unveiled at the beginning of the calendar year and marked a big change; however, Coogan was keen to stress that the previous programs had evolved in response to partner feedback.

“We don’t do anything at Cisco without asking, ‘What about partners?. Are we building it the right way? Are we providing that platform?” Coogan said.

“When we built the [360] program, we didn’t build it and unveil it. We built it with our partners. Thousands of meetings, countless hours spent understanding the program.

“It was big news, and it has required our partners to do things differently. Part of the reason our previous programs, most notably Value Incentive Program (VIP), were around for 23 years. What some people may not know is that there were 46 versions of VIP. We are deeply committed to an iterative process over time.”

Coogan added: “It’s not a set it and forget it mentality. We believe that feedback is a constant source, and we have already made numerous changes. Change is difficult. We ask partners to invest in their capabilities to deliver this incredible portfolio, and we are as deeply committed to modifying it over time based on that same feedback.”

The B2B buying landscape is forever changed

Customers, on average, work with up to seven trusted partners, according to Coogan. What’s more, the B2B buying journey is non-linear with more than 28 touchpoints. This places even more emphasis on partners to help organizations navigate this new normal.

“We recognize that, at the end of the day, growth and profitability are fundamental to our company and to our partners as well. [Offering] Cisco IQ, not as a product, but as a platform, [means] our partners can use it to deliver new services revenue, new capabilities, and a different kind of buying and use experience for our clients. Cisco IQ will become a really, really powerful tool in the bag of our partners.”

Coogan also spoke to the importance of partner experience: “We believe incredibly deeply that our ability to save our partners time is just as important as our ability to help them drive growth and profitability. Finding an easier way to do business with Cisco, improving tools, and leveraging AI becomes fundamental to the experience our partners have with us,” he said.

“Our partners don’t owe us anything, and they don’t work for us; we earn the right to work with them every single day. Partner experience is one of the ways we can invest in their time with us by making that experience as positive and productive as possible.”

Coogan also stressed the importance of constant innovation, being able to react quickly, and scaling but without adversely affecting efficiency.

“It’s our 30th year of Partner Summit. This is not a revelation that partners are important. This is a 30-year journey with our partners, founded on trust, growth, agility, and innovation. We’re so very proud of our heritage and our legacy,” he added.

“Everything for us is founded around our principles of build, buy, and partnering… Ultimately, what we build and what we buy falls short in meeting the expectations of our customers if we don’t have the partner ecosystem to support it. We believe deeply that that partner ecosystem is the enabler for this build, buy, and partner strategy.

“This is a no-ego environment where we learn from each other, provide the platform and the foundation to deliver value in the field. And I think that's really what separates us.”

As an organization, ISACA is well-versed in and has a long history of helping its members stay up to date with the latest developments in IT security, governance, and risk.

But the pace of change, particularly in the AI era, can be unrelenting. Indeed, at this year’s ISACA Europe conference held earlier this month in Munich, Germany, there was a clear sense that changes in the technology landscape are putting more pressure on the association’s membership to stay current.

ISACA oversees a range of professional certifications, including CISA and CISM, and attending conference sessions helps attendees earn CPE credits that go towards maintaining these certifications. Sessions covered at this year’s ISACA Europe Conference 2026 covered everything ranging from cross-border data privacy, operational technology and proving security ROI, to supply chain resilience, ransomware prevention and digital sovereignty. While the topics were varied, they shared a common theme. Indeed, across almost all of them, the looming specter of AI was a constant presence.

Professionals in the field are concerned about how this technology will impact their day-to-day responsibilities, and ISACA is having to adapt its own processes in order to support them. As well as speeding up the pace at which it updates its certifications and training, the association has put forward several amendments to its bylaws, including lowering the quorum for member votes, moving its legal home to Washington, DC, and moving to staggered three-year board terms.

Responding to changing member needs

Speaking at the opening session in Munich, ISACA board chair Massimo Migliuolo said the proposals give ISACA “the governance agility to respond faster to the needs of members wherever they are in the world”.

That speed is more in demand than ever. AI is impacting the industry so dramatically that not only is it difficult for professionals to keep their skills current, but it's also reshaping roles faster than they can be defined. On top of that, it's resulting in regulatory scrambles as authorities scramble to catch up.

The shift is most evident in how often IT professionals are now feeling the need to update their credentials, according to ISACA CEO Erik Prusch.

“[Previously] you got certified, and maybe five years later or six years later, you might be getting your second certification as you’re escalating through an organization,” he says.

“Now it’s much more current, and everybody’s having to stay not only trained and keep their current certifications up to date, but also bring in new technology.”

AI was inescapable across the conference. Although plenty of sessions on the agenda focused on practical, iterative work - including previews of ISACA’s updated COBIT governance framework, GRC automation, NIS2 and DORA - nearly half of the agenda touched on AI in some capacity, including keynote sessions on the first two days.

As one might expect from an audience of security and risk professionals, the response to AI wasn't entirely enthusiastic, but fears around losing their jobs to AI have largely waned.

“Even 18 months ago, there was that threat of ‘AI is going to eliminate all roles’,” says Tara Wisniewski, senior vice president of advocacy at ISACA.

“I think we’re all kind of moving away from that, but it is going to significantly change roles.”

AI through a security lens

Instead, practitioners appear to have transitioned to more immediate practical concerns, including how the rollout of these systems is affecting their security, risk, and governance posture. In her keynote, cybersecurity advisor and former CISO Monica Verma took aim at the more apocalyptic predictions about AI, calling that narrative “extremely dangerous”.

“It takes away from the actual real AI and cybersecurity risks that we do have today,” she says.

“[The ones] that are already present, that are already imminent, that you and your organizations need to be thinking about right now. There is no time to waste.”

ISACA is tapping into this need for clarity with three dedicated AI credentials (with a fourth in development), as well as integrating AI aspects into CISA and CISM. Prusch says demand is partly being driven by AI work landing on existing roles, with established professionals increasingly asked to pick up elements of AI management on an ad-hoc basis. An IT audit manager, for example, might become an IT and AI audit manager.

“I think everybody within our domains, their roles have changed to some degree,” he says.

“It just hasn’t been structured or formalized as yet. They’ve just taken on more responsibility, and there’s no other place for them to go.”

However, while ISACA members aren't worried about the immediate future of their own roles, AI has affected some jobs. In particular, AI has been blamed for a reduction in available junior and entry-level roles, and senior practitioners are concerned that this will exacerbate the industry’s existing pipeline problems. As Migliuolo noted during the event’s opening address, ENISA estimates that more than 300,000 cybersecurity positions are unfilled across the EU.

“What the hell is a 23-year-old [to do]? How are they going to get that experience?” says Wisniewski. “I fear that the gap is going to get a little bit bigger, to be honest… We’ll even see things like, ‘it’s an entry-level position, but three years’ work experience is required’. That’s a mismatch.”

A multi-pronged approach

ISACA is trying to tackle the problem from both ends. Prusch says it now tracks new roles as they emerge, to shrink the lag before training for them exists, and on the policy side, Wisniewski says workforce development is “the drum we beat every day”.

In the UK, the organization has proposed amendments to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to clarify its skills requirements, and more broadly it presses policymakers to consider the talent pipeline whenever they regulate, since meeting any new rules requires “a qualified workforce”.

Even the lawmakers are struggling to stay ahead of the changes, Wisniewski adds, explaining that “there are very few policymakers that actually have any technical depth”. The EU’s AI Act is among the most comprehensive AI laws in the world, but the bloc is already discussing revisions because, she says, the technology hasn’t developed the way Brussels expected, and other countries are even further behind in their journey towards AI regulation.

Meanwhile, as governments continue to argue over the best way to design and implement AI safeguards, organizations are already struggling to comply with existing rules.

“European organizations are navigating an increasingly complex regulatory and threat environment,” Migliuolo noted.

“…Through the EU AI Act and NIS2, DORA, CRA and other emerging regulations, I think Europe is setting a very good standard… The challenge in this transition is how we are going to do the implementation.”

That transition is proving slow. Despite the deadlines for NIS2 and DORA compliance having passed well over a year ago, conference delegates were still attending sessions framed around working out how to demonstrate compliance. While large multinationals with deep budgets are ahead of this curve, it’s a different story further down the market, according to Wisniewski.

“It’s still early days, especially for smaller organizations, because that’s where you see stress in the system,” she says, adding that compliance costs can squeeze other budgets.

“When the compliance burden gets too intense, the budget has to come from somewhere… Is it taking away from a training budget?”

With legislation struggling to keep up, Wisniewski believes professional bodies may end up filling part of the gap themselves, acting as de facto regulators by establishing industry-wide standards. That’s one of the reasons ISACA is investing in a more substantial advocacy program, she says; the association also wants a seat at the table in emerging debates, such as whether cybersecurity should become a licensed profession.

None of this is new territory for ISACA, though; helping professionals make sense of unfamiliar technology and shifting rules is what the association was set up to do. The difference now is how little time there is to do it. By the time one change has been absorbed, the next is already on the horizon - such as quantum, which Wisniewski expects to feature alongside AI at next year’s event.

That’s what makes the bylaw vote more significant than its modest contents might suggest. Whether it’s through its training, its advocacy, or the standards it sets, ISACA’s influence depends on keeping pace with the profession it serves. To shoulder those responsibilities, the association needs to be able to move at the same speed as the technology it hopes to help govern.

“This is not your typical kind of acceleration path [for] adoption of new technology,” Prusch says, emphasizing that the industry as a whole has a difficult task ahead of it.

“We’re not talking about two decades ago, when we had maybe 10 years to develop the infrastructure. We are already behind.”

“The reality is,” he says, “we’ve got to do this faster.”

Hammer Distribution has announced a new UK-focused strategic partnership with cyber protection vendor Acronis.

Hammer’s channel network now has access to Acronis’ scalable portfolio of solutions, spanning cybersecurity, infrastructure, next-generation AI services, and MSP operations.

The move brings together two companies with established roots in the UK channel at a time when MSPs face increasing pressure to deliver greater value to clients while managing rising costs and complexity.

By pairing its own channel expertise with Acronis’ comprehensive cybersecurity platform, Hammer said partners will benefit from a single, integrated approach to tackling modern customer requirements.

In an announcement, Dominic Ryles, director of Cyber and Cloud at Hammer Distribution, described the collaboration as “a genuine step forward” for the company’s network of partners.

“Bringing together Hammer's channel expertise and Acronis's innovation in GenAI and XDR gives our partners a real competitive advantage, not just new products to sell, but an automated framework to secure and future-proof their clients' businesses,” he explained. “We're excited to see what our partners build with this."

Scalable cybersecurity for partners

Through the new agreement, Hammer partners now have access to a host of cyber security services, which include endpoint, managed, and extended detection and response (EDR, MDR, and XDR) tools, alongside email security, security posture management, security awareness training, and data loss prevention (DLP).

The deal also includes Acronis’ Cyber Frame, a new infrastructure offering designed for modern IT environments, as well as AI-native solutions such as GenAI Protection and Cyber Employee for augmenting and accelerating security operations.

Additionally, MSPs can now leverage automation tools across remote monitoring management (RMM), professional services automation (PSA), and workflow automation to help scale their operations.

Hammer said Acronis’ solutions are backed by its own enablement infrastructure, which covers onboarding support, technical training, and active pipeline development assistance.

Acronis general manager Jo Holliday said the partnership will benefit UK MSPs that find themselves under increasing pressure to deliver stronger protection and more efficient service delivery without increasing complexity.

“Hammer’s channel expertise makes them a strong route to market for Acronis in the UK,” she commented.

“Together, we can help partners bring natively integrated cyber protection, infrastructure management and service automation to more customers, enabling them to protect, manage and automate client environments more effectively while building scalable, profitable managed services.”

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The UK can capitalize on a £75 billion economic boost by 2035 if it acts quickly enough on AI adoption, according to a new industry taskforce, but time is running out to act.

The Project Sovereign AI Leadership (SAIL) report has called for a “Prosperity Compact” between government, business, regions and citizens - which needs to be established within the next 12 months.

This call to action has been backed by senior executives at Microsoft, NScale, Cisco, and BT.

“AI is the defining technology of our generation, but realising its £75 billion economic potential requires genuine mobilization of the entire nation. By establishing a clear Prosperity Compact between government, industry, and local communities, we can build the infrastructure we need, equip our workforce with future-ready skills, and ensure Britain’s digital destiny," said Steve Rigby, CEO of Rigby Group and chair of the Project SAIL Taskforce.

"This taskforce’s goal isn’t another strategy document, but high-impact actions that materially accelerate the UK’s transition to an AI-enabled economy.”

The report makes ten specific recommendations for the government, kicking off with a Compute Accelerator service for mid-scale infrastructure capabilities.

This would see the creation of a dedicated service within the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST) to support local authorities in identifying, matching, and planning mids-cale data center and networking sites.

Of the roughly 73 GW of data center applications in the connection queue, about 93% sit in the two largest size bands - very little sits between 10 and 100 megawatts, the report noted.

It’s this mid-scale range where the UK can build at pace, serving enterprise, research, defence, and health. The taskforce said Downing Street should back the mid-scale with the same ambition it has shown for the flagship tier.

The taskforce also wants to see grid connection queue reforms, prioritizing homes on distribution networks, and fast-tracking data centers on transmission lines.

AI skills and sovereignty are key

Crucially, the taskforce called for a stronger focus on AI training, led by Skills England, across priority sectors including construction, care, professional services, and manufacturing.

The country also needs a clear definition of sovereign AI - often just a marketing label, the report warned. This means creating a workload classification framework that grades sovereignty across each layer of the stack - infrastructure, including data centers, compute and networks, data, models and applications, and workloads.

Elsewhere, the government should publish Cabinet Office guidance and gap analyses, requiring fallback mechanisms for public services reliant on hosted frontier AI models, starting with healthcare; and return the Government Digital Service to the center of government to lead procurement.

"The government has taken important steps to set the UK's AI ambition; now it’s time for government and industry to come together to deliver. Our national strategy must translate into tangible benefits for every region and community," said Sarah Walker, chief executive, Cisco UK & Ireland.

"That starts by recognising that AI is only ever as powerful as the infrastructure that underpins it, the power that sustains it, and the robust cybersecurity that protects it. By backing these recommendations and accelerating digital skills through strong cross-sector partnerships, government and industry can build the secure, trusted ecosystems needed for AI to scale responsibly.”

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Veeam has launched a global initiative that combines its data protection capabilities with local service providers’ local expertise to help customers address data sovereignty requirements.

The new Veeam Sovereign Service Providers Program will be launched in phases, with the first introducing the Data Sovereignty Competency within the company’s Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) program. Additional program offerings are set to follow later in the year.

The initiative will see the vendor work with participating service providers to deliver services tailored to customers’ business needs. These services will combine Veeam’s technical capabilities around sovereign data protection with providers’ local operating models, governance, jurisdictional expertise, and established market presence.

Veeam said this will enable customers to assess solutions across data location, operational control, access governance, and legal jurisdiction without compromising cyber resilience or recoverability.

“Sovereignty is defined by each customer’s regional government, legal, regulatory and operational requirements,” commented Michelle Graff, Veeam’s senior vice president of global partnerships. “Meeting those requirements depends on both technology and the way a service is operated.”

Graff said the company’s new initiative brings these two elements together by merging its own data protection capabilities with local expertise across governance and service delivery.

“The VCSP Data Sovereignty Competency gives customers a clearer way to identify providers that have invested in both,” she added.

Highlighting data sovereignty expertise

The VCSP Data Sovereignty Competency arrives as AI technologies become a critical element of business operations, security, and governance.

According to recent Veeam research, 70% of surveyed companies admitted that AI workflows are interacting with sensitive corporate data without full oversight, while 67% said employees are creating autonomous workflows that cannot currently be fully tracked.

The vendor said its new competency will now help customers identify providers that have demonstrated capabilities against its criteria for operational, legal, technological, and governance capabilities.

These requirements include local operating models, jurisdictional controls, in-region personnel, data governance, customer oversight, and resilient data protection.

The competency acts as a reflection of a provider’s alignment with its program requirements, rather than replacing a customer’s own legal, regulatory, risk, or compliance assessments.

Strengthening customer choice

By combining its own capabilities with local providers’ sovereign operating capabilities, Veeam said the resulting solutions will help customers address data sovereignty requirements as regulatory and geopolitical factors continue to evolve.

The new competency sits alongside other offerings in the VCSP program, with customers able to select service providers based on relevant requirements – including data sovereignty, disaster recovery as-a-service, and off-site backup.

Tim Pfaelzer, Veeam’s general manager and senior vice president for EMEA, said Europe has seen sovereignty evolve from a compliance consideration into a key strategic business requirement.

“As regulation expands and organizations scale AI initiatives, they need greater certainty over where data resides, who can access it and which laws govern its use,” he explained.

“Veeam’s technology, combined with the local operating capabilities of trusted service providers, gives customers a practical and defensible route to strengthen data control without sacrificing resilience or recovery.”

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The government should do more to make sure UK taxpayers benefit from tech firms that have received public funding, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is the UK’s largest single public funder of research and innovation, with a budget of £9.2 billion for 2026–27. However, a new report notes that while it’s great at handing out grants, the organization should be taking more equity stakes in companies where it provides funding. .

According to the government, UK universities proportionally generate more spinout companies and patents than in the US - but the way this intellectual property (IP) is then monetized is patchy, according to the PAC.

UKRI is too focused on avoiding inhibiting companies' growth, it said, warning: "The longer UKRI and the government spend thinking, reviewing and considering what they might do, rather than actively intervening on behalf of the taxpayer, the more opportunities will be missed."

UKRI gives free access to publicly-funded supercomputers to AI startups deemed to be 'strategically significant', while DSIT revised its procurement rules to improve UK companies' access to £400 million in specialist AI chips.

The British Business Bank, meanwhile, also invests alongside pension funds, giving the public a stake in supported businesses. However, while ministers hoped for faster pension fund investment, progress has been slow.

“It may strike followers of this committee’s work that our call for government to take a less cautious approach to taking a direct stake in British innovation is an unusual one," said Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the PAC.

"But we are a body dedicated to value for taxpayers’ money, not hoarding it. The nations currently leading the global tech race did not achieve their positions by avoiding more entrepreneurial policies. This is a simple case for the government of nothing ventured, nothing gained."

North-south divide widens

Meanwhile, the report points to a continuing north-south divide for researchers, with London, the South East, and East of England receiving half of all UKRI funding.

Although 20% of UKRI’s spending now takes place in the North – up from 12% five years ago – UKRI should build on this by setting specific targets around regional growth, the committee said.

It is also concerned that the current budget allocated by UKRI to the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which supports UK research facilities, could mean it has to cut its spending on collaborative projects with other nations.

"UKRI’s spending in the North seems to be going in the right direction, but without a dedicated focus on rebalancing the scales, there is every possibility of slipping back to the previous status quo," said Clifton-Brown.

"Further, if the UK doesn’t protect its ownership of innovative ideas, this intellectual property is then exploited by countries around the world who are then better able to compete with us."

Infrastructure bloat in the spotlight

The PAC has also urged UKRI to review the condition of its 'bloated' research infrastructure estate, and should be prioritizing decisions on what infrastructure could be decommissioned much more actively.

The report noted that UKRI cancelled funding for its airborne laboratory five years after deciding to upgrade it, after spending £46 million of the £49 million budget.

According to the committee, the organization should have been quicker in realizing the Science and Facilities Technology Council’s (STFC’s) plans were unaffordable.

"The research infrastructure funded by UKRI is becoming ever more important, as advancements and breakthroughs at the cutting edge of technology determine the new winners and losers on the global stage," the report read.

"The critical role UKRI will play in this race cannot be overstated, and it is vitally important that it spends the money available to it wisely, in accordance with a strategic plan and taking into account its existing infrastructure investments."

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The career ladder has never been wobblier. Thanks to AI’s impact on job roles and responsibilities, what once seemed like a challenging but progressive climb to the top is a lot more complicated. Defined rungs on the career ladder, such as moving from junior into more senior positions, are now less clear.

Take the IT profession, where generative and agentic AI are helping to automate increasing elements of the software development lifecycle. From coding to testing and onto deployment and maintenance, AI agents are fulfilling parts of the traditional IT professional role, with a commensurate impact on the career ladder.

These emerging technologies are automating routine, entry-level tasks and compressing lower rungs of the ladder. As these rungs disappear, so do the opportunities for junior staff members to prove their capabilities and move into more senior positions, according to research from Harvard University.

If you’re going to climb the ladder, it’s more important than ever to stand out from your competitors. And the good news, according to the experts who have spoken with ITPro, is that professionals with the right blend of skills can still reach the top in the AI age.

“If you think about yourself in a narrow sense, then I think AI is likely to displace you,” says Joel Hron, CTO at content and technology specialist Thomson Reuters.

“But if you view yourself as a higher-order value add to a company – and your job is to solve problems, and you can avoid putting yourself in a box as a certain type of employee – then the sky's the limit for you, especially with AI.”

Find ways to join the dots

The message is clear: yes, AI brings an existential threat to some professional roles, but its impact doesn’t have to be terminal. Smart people embrace the challenge of automation. For Hron, a promotion-worthy professional understands that tomorrow won’t look like today.

“I think adaptability is now one of the most important things, especially as the job of software engineering is changing,” he says, referring to transformations in IT roles and responsibilities.

“If you believe that the value that you bring to an organization is through the code you write, then you know you are going to be frustrated in the future.”

Career ladder changes are not confined to the IT sector. Employees in all sectors, from public sector organizations to blue-chip enterprises, are seeing labor market flux. In these fast-changing conditions, managers look for up-and-coming staff who can work across functions.

Thierry Martin, head of enterprise data and analytics at automotive giant Toyota Motor Europe, says he’s impressed when people can join the dots, particularly if they bring a new take to an established way of working.

“Success is about going beyond the obvious,” he says.

“It’s great if someone can say, ‘Hey, we have the sales data, we have this quality data, we have this manufacturing data, and look, this is what we can do with it.’ I might think, ‘Wow, I never thought about this.’”

That sentiment resonates with Bernhard Seiser, VP of digital, data and IT at AOP Health, who says the people who impress him are hungry for change. The pharmaceuticals sector is characterized by the opportunity to turn small ideas into life-changing transformations. The best professionals look to exploit their knowledge.

“Great people want to learn,” he says.

“They want to understand not just the technical parts, but also the business. That capability is critical for my business and how I see digitalization within a pharmaceutical organization. My team needs to understand how the organization operates, sometimes even better than the people in the business, ideally.”

Crucially, Seiser says, great ideas aren’t put into production in isolation. Professionals who move up the career ladder understand a challenge before others and then work to deliver ambitious solutions on time and to budget as part of an integrated approach.

“Always keeping in mind that we are part of a family is key,” he says.

“Managing our portfolio is often stressful. We have a lot that needs to be delivered, but this work also needs to be seen in a broader context – we're here as a family to serve our patients, and that's what the professionals need to keep in mind.”

Enable change for the business

The characteristics of next-generation leaders that business leaders like Seiser identify are focused squarely on high-quality delivery. For Tal Carmi, CIO at technology specialist WalkMe, AI might change the shape of the career ladder, but that impact doesn’t mean the best people transform their approach.

“In general, impressing the boss is about taking ownership,” he said.

“It’s caring about being a good partner to the business; trying to be an enabler, not a naysayer. And it’s about working pleasantly. Collaboration doesn't have to be centered on corporate-style language. Being a good partner means being someone people like to speak to.”

Encouragingly, Carmi says professionals who excel in these areas – taking ownership, enabling change, and collaborating effectively – will have plentiful opportunities to be promoted, particularly in IT. People who see your strengths will be receptive to your ideas, rather than thinking you’re just interfering.

“You will find yourself at the forefront because you will try to adopt new tools, concepts, or whatever the latest thing is to try and give the business you’re working with the best solution that you can,” he says.

Ankur Anand, group CIO at recruiter Harvey Nash, also says key characteristics define impressive professionals. First, they have a robust understanding of the business problem. Second, they explain their solution without using technical jargon.

“This structured approach is not just about technology,” he says.

“It’s about technology, governance, control, and people, which is training and learning and everything together. And the final piece is about understanding what role they play in making their solution successful, and knowing what data helps.”

In short, great would-be leaders measure and assess risks that inform decisions. Anand gives the example of software testing. Rather than testing endlessly to try and make things work, a great professional approaches their boss and explains the cost, in clear financial terms, of not getting a system up and running.

“Then the executive understands the issue and says, ‘Okay, now I get the impact, and we need to figure out why things are not working,’” he says.

“There’s a big difference between a person who understands the context and risk, and those who can then articulate those concerns in a business-focused way.”

More than eight-in-ten business leaders are confident that the UK can lead in AI, but only half as many UK employees agree on that front, according to new research from Microsoft.

A survey of 5,000 UK employees and 1,000 of their bosses as part of Microsoft's AI Diffusion Report reveals a growing gap between how business leaders and their employees see the potential benefits of AI.

Of the business leaders surveyed, 84% reported feeling confident that the UK can become "a world-leading economy within five years," but only 41% of UK employees agreed.

Mind the AI gap

What's behind the gap? According to Microsoft, 35% of the surveyed workers believed AI had reduced their own job security, with 57% saying it hurts job prospects for younger people.

Despite those concerns, 71% also agreed AI had a positive impact on their work and 69% believe it had boosted the quality of their work.

While business leaders and workers may disagree on the job risks and utility of AI, about six-in-ten of both groups believe the government should do more to help the UK reap the benefits of the technology. Indeed, more than a third from each group are now calling for heightened regulation and safeguards.

"Government and industry must work together to respond to British business leaders' calls for greater action on skills, build trust in the technology and ensure its benefits reach everyone," said Darren Hardman, CEO of Microsoft UK & Ireland.

"If we remain divided on whether AI will have a positive impact, if we fail to build trust in the technology and if we cannot put the necessary safety ecosystem for models in place, then we will not create the society we want.

"The UK has a chance to lead, not just in AI adoption, but in AI safety. Get both right, and we can unlock growth while ensuring the benefits of AI are open to all."

AI diffusion in the UK

Microsoft's wider AI diffusion report shows the UK has leapt from 35.6% adoption to 43.7% as of the second quarter of 2026. That ranks the UK second in the G7 when it comes to adoption rates after France, and eighth globally, according to Microsoft's figures.

The report noted that this shows a disconnect between the countries making frontier AI and applying it, with the US and China centered in most discussions about the technology.

"This overlooks a distinction between frontier AI and the more prosaic routine, task-level AI use through which most productivity gains are likely to be realised: tools embedded across routine business processes, public services, and everyday work," the report notes.

"Frontier capability does not automatically produce broad diffusion, as the United States’ comparatively low adoption rate of 33.0% illustrates, ranking at 21st globally in Q2 of 2026."

Development vs diffusion

Notably, the study found that the UK can't match the US or China in frontier capital spending, adding that an "excessive focus on that contest" risks distracting from how the UK can gain economically from the technology.

As a nation, the UK "does not need to be a leader in model development to reap the benefits", Microsoft said. The report added that countries that use these technologies will see the greatest long-term gains.

Regardless, Microsoft said the UK should still strive to meet the government's stated goal of becoming the country with the fastest AI adoption in the G7.

"Our thriving technology sector is playing a fundamental role in the economic growth recognised by the IMF," Hardman commented. "Business leaders and employees across the country are embracing AI to change not only what they do and how they get things done, but how quickly."

The report from Microsoft comes amidst increased investment in AI-related support for British businesses. The company has committed to £23 billion in investment over the next three years to help drive adoption rates, including $15bn in cloud and AI infrastructure.

However, recent reports show the company has pulled out of a data center deal with Nscale. As ITPro reported on 19 October, the deal has fallen through due to lingering concerns over power supply for the Essex-based site.

The Loughton development was set to deliver 50 MW of AI capacity, scalable to 90 MW, and to initially house 23,040 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs. It was expected to create 250 permanent jobs.

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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.

Highlights

"When we did our survey, what was very clear coming through the datasets is that organizations are actively investing in data literacy. So some of the things we've already talked about are resonating, and they recognize this is an area, a critical operational area."

"That's the first thing; let's challenge where people are and make sure we are operating from the same benchmark. You've got the right readiness to assess."

Links

• Why AI adoption is a people problem, not a technology problem
• Enterprises are 'paralyzed by a lack of understanding' with AI adoption – and there's one key factor that decides success

European businesses are over-reliant on American AI providers and their laissez-faire attitude risks putting the continent at the mercy of closed systems and unexpected access restrictions.

That’s according to Mistral AI co-founder Arthur Mensch, who penned a column in Le Monde arguing Europe will be subject to an “an economic regime of dependence without equivalent in the history of civilization”.

Mensch claimed that “serious people” in Europe have suggested it’s better for the US and China to spend the millions or billions of Euros needed to create frontier AI models, rather than strain the European economy.

“According to them, it’s better to follow the recipe of the internet, where the value is in creating new applications and focus our efforts on what Europe knows how to do: its industrial data, its SMBs, and professional expertise. For everything else, open models created by others will suffice,” said Mensch.

“This is a fundamental error, which will cost Europe its place in the world,” he added. “AI isn’t the internet. The internet relied on open protocols that nobody owned. Closed AI models are proprietary. What an application or agent knows to do is decided by the model.”

Mensch pointed out not only can the owners of these proprietary models hike prices or retire a version of the model without user recourse, they can also cut access without notice. This isn’t hypothetical, as evidenced by Anthropic cutting off access to Fable and Mythos in June 2026.

“Access was reestablished, but the decision wasn’t taken in Europe, nor for Europeans. Nobody asked our opinion,” he added.

Mensch’s column comes amid heightened tensions over AI dependence and a rising interest in sovereign cloud and sovereign AI.

In the UK, the government established a £500 million startup fund to boost the country’s sovereign AI ambitions. Businesses in the country have also started to turn their attention towards sovereign AI in order to reduce their dependence on overseas providers.

Nevertheless, sovereign AI can have hidden costs. According to Forrester senior analyst Dario Maisto, this can mean slower roll out due to a skills deficit and a misunderstanding of what ‘sovereign’ is when it comes to infrastructure.

There’s also a monetary cost: research commissioned by CCIA Europe has claimed the EU sovereign AI bill could cost six times more than the bloc’s own upper estimate of €18 billion. Instead, the trade body – which is made up of non-EU businesses, primarily from the US – has predicted a potential cost of €115 billion over 10 years.

According to Mensch, however, the price is worth paying.

“If Europe resigns itself [to the status quo], AI will continue to be created elsewhere and we will only have access to second tier export versions, in exchange for licenses that will cost trillions of Euros,” he said.

The European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) think tank has issued a report claiming that the EU's proposed sovereignty rules could cost the bloc billions.

The research, funded by CCIA Europe – a trade body with members including Amazon, Google, and Meta – examined the costs associated with the European Commission’s proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), which excludes non-EU providers from parts of the cloud and AI market.

The research found, the Act risks imposing €115 billion in costs over the next decade – six times the Commission’s upper estimate of €18 billion.

The reasons, said the researchers, come down to three critical blind spots in the Commission’s impact assessment:

• Failure to include €33.3 billion in direct public budget exposure
• Ignoring the cost of software re-architecting and code-rewriting, which ECIPE said accounts for 69% of CADA’s real-world impact
• Failure to take into account the cost of private-sector spill-overs, which, the report found, could amount to as much as €80 billion.

"Member states can’t rely on the Commission’s incomplete estimates when deciding CADA’s strict sovereignty requirements for cloud and AI providers," said CCIA Europe’s policy manager, Mitchell Rutledge. "Taxpayers and businesses will foot the bill, yet the official assessment missed 70% of CADA’s true impact.”

CCIA Europe is particularly bothered by Article 31 of the act, which allows the Commission to extend strict sovereignty restrictions beyond public procurement to certain private sectors, including banking, energy, healthcare, and transport.

This, it said, would increase the cost enormously, as European software vendors and digital SMEs would be forced to redesign applications currently built on global cloud architectures and AI platforms.

“Governments must recognise that CADA’s massive spillover costs for essential private-sector entities are not hypothetical but inevitable," said Rutledge. "Businesses cannot simply switch servers; they must redesign software and rewrite code across entire supply chains.”

Not entirely unexpectedly, CCIA Europe is calling on EU member states to drastically overhaul CADA, limiting sovereignty restrictions to sensitive workloads where specific public-order risks are demonstrated.

Describing corporate-origin and personnel-nationality requirements as 'discriminatory', it wants to see these rules replaced with risk-based technical safeguards.

Meanwhile, 'trusted international partners' with bilateral EU procurement commitments – like its members – should be exempted from Article 18 country screening.

“These sweeping restrictions risk draining European innovation and penalizing highly digitized member states," said Rutledge. "EU decision-makers must refocus CADA on objective, risk-based security rather than discriminatory rules that fragment the single market.”

Big US tech firms have put a lot of effort into convincing Europe that they too can provide sovereign European services. AWS's European Sovereign Cloud, for example, sees enterprise data hosted and stored solely in the region, and kept separate from other AWS Regions worldwide. Microsoft's Sovereign Cloud and Google's sovereign solutions make similar promises.

However, there are still concerns: US tech firms are subject to the US Cloud Act, which allows US law enforcement to demand access to the data they hold, even when it's stored outside the US.

Thanks to these concerns, according to Gartner research earlier this year, a fifth of European workloads are shifting to local clouds, with sovereign cloud infrastructure spending in the region set to triple between 2025 and 2027.

The topic of conversation in enterprise IT used to focus on transformation: which platform to move to, how fast to migrate, and what the roadmap looked like. Gradually, the conversation has shifted to questions about how we ended up spending so much just to stand still.

Those conversations with senior IT and finance leaders across the region keep returning to the same issues, and the pattern goes beyond any single vendor or sector. Organizations are caught between rising software maintenance costs, a storm of vendor demands to upgrade to their latest AI versions, growing cybersecurity demands and budgets that have barely moved.

Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index finds that one in three employees say the pace of work over the past five years has made it impossible to keep up, and business leaders feel that pressure as well. When you factor in that nearly a quarter of the IT workforce's time goes on maintaining existing systems, it becomes clear why so many organizations are struggling to fund anything new.

We call this ‘innovation paralysis’, the inability to progress new strategies and ideas because existing systems consume so much of the budget, resources and attention that innovation requires. For channel partners that can identify and eliminate low-value spend, freeing up capital and resources for higher-value initiatives, this presents an opportunity to help clients accelerate progress and springboard to the future.

The pressure leaders are feeling also shows up in the numbers

Our research found that 44% of C-suite decision-makers see AI and automation as their top capability priority, and 69% anticipate significant changes in their ERP investments. However, most organizations have resources tied up in maintenance costs, with little room for anything new.

A separate Akamai study of 750 IT decision-makers in the UK, France, and Germany reinforces this point by highlighting how rising cloud costs are forcing over two-thirds of businesses to cut spending elsewhere. Those cuts hit AI budgets, cybersecurity investment, and IT staff the most, as only 11% of organizations say their AI initiatives are paying for themselves. The result is a widening gap between ambition and execution: vendors and market demand that businesses accelerate AI adoption and strengthen cyber resilience, yet organizations keep redirecting the resources needed to sustain existing systems instead.

Much of this pressure stems from vendor lock-in. Forced upgrade cycles, limited pricing transparency, and the threat of losing access to future innovation unless a company migrates to a newer version are now familiar frustrations, with 35% of C-suite leaders directly citing vendor lock-in as a barrier to their long-term technology goals. The impact of that dynamic becomes most visible in support contracts, where many European enterprises continue to pay premium maintenance fees for services that feel distant, standardized, and disconnected from their operational realities.

Trust: The gap channel partners must bridge

Relationships, implementation history, and the extent to which boards trust the guidance their channel partners provide all shape the outcome of enterprise technology investment decisions.

When vendors reinforce those constraints through costly migrations or unexpected licensing changes, the conversation moves from IT into the boardroom, where boards stop asking which platform to choose and start asking whose interests their vendor actually serves.

This is where channel partners can serve as the objective voice many organizations are actively seeking. The partners delivering real progress are walking into customer meetings and putting their clients’ desired business outcomes first, technology and solutions second.

From cost reduction to self-funded innovation

For many customers, this issue is not a lack of ambition. It is that too much of the IT budget is already committed to maintaining existing environments, responding to vendor-driven timelines, or absorbing cost increases that were not part of the original plan. This is where channel partners can play a far more strategic role: helping clients identify where budget is being consumed without creating proportional business value, then building a realistic path to redirect spend toward innovation.

That conversation should not start with a solution. It should start with the client’s roadmap. What systems are still delivering value? Which upgrades are being driven more by vendor pressure rather than business need? Where are costs rising without improving resilience, agility, or customer experience? By helping clients answer those questions, partners can advocate for the budget flexibility and technology choices the customers need, rather than accepting a vendor-prescribed route.

VMware is a useful example of how this dynamic is playing out. Following the Broadcom acquisition, many customers have had to reassess rising licensing costs, contract terms, and longer-term infrastructure plans. The partners creating value in those conversations are not just presenting alternatives; they help clients understand their options, protect continuity, and make decisions based on business priorities rather than external pressure.

The same principle applies to AI. Innovation does not always require a full migration or multi-year transformation program. In many cases, clients can make progress by layering Agentic AI capabilities onto stable enterprise systems they already trust, freeing up budget from low-value spend and applying it to targeted, measurable initiatives. For organizations caught in innovation paralysis, that shift matters. It gives them more control over when and how they modernize, and it gives partners a stronger role as advocates for the client’s roadmap, budget, and long-term business outcomes.

What this means for how partners position themselves

Across Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Value-Added Resellers (VARs), and management consultants, the channel partners building lasting customer relationships in this environment share a few characteristics. They lead with financial and strategic analysis rather than a product.

Just as importantly, they give clients more choices, helping them evaluate the best path based on business priorities rather than vendor timelines — and, in doing so, demonstrate that client needs come first. They are willing to name the cost of staying still, including the cost of lock-in, and they bring third-party data to support that conversation rather than relying on narratives that come from the vendor. They are also broadening the conversation beyond the IT team, finding their way into CFO and boardroom discussions, where the real decisions about innovation investment are happening.

The recurring revenue opportunity here is worth taking seriously because it naturally follows from the kind of relationship building being described. Customers who restructure their software estate to reduce maintenance costs and reinvest those savings in AI-enabled processes need ongoing advisory support, managed services, and implementation capability to make it work. That relationship deepens over time, built on independence from vendors and the ability to deliver outcomes the customer can see and measure.

Boards are already asking whether the advice they've been receiving has served the business or the vendor best. The channel partners who can answer that question in the customer's favor will own those relationships and close the trust gap. The ones who can't will find they're limited to competing on price.

High job satisfaction may not be enough for employers to keep hold of their tech staff, according to new research from professional association ISACA, which warns that burnout and unclear career paths are pushing workers to look elsewhere.

According to the organisation's Tech Workplace and Culture 2026 report, which surveyed more than 1,000 tech professionals worldwide, although 76% are satisfied with their current role and 71% are satisfied with their career progression, nearly three-quarters (73%) said they would consider moving to a new employer in the next two years, or had not ruled it out.

Among respondents who had left a previous job, the most common reasons were better career prospects (29%), higher pay (28%), and more interesting work (23%). An unclear path upwards was also the most commonly cited obstacle to career advancement, named by a third (34%) of respondents and 41% of women.

Economic conditions may be masking the scale of this problem, according to Julia Hermann, head of digital platform services at cybersecurity firm Giesecke+Devrient. Speaking at a media briefing during ISACA Europe 2026, Hermann, who is also a leader of ISACA's SheLeadsTech programme in Germany, said layoffs in sectors such as the German automotive industry had led to a phenomenon known as "job hugging".

"People stick to their jobs, though they might not be totally satisfied, because at the moment it's not really easy to find a new job," she said. "The salaries are partially going down, or at least stagnating, so you're not necessarily making a big jump when you go to another company."

Long probationary periods add to the risk of moving, she added: "If you're the last to come, you're the first to go on the next layoffs."

This trend may be delaying departures rather than preventing them, however. ISACA warned that workplace pressures are feeding into the sector's retention problems, which three-quarters (75%) of respondents said were already a concern for their organisation. More than half (59%) of respondents said they had experienced work-related stress or burnout, rising to 64% among women, with the main causes being heavy workloads (48%) and a lack of resources (43%). Despite this, only a quarter (25%) said their employer offers mental health days, and 23% said it offers no support at all.

AI is adding to this pressure, Hermann explained, noting that while the technology is often deployed with the intention to reduce workloads, companies are not hiring for new roles to run the platforms behind it. As a result, she said, the work lands on existing staff on top of their day-to-day operational duties, noting that AI has created "a lot more work" for her team, which is now responsible for managing and securing the internal platforms that support the company's own AI models.

Entry-level roles may be more affected, however. Younger staff tend to move jobs more often, according to Hermann, and AI may also be squeezing the roles they start out in. ISACA's senior vice president of advocacy, Tara Wisniewski, warned this could make the industry's pipeline problems worse, arguing that organisations like ISACA and universities need to help graduates into the market, "and industry needs to be called to the table there too".

"We do believe that professions will change. We don't believe that they will be eradicated as a whole, but we do believe that they will change," Chris Dimitriadis, ISACA's chief global strategy officer, told media at ISACA Europe. He said he expects AI to take on most technical and orchestration tasks, leaving people to focus on governance, configuring and monitoring AI systems, and making final decisions.

In ISACA's State of Cybersecurity 2026 report, which surveyed security professionals globally, soft skills were the most commonly reported shortcoming among security professionals (57%), while 45% cited missing LLM SecOps capabilities, up 12 percentage points from the previous year. As AI takes on more technical work, Dimitriadis said, security staff will increasingly need the ability to explain to the rest of the business, in financial terms, how investment in security and AI will pay off.

Many teams are already short of people and money, however. The same report, published last month, found that more than half of European cyber security professionals said their teams were understaffed (56%) and underfunded (55%).

"Too often we are seeing budgets being sunk into crisis response, but there's still a distinct lack of investment in the workforce, training, and resources needed to prevent attacks and protect organisations in the first place," Dimitriadis said when the report was published.

He warned that the skills gap is likely to widen as roles change, "not just in terms of the numbers, but also in terms of the type of skills that's needed". It could grow "not because we are going to lose the people, but because... their knowledge may become obsolete very fast as digital ecosystems change".

ISACA's Tech Workplace and Culture 2026 survey of 1,025 tech professionals worldwide was carried out between 17 July and 3 August 2026. Its State of Cybersecurity 2026 report surveyed 1,888 cybersecurity professionals, including 494 in Europe, in May 2026.

OpenAI has announced the appointment of Ismail Elmas as vice president of EMEA sales, as the AI giant looks to continue expanding its footprint in the region.

A seasoned industry leader, Elmas arrives with more than 25 years’ experience in enterprise software and cyber security. He joins OpenAI from SpaceXAI via its acquisition of Cursor, where he held the role of senior vice president for EMEA.

Prior to his spell at Cursor, Elmas served as group vice president of international business at Rubrik, and has previously spent four years at Zscaler, where he led teams across Europe and Asia. Other positions include leadership roles at AppDynamics and BMC Software.

In an announcement, Brian McCarthy, OpenAI’s vice president of worldwide sales, praised Elmas as “an exceptional leader” with expertise in building successful teams and helping companies leverage new technologies to drive value.

“He combines the discipline to deliver results with a clear focus on customers,” he said. “I’m excited to work with him as we grow across EMEA and help more businesses across the region put AI to work.”

Expanding OpenAI’s EMEA footprint

The appointment follows a strong period of expansion for OpenAI in EMEA – a region the company considers one of its largest and most important outside of the US. Over the past year, weekly users of ChatGPT in EMEA grew by more than 40%, while ChatGPT Business Enterprise seats across the region have more than doubled in that time.

The last few years have also seen the business add new offices in Dublin, Paris, Munich, Zurich, Brussels, and Abu Dhabi, following the 2023 opening of its first international office in London.

OpenAI said it is now looking to further build on that progress, with new offices in Madrid, Berlin, and Stockholm due to open in the coming months and further expansion plans slated for 2027.

Commenting on his appointment, Elmas said OpenAI has transformed how people work and how businesses conduct their operations.

“The combination of frontier technology and products people already know and use creates an enormous opportunity for businesses across EMEA in this era of agentic AI,” he said.

“Realising that opportunity means being close to customers, understanding their challenges and working alongside them. I can’t wait to build on what the team has already achieved as we enter this next chapter.”

It is "likely, if not inevitable" that the UK will fall victim to a major cyber attack similar to Australia's recent healthcare breach, AI minister Kanishka Narayan has warned.

His speech comes as part of a government pledge to introduce greater protections against emerging AI threats, use frontier AI to strengthen cyber defences, look at stronger legal protections and make the UK better-prepared for serious incidents involving autonomous AI systems.

"We will use every power at our disposal. We will legislate wherever necessary," Narayan said.

"And we won’t look to law alone. We will look to British ingenuity: our scientific expertise, technological capabilities and institutions to understand these increasingly powerful systems, defend against emerging threats and respond when things go wrong."

There are plans to build on two existing pilot schemes that have already used frontier AI to help identify and fix more than 1,000 vulnerabilities across government systems.

The government is also looking at stronger protections against emerging AI threats with the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, currently with the House of Lords, looking at how serious AI incidents and near misses can be identified and reported.

It's working with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the AI Security Institute (AISI) – which has once again been given access to major US models before they are released.

Naryan pointed out that the UK is increasingly dependent on technologies developed elsewhere.

"Much of the technology that will shape our economy, our public services, our national security is being developed outside this country," he said.

"That is now a question of national security, also a question of democratic power. If the British state cannot exercise meaningful control over the technologies on which our country depends, neither can the people that it represents."

The announcement follows a series of incidents in which AI agents have autonomously hacked into external systems. In one major example, OpenAI admitted that a combination of its models had breached Hugging Face systems, gaining access to the production database.

In a separate incident, four different versions of Anthropic's Claude AI models were revealed to have breached third-party systems.

"To the companies developing the world’s most powerful AI systems, my message is: Listen when your scientists warn of severe dangers. Investigate unexpected behaviours. And if you can’t adequately control the risks, do not release the system," Naryan said.

However, Nuala Polo, UK Public Policy Lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute, said the announcement contains little in the way of definite commitment.

"Stronger protections will be ‘considered’, strengthening the Cyber Bill ‘explored’ and near-miss reporting ‘looked at’, with the detail to come later. There is no new regulatory power, no timetable and no obligation on AI developers," she said.

"Even incident reporting, the most modest measure on the table, is still only under consideration, and might only apply to the ‘victims’ – the operators of essential services – rather than the AI companies."

BlueStar has announced it has agreed to be acquired by TD Synnex, in a move the US-based IT distributor said will generate new opportunities for partners.

Headquartered in Kentucky, BlueStar specializes in technologies across digital identification, point-of-sale (POS), radio-frequency identification (RFID), mobility, digital signage, networking, IoT, and robotics.

The company sells services exclusively to value-added resellers (VARs), integrators, and managed service providers (MSPs) in collaboration with hardware and software vendors.

Post-acquisition, BlueStar said it will continue to deliver specialized knowledge, trusted relationships, and dedicated partner support to the channel and wider IT community.

In an announcement, BlueStar chief executive officer Ryan Girvin described the move as a testament to the "hard work, commitment, and passion" of the firm's employees, customers, vendors, and network of partners.

"Together, we have built a company known for its expertise, innovation, and customer focus," he commented. "We believe joining TD Synnex creates an opportunity to accelerate our growth while preserving the specialized approach and entrepreneurial culture that have defined BlueStar from the beginning."

BlueStar will continue to operate as an independent company until the acquisition closes, with no changes to the processes, programs, and services it currently provides.

Girvin said the firm's success to date has been built on people and relationships – a focus that TD Synnex will help to strengthen through its broader resources and reach.

"We are excited about the opportunities this creates for our employees, customers, and vendor partners, and we are confident that TD Synnex shares our commitment to delivering exceptional value through expertise, service, and innovation," he added.

Expanding resources and capabilities for partners

TD Synnex provides a wide-ranging portfolio of technology solutions spanning cloud, cybersecurity, analytics, AI, and mobility. Supporting more than 150,000 customers across 100 countries.

According to the companies, TD Synnex moved to acquire BlueStar due to its specialized expertise, strong market position, and established presence across key global regions.

After completing the deal, the pair said customers, vendors, and partners can expect expanded resources, broader capabilities, and more market opportunities, alongside the industry expertise and high-touch support already on offer.

"BlueStar's success is built on the expertise of its team and the strong relationships they have developed with partners," commented TD Synnex CEO Patrick Zammit. "We're excited about the specialization BlueStar would bring to TD Synnex, including a focused go-to-market approach that has differentiated the business and created value for its partners."

The proposed deal remains subject to customary closing conditions and financial terms were not disclosed.

Businesses have spent the past few years investing heavily in AI, unified communications, collaboration platforms, and digital transformation. However, we’re increasingly seeing employees bypassing the systems organizations have invested in, causing significant security, compliance, and operational risks.

In fact, our recent research found a growing disconnect between technology investment and the realities of how people work. We’re experiencing a lack of cohesion between approved tools and employee requirements, with 71% of employees using non-approved communication tools at work when official systems do not meet their needs.

The concerns here are twofold: firstly, employees feel the need to seek out tools that better suit the way they work; secondly, the use of unapproved communication tools creates security and compliance risks while undermining the return on organizations' technology investments.

Channel partners are increasingly having to help customers and organizations navigate these challenges. It’s no longer enough for a customer to simply add new communication tools and technologies to their IT stack. They also need support to ensure the tools they’re implementing will bring impact and value to their employees, as well as ensuring that employees are actually using it in a way that will reap the benefits it promises.

The risk of shadow IT for businesses

The question to ask is, why are employees abandoning approved communication tools in the first place?

To uncover the reasoning, we need to delve into the uptick in ‘shadow IT’ use in the workplace. Shadow IT refers to employees using unapproved tools ‘in the shadows’, with organization leaders having little or no awareness of what is being used or how. This, in turn, creates a multitude of security issues, as these tools have not been properly vetted by an organization and therefore may have data security challenges that employees are unaware of when using them.

However, shadow IT is not a result of employees deliberately ignoring company policy, nor does it happen overnight. It develops gradually over time as employees become increasingly frustrated with the tools they are presented with at work that do not meet their own individual needs.

Particularly over the last six years, as hybrid work has increased dramatically, communication platforms often don’t fit naturally into day-to-day workflows.

Research shows that 71% of workers feel compelled to "make it work" with tools that were not designed for their needs, a figure that climbs to 79% among frontline workers.

The expectations around workplace communication have changed so much that many organizations are simply not set up to support employees in the right way anymore. Quick access to communication tools that offer flexibility is now crucial, but so is having systems that are easy to navigate.

For example, frontline or hybrid workers may need to respond quickly while away from their desks, making consumer messaging apps more convenient than approved workplace systems that were designed primarily for office-based use. The technology itself is not necessarily wrong, but it is not designed around the way people actually work, leading many employees to take matters into their own hands instead.

This complexity increases when we add AI into the mix. Shadow AI has seen a major uptick in UK organizations as legacy communication tools lack the AI capabilities employees today need to drive efficiency and innovation in their work. Our research found that 76% of workers use non-approved communication channels at work, significantly increasing the risk of cyber and compliance risks. To stop employees turning to their own preferred AI models, enterprises need to consider communication tools that already embed AI into workflows to improve productivity and day-to-day impact for teams.

We must remember that control, innovation, and employee experience are not competing priorities, but deeply interconnected. It is possible to provide the workforce with a streamlined communication tool stack that is efficient, easy to use, and supports their use of AI, while meeting compliance and control requirements.

Closing the communication experience gap is now essential for organizations that want to regain control, reduce risk and ensure technology investments deliver meaningful business impact.

The opportunity for partners

For channel partners, helping customers improve communication adoption presents far more than a services opportunity. It creates a route to becoming a trusted strategic adviser, supporting organizations with adoption, governance, integration, and AI readiness long after the initial deployment is complete.

The end goal for business leaders is to maximise ROI from their AI and communications tools. The ultimate way to achieve this is by streamlining tool overload to reduce spend and maximise operational efficiency, while ensuring that the chosen tools are delivering impact to employees in their day-to-day.

Channel partners are uniquely positioned to help businesses close this gap between technology implementation and real-world adoption. Customers need support not only with deploying new technologies, but with ensuring communication platforms are secure, intuitive, and aligned with how employees actually work. To maximise this support, there are four key areas that I believe channel partners can focus on to deliver real value to enterprises:

Assess organizational needs

Before implementing any new solutions, channel partners can help organizations take a step back and assess how their workforce is actually communicating. Different worker profiles, roles, and working environments will typically need different requirements, so a one-size-fits-all approach likely won’t deliver the best results.

By auditing existing tools, identifying gaps, and understanding the needs and working patterns of different employee groups, partners can help their customers determine the communications stack and solutions that will best support their workforce. This will ensure that technology decisions are driven by real-world needs from the start and create a stronger foundation for adoption and usability, as well as long-term value.

Training and usability

Channel partners can work with customers to establish robust and relevant training regimes that improve confidence, encourage adoption, and help employees get the most from the tools available to them. By improving adoption and confidence, partners can help organizations reduce reliance on unofficial communication channels and maximise the value of existing technology investments.

Strengthen governance

Governance is another area where many organizations continue to face challenges. Laws are changing all the time, especially when it comes to AI and automation. Channel partners have the opportunity to be the trusted voice that guides customers through the process with confidence, ensuring their chosen communication tools are compliant with evolving regulations while maintaining efficiency and usability.

The goal should be to embed governance into everyday workflows, rather than allowing it to become a barrier that encourages employees to seek alternative solutions.

Integration alignment

The final piece of the puzzle is ensuring communication tools fit within the wider organizational workflow. Can they connect to other business applications for a more integrated experience for the employee, or do they create additional steps that make the process more time-consuming?

By working closely with customers, channel partners can ensure communications infrastructure serves as a foundation for future AI initiatives, rather than a standalone technology investment.

The road ahead

The greatest opportunity for channel partners lies in helping customers bridge the gap between technology and employee experience.

Organizations are no longer looking for suppliers that simply deliver communications platforms. Indeed, they need trusted advisors who can help ensure those platforms are adopted, governed, and integrated in ways that improve productivity, reduce risk, and unlock greater value from AI and digital transformation investments.

AI is significantly under-regulated, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith has told the BBC, calling for greater legal obligations to organizations when their security is breached by AI.

"Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI," he told the BBC's Big Boss Interview podcast. "Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection."

AI, he said, is both a "tool and a weapon", and AI firms need to implement kill switches for when things go wrong. He also called for a legal requirement for the companies to create incident reports and inform any victims.

Smith also called for new AI technology to be evaluated by independent government bodies – and said that the UK was the best-positioned country to take the lead, referencing the work of the AI Security Institute (AISI).

"I actually think the country and the government that is in the best position to advance AI safety standards and even rules is here, it's the UK," he said.

"In the world of technology, in the tech sector, most people that I know would say, if you ask them, name the country that is the leader in having this technical capability, they would say, it's very simple. It's the UK."

Meanwhile, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has echoed Smith's remarks in a blog post over the weekend.

"It's time to step back and assess the trust architecture for this new era," he wrote. "We simply can't outsource responsibility for what intelligence does on our behalf. A model provider's assurances do not relieve us of that responsibility."

He called for systems to be developed around principles of observability, model diversity, observability, verifiability, and independent auditability. Models should be tightly contained from the start, and incidents should be quickly disclosed.

Notably, Nadella referred to AI as Super Intelligence – Donald Trump's preferred term. Trump, however, has repeatedly said that AI companies should be left to police themselves, and that he doesn't want to see them "stifled".

Late last month, he announced that Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Nvidia and xAI had signed a pledge to work with independent auditors on their AI systems - although this was merely "morally binding".

Trump also recently called on AI developers to stop sharing unreleased systems with AISI, causing Anthropic to prevent UK officials from examining Claude Mythos 5.1, its newest model.

However, he has now reportedly reversed that ban, and Smith believes that a UK leading global AI safety efforts could be viewed positively in the US.

"In Washington DC, people don't look at the UK, and they don't look at London the way they look at Brussels – that's a strength," he said.

"Let's speak calmly, maybe even softly, but firmly, and start to bring people together. I hope that's the role we can play as a company. I hope that's the role the UK can play as a country."

Former Sophos chief security officer (CSO) Simon Reed has joined Overe as a strategic advisor in a move CEO Paul Barnes believes will supercharge engagement with managed service providers (MSPs).

Launched three years ago, Overe offers a cybersecurity platform designed to help MSPs and small businesses secure Microsoft 365 and SaaS tools.

Speaking to ITPro, Barnes said the inspiration for launching the firm came after his experiences with a previous venture, endpoint security startup Prevx. At its height, before being acquired by Webroot, Prevx had more than 15,000 MSPs using its product.

With Overe, Barnes hopes to build on that success and bolster support for what he said has traditionally been a market overlooked by larger vendors.

“We’re very much focused on the MSP market because that’s been something which I’m extremely passionate about,” he told ITPro. “We know how underserved that market is and those clients which the MSPs serve.”

According to Barnes, the state of the security vendor market in 2026 requires a rethink. Large organizations such as Microsoft, for example, typically focus on larger clients, leaving a vacuum where smaller businesses are “kind of left to manage themselves”.

Combined with traditional challenges such as costs and skill capabilities, this places organizations at great risk amidst an increasingly perilous threat landscape, he added.

“Typically an MSP client is only small, like 10 users, clients, and the technologies that they are there to try and support them [with] are either far too expensive or far too complex, [and] hard to manage,” he told ITPro. “They make it inaccessible in the sense that you need expertise to really take advantage of that.”

“There are capital costs, staff, and the actual buying of the technologies,” Barnes added.

With Reed joining Overe, Barnes said this marks a “big win” for the company. The industry veteran brings a wealth of experience, having come from a software engineering background before moving into the cybersecurity industry in 2001.

Working on the vendor side with roles at McAfee and Sophos, this gives Reed a unique insight into this market, Barnes said.

A challenging environment

Speaking to ITPro, Reed said his appointment at Overe comes amidst a challenging period both for MSPs and end-user enterprises, many of which lack key technical capabilities and require continuous support.

“It used to be that cybersecurity was an install and forget capability,” he said. “The product updated itself and kept you protected. That’s not the case these days you need continued expertise in partnership with [a] decent product and capability.”

“If you think about a smaller company, where are they getting their cybersecurity expertise? Generally, they’re getting it from the MSP, and it’s that partnership between product and the MSP that’s the most crucial link.”

Combined with rising cybersecurity threats and the advent of generative AI, these dynamics are placing huge pressure on both enterprise end-users and MSPs alike, according to Reed.

It’s here that Overe aims to plug gaps and provide support, with a particular focus on cyber resilience. Indeed, it’s this focus that drew Reed to the company in the first place.

“We’re at a sort of sea change in thinking about cyber where just building defenses is just not adequate on its own,” he told ITPro. “You will see people working a lot hard on what I call resilience in that market

“This is why I’m passionate about it [Overe] because it’s not just a sort of defensive play for MSPs. It’s a resilience play. It’s about have you got your estate configured, have you got this tool set up, do you have the coverage in the place you think you have the coverage,” he added.

“It plays into that growing need in the market for more resilience, and we definitely need more resilience in smaller medium businesses.”

Looking ahead, Barnes said Overe intends to build on early success so far and the company has built a “solid team” that operates in several regions.

“We’ve got some great early angels and built a solid team around us,” he said. “We’re in a few regions and having someone like Simon advise us it’s a massive win for us.”

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The UK and Germany have announced a new Industrial Tech Corridor aimed at encouraging partnerships between companies in the two countries.

The deal, which builds on the existing Strategic Science and Technology Partnership, is being backed by some of Germany’s leading companies including Allianz, Bosch, RWE, and Siemens.

The aim is to connect industry leaders, tech firms, and innovators from both countries, allowing them to work together on AI and critical technologies.

"Together with the UK, we’re building an ideal launchpad for AI companies to scale internationally," said Germany's federal minister for digital transformation and government modernization, Karsten Wildberger.

"The UK-German Tech Corridor will accelerate scale-ups to enter Europe’s most advanced AI ecosystems. This partnership represents an important step to strengthening our digital sovereignty."

The focus will be initially on AI and high-value industrial applications, with a first dedicated Tech Corridor roundtable convening CEOs of selected primes, AI scale-ups, and senior officials scheduled for later this year.

To connect AI and critical technology scale-ups with industrial demand, firms in both countries will be encouraged to develop scaled industrial use cases.

The two countries will also share a pot of around €20 million to help accelerate joint quantum research. This will support projects in a range of areas, from quantum computing through to the technology’s use in financial services.

It could also lead to cutting-edge breakthroughs in areas such as quantum sensors.

This means cash for a further five research projects across Germany and the UK, making use of the existing bilateral quantum cooperation and increasing the number of funded projects to 10.

"We already work closely with Germany in key areas like AI and quantum, and today lays a new foundation - combining the strengths of our businesses and innovators so people in both countries will benefit from for years to come," said UK secretary of state for business, innovation, science and trade, Jonathan Reynolds.

MicroAGI announces London hub

Following the deal, Germany-based tech firm MicroAGI, a robotics research company headquartered in Munich, will expand its footprint in London, creating 180 new jobs, while energy company Proxima Fusion plans to expand its base in Oxfordshire, hoping to quadruple its local workforce by 2028.

The UK-based AI software company Quantexa, meanwhile, is committing to building a dedicated sovereign unit in Germany which will support AI deployment in both countries.

Similarly, the two countries have also convened senior business leaders for a Regional Growth Forum, focused on fostering business-government collaboration, regional growth and innovation.

The plan is to develop a deeper regional dialog to be held in 2027, involving local and regional stakeholders.

"Today’s agreements are great news for British tech, businesses, and workers. They mean more jobs, more investment, and more innovations that will change lives," said Reynolds.

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Keeper Security has announced it now protects more than 100,000 enterprise customers worldwide, as the identity security vendor continues to build on strong recent growth.

The zero trust and zero-knowledge specialist said the growing adoption of its security platform spans all industries – including finance, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, and the public sector – across more than 150 countries.

The latest milestone follows the news that Keeper Security has now surpassed $240 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), while research firm Gartner named the company as the second fastest-growing competitor in the worldwide security software market in 2025.

The firm’s KeeperPAM privileged access management platform unifies capabilities such as password and passkey management, secrets governance, privileged session monitoring, endpoint privilege management, zero-trust network access, and remote browser isolation.

The platform’s zero-knowledge architecture works to ensure that all credentials and session data remain encrypted with the customer’s private key to give security teams complete control over their data.

Driving enterprise adoption

Fresh innovations have helped drive adoption of the platform across the enterprise – including the introduction of KeeperAI. According to Keeper, the tool provides real-time session monitoring to reduce threat detection time by 99% with automated response across 100% of privileged sessions.

The vendor has also extended agentic AI governance to its Endpoint Privilege Manager to enable enforcement of access policies, elevation controls, and behavioral monitoring across known and unknown AI agents.

Additionally, the Keeper Secrets Manager now integrates with model context protocol (MCP) servers to enable secure credential access for AI agents, while certified enterprise connectors for platforms such as Microsoft Azure Logic Apps aim to eliminate hardcoded secrets within automated workflows.

Elsewhere, Keeper said system integrations with SailPoint and Wiz are also helping to accelerate adoption, alongside the integration of privileged access and and credential approvals into platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Slack, Jira, ServiceNow, and Freshservice, which enable users to request and approve access without switching systems.

Consolidating security in the agentic AI era

Commenting on the latest growth milestone, Keeper Security CEO and co-founder Darren Guccione said the achievement comes amid a “paradigm shift” in the market, driven by the rise of AI across the enterprise.

"Forward-thinking security leaders are strategically moving beyond disparate, siloed software in favor of a unified identity control plane that offers unparalleled visibility, control and governance,” he explained. “They recognise that identity has become the primary attack surface, and platform consolidation is a strategic imperative.

“Keeper's architecture was designed to address this complex reality, and our growth demonstrates that enterprises are decisively embracing this new direction."

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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.

Highlights

“I think when we’re talking about decentralization, and the things that Andy Burnham has talked about at a high level, he’s talked about putting agency and power and decision making into regions, instead of a university saying: ‘we’re doing something fantastic, it would be great to have support’.”

“Maybe we have to find a balance between a decentralized policy and a broader mission for the United Kingdom. A good UK tech ecosystem is good for everybody, and it’s ultimately good for our economy as well.”

Links

• UK government targets 'sovereign AI' gains with new £500 million startup funding scheme
• UK's AI sector booms – but can the country hang on to its startups?

Channel conversations often begin with a question: how can partners keep pace with technological change? My answer is that they should not try to keep pace with everything.

Across AI, cybersecurity, and cloud services, new products and features are arriving at a relentless rate. For many partners, the natural response is to expand their portfolios and pursue every emerging opportunity. But breadth without sufficient expertise is difficult to sustain and even harder to translate into meaningful customer value.

The channel’s real advantage has never been its ability to follow every product development. It lies in understanding customers, applying technology in the right context, and knowing when a new capability is genuinely useful.

That is why some partners are becoming more selective. They are concentrating on particular industries, business problems, or areas of technical expertise. This allows them to build deeper knowledge, stronger customer relationships, and services they can deliver consistently.

That focus matters because customers are not simply asking how quickly they can adopt new technology. They are trying to balance innovation with security, compliance, cost, and operational risk. They need partners that can help them make those judgments.

AI has changed the risk conversation

Document workflows offer a useful example. These conversations once centered largely on productivity, licensing, and incremental improvements to established processes. The arrival of generative AI has raised the stakes.

Organizations now need to consider what happens when commercially sensitive, personal, or regulated information is processed by an AI system. Where is that data stored? How long is it retained? Is it used to train a model? Who can access it? What happens when an AI tool connects to another business system?

These questions are particularly important in regulated sectors, but they should be part of every responsible AI deployment.

A compelling demonstration is no longer enough. Showing that an AI tool can summarise a contract or extract information from an invoice establishes what the technology can do. It does not establish whether an organization should use it, under what conditions, or with which safeguards.

If AI is introduced into a poorly governed document environment, it can amplify existing weaknesses. Information can be exposed more quickly, errors can move further through a workflow, and unclear access controls can create new compliance risks.

This is where channel partners can provide far more value than a product demonstration alone.

Trusted advice must produce practical outcomes

Customers do not necessarily need another standalone AI application. In many cases, they want useful capabilities embedded into the tools and processes their employees already use.

They want invoices handled with less manual intervention, contracts reviewed more efficiently, and routine administrative work completed with fewer errors. These outcomes may attract less attention than a new chatbot, but they are often far more valuable to the business.

Before recommending a new technology, partners should be able to answer three questions:

1. What specific customer problem will this solve?
2. What new security, compliance, or operational risks will it introduce?
3. Can the partner support its responsible adoption beyond the initial sale?

The third question is particularly important. A successful AI deployment requires more than implementation. Customers may need help mapping workflows, establishing governance policies, training employees, and reviewing performance as the technology evolves.

This creates an opportunity for partners to build services around adoption, risk management, and ongoing optimization. It also gives them a more durable role than simply facilitating a licensing transaction.

Transactional business will remain part of the channel, but it is becoming harder to differentiate through the transaction alone. Partners that combine technology knowledge with an understanding of governance, compliance, and business processes can have a much more valuable conversation with customers.

Vendors must help partners build trust

Vendors also have responsibilities. Partners cannot be expected to manage the pace and complexity of technological change without clear information and practical support.

If vendors want partners to invest in new capabilities, they need to provide transparent product direction, effective technical training, and clear answers about data handling. Partners should be able to explain where customer data is processed, how it is protected, what controls are available, and how the technology supports relevant regulatory requirements.

They also need honesty about a technology’s limitations. Confidence does not come from pretending that every new feature is suitable for every customer. It comes from giving partners the information they need to make responsible recommendations.

The future of the channel will belong to those who understand where they can add the most value and have the discipline to focus on it.

Customers already face more technological noise than they can reasonably process. What they need from partners is clarity: which developments matter, which risks need to be managed, and which investments will produce measurable results.

The partners that can provide those answers will remain valuable, regardless of how quickly technology changes.

The use of AI in financial departments is surging, but workers now find themselves spending a quarter of their week verifying or correcting AI outputs.

That's according to Datarails' 2026 CFO Sentiments Survey, which focused on the impact of AI on finance departments.

Datarails found that nearly all of the 270 chief financial officers (CFO) polled were using AI in some way for finance processes. While adoption is no longer a concern, the study noted that verification burden is.

Around 96% of CFOs said they spend at least 10% of their time checking or fixing AI outputs, with 8% spending more than half their working time on such efforts.

More widely, finance teams are spending 26% of their working week checking AI output to ensure it's accurate, the survey found.

Crucially, the study noted that they're right to check. Two-thirds of CFOs said their most common source of frustration with AI is when it gives confident answers based on incorrect data.

More than half (56%), meanwhile, said they've had AI provide different answers to team members despite using the same prompt and data.

"What this survey shows is that although AI adoption is now standard for CFOs, caution hasn't disappeared," said Didi Gurfinkel, CEO and co-founder of Datarails. "Finance teams have stopped asking 'will we use AI?' and started asking 'how am I going to most effectively check its work?’”

Keeping humans in the loop

Despite concerns about AI slop and inaccuracies, more than half of CFOs expect to increase their spending on AI licenses this year, with just 7% slashing budgets.

Three-quarters feel under ‘high’ or ‘very high’ pressure to integrate AI further, but just 7% said their finance department workflows are ready for a wider implementation.

Given such challenges, it comes as no surprise then that finance leaders value a human in the loop, with just 5% saying they'd hand an AI-produced financial report to the board without human review, and just 4% saying they'd do the same with monthly reports.

AI isn’t impacting jobs

The survey also asked CFOs about job losses, a recurring talking point since the advent of generative AI nearly four years ago.

Yet only 3% of respondents said they were cutting full time employees due to a shift to the technology – perhaps not a surprise given checking outputs remains manual work.

"Fears of job losses have been largely allayed, but the challenge of AI output verification is critical," said Gurfinkel. "Tackling it will allow finance teams to spend less time doing intensive checking, and let them focus instead on the strategic work they were actually hired to do."

A lack of auditability remains the main reason CFOs don't trust AI tools with mission critical tasks, the report found, with 75% of those asked naming it the biggest challenge.

That was followed by accuracy and so-called hallucinations at 71% and regulatory and compliance concerns regarding AI outputs at 54%.

Because of that, Datarails noted that a new technology category was emerging, with a third of CFOs looking to implement a "finance operating system", effectively a governed data layer for AI.

At the moment, finance teams use an average of 2.5 general-purpose models, with Microsoft Copilot the clear leader at 93%, followed by ChatGPT at 65% and Claude at 64%.

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Compliance with AI regulations will present an enormous challenge for businesses, according to ISACA CEO Erik Prusch, describing the task as “Sarbanes-Oxley on steroids”.

Introduced in 2002 following the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (commonly abbreviated to SOX) is a US federal law governing the reporting and verification of financial information by public companies.

Initial implementation of the necessary internal controls was notoriously costly and took several years to bed in, and compliance remains an annual exercise for US-listed companies.

Prusch, who was CFO of biometric authentication company Identix when the rules came into force, said the challenge of achieving compliance with incoming AI regulations dwarfs that work.

Prusch warned companies will need to do the same level of work five or even ten times faster thanks to the rapid pace of AI development – and all without a settled regulatory framework to guide them.

“It's the equivalent of SOX on steroids,” he told ITPro in an interview at the annual ISACA Europe conference in Munich. “It took us multiple years to get to a place where we actually knew what we were required to do from a Sarbanes-Oxley standpoint, and that was with the benefit of regulation that told us something to do.”

Dazed and confused over AI compliance

Part of the challenge with AI compliance, he explained, is that unlike SOX, the industry is still in the process of establishing the controls, accountability, and reporting lines that compliance will be based on.

“Who is responsible, who is ultimately going to be accountable, and how that is going to get communicated to the board, is brand new,” he said.

Further complicating matters, multiple countries and supranational bodies are butting heads over the best approach to regulating AI.

The EU's more cautious approach has favoured a comprehensive, risk-based rulebook – laid out in its AI Act – while the US federal government has prioritized development speed and innovation, resisting attempts to impose regulation at home and pressuring Brussels to scale back its own rules.

Combined with NIS2, DORA, and the Cyber Resilience Act, which govern cybersecurity for everything from critical infrastructure and banks to connected products, the AI Act makes the EU one of the more demanding regulatory environments for businesses.

Many organizations fall under several of these regimes at once, each with its own overlapping obligations.

"Over the last couple of years, we have seen a definite increase in the compliance burden," said Tara Wisniewski, senior vice president of advocacy at ISACA, citing complaints she’s heard from members.

"My DORA regulation says it has to look this way, NIS2 says it has to look this way, now CRA wants it this way… Why do I have to provide the same piece of information in six different colours? It gets ridiculous."

No light on the horizon

Prusch warned that the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. He predicted that board members will be named in lawsuits when AI deployments go wrong, arguing that, as with SOX, regulation will arrive as a reaction to a string of high-profile failures.

"It's only going to take a couple of companies that frankly go out of business because they're exposed, and they haven't done the work necessary," he said. “Everybody’s going to have that ‘oh shit’ moment.”

"We're probably 12 months from panic," he added.

As part of efforts to address the gap, Wisniewski said ISACA is expanding its advocacy work, engaging with policymakers on the principles that should underpin AI regulation, and calling for greater consistency between different jurisdictions' rules.

This includes working with UK lawmakers on amendments to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.

At the same time, the association has also launched three AI-focused certification products, with a fourth on the way, and is building AI into established credentials such as CISA and CISM. Until regulation catches up, however, Prusch warned the onus is on businesses themselves.

“Every organization that is utilising AI without proper controls, without understanding risk, without governance policy principles, without cybersecurity awareness, is exposing that company to a traumatic amount of risk,” Prusch said.

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Updates to the Dell AI Data Platform aim to provide more reliable AI systems and reduce costs, according to the tech giant.

In a sweeping update to the platform, Dell technologies has unveiled three new features, including a “Unified Semantic Layer” designed to improve visibility for unstructured and structured data sources.

In a blog post detailing the move, the company said this will give data more “consistent business meaning” by providing users with rules, definitions, and a searchable glossary “so a term means the same thing everywhere it appears”.

“If one system calls it a client and another calls it an account, AI now knows they’re the same thing,” Dell explained. “Users can also import existing ontologies and classification taxonomies, reusing industry-standard or enterprise-specific taxonomy assets”.

As part of this, Dell confirmed it will draw upon Nvidia Auto-Ontology, an open source library used to design and build knowledge graphs.

Dell targets AI context gains

On that front, platform users will now have access to the Enterprise Knowledge Graph feature. According to Dell, this maps how structured and unstructured data is related, and plays a key role in the Unified Semantic Layer.

“It uses metadata, lineage, and query history to keep tuning the graph as activity changes. When an agent asks a question, the platform pulls in every related piece it's allowed to see,” the company noted in a blog post.

New "Knowledge Agents" will run parallel to these new features, according to Dell Technologies.

The company said these “put context to work” and will act as a complementary tool to provide teams with insights on data sources and infrastructure environments.

AI costs in the spotlight

Dell Technologies said the new features come at a pivotal time for organizations, many of whom are scaling AI projects and encountering infrastructure-related bottlenecks.

“In most cases, the model isn’t the bottleneck to achieving enterprise scale for AI,” the company said. “The data is. A company’s most useful information sits in files, databases, cloud services, and systems across multiple sites.”

These disparate and fragmented data sources mean agents burn through tokens to reconstruct answers and derive context from enterprise information, said Arthur Lewis, president of Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group.

“Data without context is just noise,” he commented. “Most enterprises have spent years making their data accessible. That’s not the same as making it usable.”

“An agent that can find a customer record but doesn’t know what it means, how it connects to everything else, or whether it can be trusted isn’t intelligent. It’s just fast.”

Lewis added that by focusing on providing greater visibility and context for agents will “get more out of the data they already have”.

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Tesco has announced the appointment of Chris Blatchford as chief technology officer (CTO) and a member of the executive committee from March 2027.

He will replace the supermarket giant’s current CTO Guus Dekkers, who is retiring in December following eight years with the company.

Blatchford joins Tesco from Kingfisher plc, where he currently serves as group CTO and is responsible for technology, data, and product platforms across its B&Q, Screwfix, Castorama, and Brico Dépôt businesses.

In an announcement, Tesco highlighted Blatchford’s track record of driving digital transformation, modernizing technology platforms, and applying data and emerging technologies to improve experiences for both customers and staff.

Blatchford said he is excited to be joining the business at a time when the technology agenda is more important than ever.

“There are so many opportunities for technology to improve the experience for customers and colleagues across the Tesco ecosystem,” he said.

“Tesco has built an outstanding technology organisation under Guus's leadership, and I'm looking forward to working with the team to build on that momentum and continue delivering technology that makes a real difference for customers, colleagues and the business."

Retiring CTO Guus Dekkers joined Tesco in 2018, later becoming a member of the executive committee in March 2021, and his tenure saw technology become an increasingly important factor in the company’s success.

He is credited with playing a pivotal role in the modernization of Tesco's technology capabilities, the strengthening of its digital and data foundations, and the building of growth-enabling platforms.

"Leading the Technology team at Tesco has been a huge privilege,” Dekkers commented. “I know the team will continue to go from strength to strength under Chris's leadership, and I wish him every success in the role.”

Maintaining leadership continuity

To bridge the gap between Dekkers’ retirement and Blatchford’s arrival, Tesco’s technology director Jane Mustoe will become acting chief technology officer from the beginning of November.

Commenting on the leadership change, Tesco group chief executive Ken Murphy praised Dekkers’ “outstanding contribution” to the business’ success.

“His leadership has been central to strengthening our technology capabilities and delivering our strategic ambitions,” he said.

“I'm also grateful for the contribution he has made as a member of our Executive Committee and his commitment to developing technology talent."

Murphy added that the group has found a strong successor in Blatchford as it seeks to continue leveraging technology as part of its ongoing growth ambitions.

“He has led technology, data and digital transformation at scale and brings a combination of strategic vision, deep technical expertise and a strong track record of building high-performing teams,” he said.

“I am confident he will help us continue to strengthen the role technology plays in serving customers and colleagues and supporting our long-term growth."

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Is it time to upgrade the fleet of endpoints across your organization? The answer to that question may well have once come from a simple check of the calendar. In 2026, however, the concept of a three-to-four-year refresh cycle feels like something from a bygone era, like looking back on the charm of an old sitcom.

Life was simpler then; prices were more stable, and the improvements between hardware generations were more predictable. In the age of mobile computing, AI PCs, a components (specifically memory) supply crisis, and Microsoft's Windows OS proclamations, among other factors, the conventional hardware refresh cycle has shifted, experts tell ITPro.

In its place is a complex picture of different and dynamic cycles that vary based on not just the type of device in question, but its role within the business and how friendly any upgrade can be on IT budgets. In 2026 and beyond, organizations will be considering multiple angles – not just the calendar – when opting into an upgrade program.

Which factors are affecting the refresh cycle?

The cycle is dead, or maybe it isn't – perhaps it's somewhere in between. Nobody can agree on a consensus, least of all the experts that ITPro consulted with.

Michael Rosholt, SVP at M&A specialist and IT industry investment bank martinwolf, falls into the former camp but adds certain caveats: "It depends on the type of technology," he says, adding: "Rather than one universal refresh cycle, we're seeing the market increasingly segmented by technology and use case."

It might not even be describable as a cycle, says Adam Bowles, who runs the managed IT services company Act360 in Canada, telling ITPro that it's split by role and device type – where employees with less intensive performance requirements are hanging onto hardware for longer to save on budget – while 'power users' may see a new device every couple of years due to the recent acceleration in functionality.

So how did we get here? The earliest factors that drove some of the shifts we are seeing today first emerged with Microsoft and its Windows 11 hardware requirements, "forcing replacements on OS support grounds, not performance," as Bowles phrases it. The migration pressure was compounded with the end of support for Windows 10, which triggered a rush of new purchases at the time.

Then there's the components crisis. Memory prices have surged due to the AI infrastructure buildout, which has carried seemingly permanent ramifications for the cost of devices and the memory powering those systems. Low-budget devices have been a major casualty, amid a general decline in PC shipments and a projected 20% year-on-year fall in sales, according to IDC analysis. Interestingly, PC manufacturers are struggling to maintain full product portfolios, the report highlighted.

Then there's the question of AI PCs, divided between the initial marketing push and newer systems that boast actually useful on-device capabilities. The expectation in the latter camp is that power users want to tap into the most powerful systems, like AI agents, without necessarily requiring a constant connection to a cloud server to churn through expensive and scarce tokens. Ole Bülow, director of business development at Egiss, poses the question: "Which capabilities will employees actually use during the device’s lifecycle?"

"This requires understanding applications and processing locations, rather than using an AI label as a universal refresh trigger," adds Bülow, whose experience lies in advising enterprises, including one instance supporting the transition of a 120,000-strong global enterprise from a three-year device refresh cycle to a four-year cycle.

How is the refresh cycle changing?

While experts can't agree on the 'death' of the conventional cycle, they all agree that it's both shortening and lengthening at the same time, depending on a few different factors, including the technology itself and the user.

"A hybrid lifecycle, supported by signals such as DEX, is recommended," Bülow continues. "A supported device used for predictable tasks may remain productive longer. Employees with increasing demands may require earlier replacement. The original device can then be redeployed to another user after secure recovery and preparation.

He continues: "An employee may require an upgrade before the device reaches end of life. Mini PCs or thin clients should not be assumed to be underpowered. Suitability depends on the specific work requirements. For thin clients, the business case should consider the remote computing environment, connectivity, licensing, support, and endpoint price.

That's certainly true across the equipment landscape that organizations of any size may conventionally seek to upgrade, from business smartphones to on-premises servers and everything in between. The challenge, as Rosholt sees it, is that much of this is now ad hoc rather than following a single schedule.

"IT leaders are looking more closely at how equipment is being used and whether an upgrade delivers a meaningful benefit," he explains.

"Employees with heavier workloads or a clear need for AI capabilities may receive newer machines sooner, while regular users can often keep their existing devices longer. Refurbished equipment is also becoming a more important part of the equation, particularly for users who don't require the latest hardware."

How can businesses navigate being pulled in multiple directions?

Greater flexibility seems like a broad solution for navigating this new, complex, mixed picture. Bowles says his company tiers hardware by role instead of buying the same laptops for everyone. That includes cheaper thin clients or refurbished units for lighter roles and newer machines for finance or development teams.

Bülow also seeks to understand how an employee is likely to use the device based on data and what the existing device estate can support in terms of functionality.

"Combine performance and employee experience data with repair history, battery condition, warranty and security requirements," he advises, adding: "Determine whether poor performance requires a new device, a repair or a software adjustment. Define clear criteria for retaining, repairing, redeploying or replacing equipment. Assign responsibility for reviewing exceptions."

How manufacturers are responding to the new market conditions may also inform what businesses do. The OEMs are pushing to replace PCs with newer models, but enterprises are being far more disciplined about how much they spend due to the components crisis.

One of the fixes they're employing is actually trimming configurations of memory to, at the very least, maintain price levels. It may well be, Rosholt says, that organizations now choose to take them up on the offer of financing options and leasing.

Long gone are the days of fixed refresh cycles for every device across an organization. Many factors are temporarily affecting the decisions that businesses make on a day-to-day basis, including price volatility and Windows support. But still, the increased complexity across the suite of enterprise hardware is also a sign of technological progress and diversity in the systems that end users will rely on as AI becomes more useful and prevalent.

NetApp has announced a brace of appointments to its UK&I senior leadership team, as the intelligent data infrastructure vendor looks to meet growing demand for AI, hybrid cloud, modernization, and cyber resilience solutions in the region.

The move sees Liam Varndell join NetApp’s UK&I business as senior director of solutions engineering, while Simon Mead steps into the role of senior director of partner sales.

The vendor said the additions will help strengthen its go-to-market capability across both countries, including its technical pre-sales organization and partner ecosystem, at a time of increasing complexity across customers’ IT setups.

In an announcement, Puneet Gupta, NetApp’s area vice president for the UK and Ireland, said the appointments underline the company’s continued investment in the region.

“Both Liam and Simon bring a proven track record of building teams, driving growth and helping our customers and partners solve real world data management challenges,” he commented.

According to NetApp, both leaders have already started meeting customers, partners, and internal teams across the region as they look to understand their needs and business priorities.

“As our customers and partners navigate an increasingly complex landscape of AI, hybrid cloud and cyber resilience, having leaders of this caliber strengthens our ability to be their most trusted data partner," Gupta added.

A seasoned industry veteran, Liam Varndell joins the business with over two decades of pre-sales and technical architecture leadership experience.

Most recently, he led enterprise pre-sales teams at Google Cloud, where scaled teams through significant growth and led major go-to-market integrations.

Prior to that, he has held positions at Data General, EMC, VCE, and Dell.

Varndell’s appointment comes as NetApp looks to ensure its technical teams are delivering high value to customers dealing with the rise of AI workloads and modern data and security challenges.

“My focus is on building a pre-sales environment where people feel supported, trusted and empowered to do their best work: that's how we deliver the best outcomes for our customers and partners," Varndell said.

Meanwhile, Simon Mead arrives with extensive channel and partner sales experience from previous senior roles at the likes of Red Hat and Dell.

As NetApp’s new senior director for partner sales, he is tasked with accelerating growth with strategic partners across the UK and Ireland as well as ensuring they are equipped to navigate the AI era.

"I've spent much of my career working across the channel and ecosystem, and I know that the best results come when vendors and partners are genuinely aligned," Mead said. “At NetApp, I see a real commitment to that.

“I fundamentally believe our partners will be at the heart of our growth, and I'm looking forward to working with and for them, alongside the wider NetApp team, to go after the opportunity ahead together."

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Britain is a burgeoning market for NetApp, according to UK & Ireland VP Puneet Gupta, and with the recent launch of the company’s Novus system, it’s ripe for the picking.

Speaking to ITPro at NetApp Insight 2026, Gupta said the cloud storage provider has made significant headway in the UK in recent years. Indeed, since joining as VP for the region in December last year, he’s been shocked at the maturity and appetite among British businesses.

“I think the market has truly surprised me,” he told ITPro. “The growth in this market has been phenomenal. When you look from a distance, the usual view is that a mature market like the UK will have single-digit growth.”

“But look at how this market for external storage has grown. It’s remarkable.”

According to Gupta, figures from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems (ESS) Historical Tracker for Q2 CY2026 show NetApp reached a 28.5% market share in the UK all-flash domain. This growth follows several quarters of consistent flash hardware revenue growth.

This represents a potential springboard for NetApp in the UK market, Gupta told ITPro. Crucially, it comes at a vital time for enterprises as many accelerate AI adoption and associated infrastructure overhauls to compensate for the technology.

Data readiness was a key talking point at NetApp’s annual conference last week, and the company has been highly vocal on this front in recent years. UK businesses, meanwhile, appear highly receptive to the messaging.

“The way customers are now thinking about their data, their data infrastructure, their AI infrastructure has been absolutely remarkable,” he said. “The conversations with customers have been pretty amazing in the last few months.”

“When you talk to customers, data is at the center of everything that they’re thinking, and whether it is around data sovereignty, whether it is around compliance, whether it’s how to leverage data … a lot of customers are planning that ahead of time, [and] are making the right investments.”

Sovereignty, in particular, is an area Gupta and his team are keen to capitalize on in the coming months. As ITPro reported at Insight 2026, the company unveiled the new Keystone Sovereign service, which is rolling out first to European customers before hitting shelves in the UK.

The new service, which sits within NetApp’s broader Keystone storage as a service (STaaS) offering, aims to provide customers with flexible sovereignty-related controls.

Since arriving in the UK last year, Gupta said this has become a common recurring talking point with customers and partners across the UK, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

“Every customer is thinking about sovereignty,” he told ITPro. “Every customer wants to be prepared for data sovereignty.”

Gupta’s engagement on this front comes amidst a sharpened focus on sovereignty-related concerns on both sides of the English Channel. Research from Civo in June this year found 73% of firms now view sovereignty as a “strategic priority”, for example.

Acting fast with NetApp Novus

An area of huge excitement for Gupta lies in the launch of NetApp Novus. Unveiled at the annual conference, this is a new zettabyte-scale file system designed specifically for organizations running AI factories.”

According to NetApp, storage has become the key bottleneck for AI factories, with outdated architectures unable to contend with the intense demands placed on infrastructure by high-performance GPU clusters.

Gupta told ITPro that with Novus, the company’s product range is now stronger than ever and represents the culmination of several years of work for the company. With this in mind, the company is keen to bang the drum for its new flagship service.

“I think the portfolio we have today, I haven’t seen anything like this in many, many years,” he said. “I've been at NetApp for six years. The first signs I think we got were three four years back when we refreshed the all-flash portfolio.”

“We refreshed everything, brought in new stuff. Our partnership with the hyperscalers, now the Novus announcement. I don't think anybody else has the kind of portfolio today that we have, and with Novus, I think we have leapfrogged everybody else.”

Gupta added that Novus will be “very powerful for momentum” both in the UK and further afield for NetApp in the coming months and years – but engagement and execution will be critical.

“In go-to-market, that’s where me and my team, our role, really comes into play,” he noted. “We have organized ourselves pretty well. We’ve hired, we’ve made investments, we’ve hired new leaders.”

“I think we are very well positioned in the market. Of course, the proof of the pudding is how we execute, and I’m very confident that the team is energized and very well positioned, and having the right conversations.”

With Novus targeting neoclouds and GPU as a Service providers specifically, Gupta said NetApp is also targeting heightened engagement with UK operators on this front – in particular, smaller providers.

“There are a fair amount of smaller neoclouds [in the UK],” he said. “We are talking to the smaller ones because the big ones have made their investments in the past, so that will be a different conversation.”

“For the neoclouds, they’ve got a lot of funding from the market, and obviously when they get funding, they need to give a return and there will be increasing pressure from investors to find that.”

This is a tactical move by NetApp designed to swerve the larger neoclouds already deeply integrated with industry big hitters, creating in-roads for the long term.

“Any tech company that goes to them and says ‘I'll find you a better return on your investment’ I think will be music to their ears.

Nearly one-in-four UK business leaders pretend to know more about AI than they actually do, while even more are worried that their lack of expertise will affect career prospects.

New research from Emergn found that 23% admit to bluffing about their AI knowledge, with 38% believing their career will suffer unless they drastically improve their AI skills within the next year.

Despite the fact that every respondent had been in their role for at least five years, 22% said they feel anxious or lose sleep over how fast AI is changing their industry, with the same proportion feeling out of their depth because of AI’s impact on their role.

Training, though, is thin on the ground. Only 43% of UK senior leaders told researchers they had taken part in substantial, ongoing AI training in the past 12 months.

Four-in-ten, meanwhile, said that they'd change jobs if a new employer offered better AI training.

Workers are worried about AI skills capabilities

These concerns extend to their staff, with more than four-in-ten leaders saying they rate AI skills above formal qualifications, and 36% saying delivery performance would deteriorate significantly if their most experienced transformation people left.

“It is hard to admit you do not understand something when you are supposed to be the person with the answers. But pretending leaves you with the same unanswered question tomorrow. Employers need to make it easier for people to say where they are stuck and get useful help,” said Alex Adamopoulos, CEO at Emergn.

“If someone is worrying about their career or losing sleep over AI, telling them to keep up is not much of an answer. Give them time to learn and coaching they can use in the working day. People need to see a future for themselves as the work changes.”

It's not just leaders that are bluffing about their AI skills. A survey earlier this year from Pluralsight found that 79% of tech workers pretend to know more about AI than they actually do.

Despite this, though, nine-in-ten tech workers and execs said they believed they have the necessary skills to use AI in their day-to-day roles.

Earlier this year, the government launched a new program to train 10 million people in practical AI skills for work.

The idea is to teach them to use simple AI tools effectively in the workplace for tasks such as drafting text, creating content and completing administrative tasks.

Broadly speaking, the UK is severely lacking in AI skills, according to a report from the Learning and Work Institute and The Rigby Foundation.

Comprehensive AI upskilling could help boost UK productivity by 2.3% by 2035, creating a net present value of £80 billion over the next nine years.

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Digital work platform provider Omnissa has announced the appointment of Amit Singh as its new CEO, effective immediately.

A seasoned leadership veteran, Singh brings more than 35 years’ experience from across the technology industry and has previously served as president of Palo Alto Networks.

He succeeds Shankar Iyer, who recently stepped down from the role in order to pursue other opportunities.

During Singh’s most recent tenure as president of Palo Alto Networks, the company’s market value grew fivefold, launched several new billion-dollar businesses, and was crowned the world’s first $100 billion cyber security company.

Prior to his success at Palo Alto, he spent almost a decade at Google Cloud as co-founder and president, following an earlier two-decade spell at Oracle.

In an announcement, Omnissa said its new CEO brings the experience and vision needed to build on its strong foundation and help it define the era of agentic endpoints across the enterprise.

"Amit has helped build two of the defining enterprise platforms of the last 20 years," commented Angad Singh, co-head of software private equity in North America at KKR and member of Omnissa’s Board of Directors.

"The company is uniquely well positioned as AI agents increasingly handle that work and every enterprise considers how to safely harness AI technology. Amit is the right leader to help Omnissa make the most of this tremendous opportunity."

Omnissa specializes in digital workspace solutions, offering a platform that incorporates unified endpoint management, virtual desktops and applications, digital employee experience, and endpoint security, alongside a new suite of AI-first visibility and control tools.

The company says it now serves more than 15,000 enterprise customers as well as tens of millions of endpoints.

The rise of agentic endpoints across the enterprise

In his new role, Singh will work to accelerate the company’s momentum as endpoints continue to emerge as a critical security control plane due to the prominence of AI technologies.

Commenting on his appointment, Singh said he steps into the position at a “pivotal moment” for both the company and the wider industry.

"The shift to agentic AI is transforming how work gets done, and the endpoint is at the center of that transformation,” he explained. “I look forward to leading this team as we continue innovating and delivering products that will help our customers and partners manage and secure this next era of work.”

According to Singh, every laptop and phone within an enterprise network will be an agentic endpoint within a year, running multiple AI agents that act with the identity and permissions of the user.

He added that this change is reminiscent of the era that saw phones and personal devices gain prominence across the enterprise, with companies extending their existing management platforms rather than building new ones.

“Agents are a similar shift,” he said. “Omnissa already has the agent on the device, the credentials, the traffic, the telemetry and the remediation; our job now is to extend all of it to the agent and make it safe for CIOs and CISOs to say yes.”

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Anthropic has revealed plans to train more than 10,000 ‘frontier deployed engineers’ (FDEs) by the end of 2027 as the firm looks to drive enterprise AI adoption.

The Claude Frontier Academy, backed by $100 million in funding, will see the AI firm work with Accenture, Bain, Capgemini, McKinsey, and others to ramp up training of FDEs.

Steve Corfield, Anthropic’s global head of business development and partnerships, said the investment will target heightened adoption of Claude products and improve skills capabilities for customers.

“A small team of high-agency people with the right skills, access to Claude, and a deep understanding of how their business runs can transform an entire company,” he said.

“The hard part is building that depth of talent, engineers with the highest level of AI fluency who can take Claude from an idea to a system in production and turn it into faster processes and new products and services.”

The move by Anthropic comes just months after the launch of Ode, an enterprise AI services firm launched following a $1.5 billion investment. The joint venture includes support from consulting firms such as Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, with the aim of helping customers implement AI.

How Anthropic’s FDEs will work

According to Anthropic, the academy’s first program, dubbed the ‘Frontier Deployed Engineer Residency’, follows the “medical model for building expertise”.

Engineers will learn in a similar manner to practicing physicians by training on real-world use cases and are assessed before practicing alone.

“FDE Residency engineers learn from practitioners, practice on realistic cases, and are assessed on their work before they earn the credential,” the company explained in a blog post.

“The goal is agentic systems that change how a business runs, from faster, redesigned processes to new products and services.”

The program is designed specifically for “hands-on software engineers with strong fundamentals” and those with an extensive background in working with LLMs and supporting enterprise AI adoption projects.

Participating organizations are allowed to nominate individual engineers, who then undergo a multi-day program with Anthropic engineers and instructors, the company noted.

“They work through a simulated enterprise deployment, from the right use case through security review to handover, and finish with a graded practical on a new scenario,” Anthropic explained.

“Those who pass earn the Claude Resident Engineer badge and move into the 12-week residency, where they lead a real Claude use case at their own organization, supported by Anthropic engineers and learning from their cohort as they build.”

Anthropic revealed the first cohorts under the scheme are already running in San Francisco, New York, and London.

Anthropic’s multi-pronged approach to AI adoption

If you’re wondering why the term ‘FDE’ sounds familiar, it’s because these engineers have become a primary focus for big tech companies over the last year, albeit with a slightly different terminology.

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, announced multi-billion dollar investments in ‘forward deployed engineer’ capabilities earlier this year.

As ITPro reported at the time, FDEs have rapidly become one of the most sought-after technology professionals globally as big tech providers look to accelerate integration of the technology for customers.

A key advantage of FDEs is that they’re embedded directly within customer teams to help support adoption processes and to build custom AI applications. AWS said its own strategy aims to compress integration timelines from “months to days”.

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There’s been a lot of talk - and some action - about AI, but now is the time to really take things to the next level and make AI real for your business.

That was the key message tech giant Snowflake wanted delegates to take away from its Snowflake World Tour London event earlier this week. The event, hosted at the ExCeL, played home to more than 5,000 attendees, 60 partners, 72 sessions and 150 speakers.

“It's fantastic to see so many of you here. Customers, partners, innovators, data visionaries from all across the region wanting to make AI real for [their] business. What an incredible time to be together. The energy today will tell you everything about the pace of change we're seeing across our customers and industries,” said Jimmy Hall, Snowflake’s vice president and country manager for the UK and Ireland in his welcome address.

“Year after year, we've seen organizations across this region move at an incredible speed. [They’ve been] moving beyond pilots and experimentation, and putting AI into production at scale. [Ultimately], taking those ambitious ideas and turning them into real operational value.

He added: “We've moved from talking about the potential of AI to putting AI to work. It's now all about making AI real for business as we enter the era of the agentic enterprise; we're operating in a fast-moving environment. Arguably, the biggest risk any business could take right now is standing still. But moving fast with data and AI shouldn't mean losing control. It means having the foundation, the flexibility, and the confidence to move quickly.”

Data underpins AI ambition and results

That foundational element is key, according to Hall and his Snowflake peers. Indeed, while the momentum gained sounds very exciting, he cautioned that organizations must not forget the fundamentals. You cannot successfully implement an AI strategy unless you have the solid foundations of a good data strategy to support it, Hall stressed.

“There is some myth about data. Some organizations have been of the mindset that AI is so good and so smart, the data will sort itself out,” said Christian Kleinerman, Snowflake’s EVP of Product.

“The reality is not quite. It won't happen. If anything, the opposite is true. The most amazing results you can envision for your organization with AI come from having a great data strategy.”

Event attendees looking for inspiration as to how to move the theory into reality didn’t have to wait too long. Hall was soon joined on stage by Kate Dohaney, CEO of giffgaff.

“I joined about eight months ago, and I knew we had a massive opportunity to lean into the world [of AI],” she said.

“We were already optimizing Snowflake at different levels and in different teams within our organization, but commercially we weren't seeing what we wanted from it. So we [created] a proper data strategy team and [have been] really teaching our business as a whole how to optimize information to better serve our customers.”

The company is keen to automate as much as possible, to free up valuable human resources from time-sink tasks so they can be more productive elsewhere, according to Dohaney.

“That means taking out the repetitive work, understanding the market, understanding our competitors, and having that ability without weeks and hours of human capital research. Snowflake has given us the right tools to move at pace,” she added.

“It empowers our business. It’s about partnering with the right tools, the right partner, to move quicker.”

Recipe for success

For organizations to truly benefit from what it means to be an agentic enterprise, they need to embrace four key elements, according to Kleinerman.

These are the choice of AI model, software and apps, enterprise data, and context, with all three of these linked in the middle to an agentic control plane, which Kleinerman described as “the glue”

He added: “That's what makes all of this together. This framework is high level. It's agnostic of any one technology or any one vendor. This is what we believe is needed for any of you to leverage and deploy AI successes.

“The promise of AI, in my mind, is unparalleled to other technologies that we've seen at least in our lifetimes. And hopefully, everyone here is excited about how you can help your organization achieve greater successes through the power of AI.”

Hall concluded the keynote by saying that we’re in the midst of “the biggest structural shift in enterprise technology of our lifetime.”

“As I said earlier, the biggest risk you could take now is standing still. The companies that will win this decade won't just apply standalone agents; they will build an agentic enterprise,” he continued.

“Turning this vision into reality requires investing in your data foundation today, and that comes down to three core priorities: one is modernizing your data space; secondly, making your data AI-ready; and thirdly, driving autonomous action and impact with AI.”

You can lose a job to AI, but in California, a human has to make the decision to fire you.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law the No Robo Bosses Act 2026, requiring human oversight in the workplace specifically when it comes to firing or disciplining workers.

Act SB 947, as it's officially known, was introduced by Senator Jerry McNerney to push back against the use of automated decision making systems (ADS) in the workplace. In a statement, McNerney's office pointed to the rise of "bossware" products used to manage workplaces, which have led to people being mistakenly fired. The new law doesn't outright ban the use of such systems, but requires a human in the loop.

“No worker should ever be fired or disciplined by a robo boss," said McNerney, in a statement. "Artificial intelligence systems have the potential to increase productivity, but they’ve also been prone to errors, bias, and misjudgments.”

McNerney added that the aim is ensuring human oversight in workplaces. “AI must remain a tool controlled by humans, not the other way around," he said.

California has led AI regulation, with laws requiring frontier AI developers to report safety incidents and publish safety frameworks, forcing AI generated content to be labeled as such, and creating a registry for AI auditors, alongside rules targeting political and sexual deepfakes, and AI generated unauthorised replicas of performers, among others. Newsom signed into law a list of other AI rules this week, including banning lawyers from handing over core work wholly to AI and requiring educational institutions to train staff and students about AI.

"Super intelligence is clearly not coming from the White House – that’s why California continues to lead," Newsom said in a statement. "AI should expand opportunity – not come at the expense of workers and families. As this technology reshapes the workplace, California is putting people at the center, ensuring we all have a voice in the decisions shaping their future."

No robo bosses

The robo boss legislation has three points. First, it bans employers from relying solely on ADS to make firing or disciplinary decisions. Second, it requires human oversight and verification when employers do use ADS to assist in those decisions. And third, if a company does use ADS for termination or disciplinary decisions, the impacted worker must be informed.

The rules will be enforced by the California labor commissioner, state attorney general, or local prosecutors. Similar laws are in the works in a handful of other states.

The law was backed by the local labor union, with Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions saying the law gives "other states and the nation a clear example of how, by letting workers lead, we can stop some of [the] worst abuses of AI at work."

SB 947 originally included a provision to notify employees if an AI system would impact their work, but Newsom vetoed it saying the focus should be on misuse rather than forcing "unfocused notification requirements on any business using even the most innocuous tools," he said at the time. That aspect was removed, as were protections for gig workers.

Rise of AI workplaces

The move comes as management becomes increasingly automated or algorithmically controlled. A survey from the OECD last year found that 90% of American managers polled said they have at least one such tool in place, versus 79% across Europe and 40% in Japan.

Beyond prevalence, that study also found that US companies were more likely than European counterparts to use algorithmic management for monitoring or evaluating workers even if it involves personal data and has "consequential outcomes" such as access to work. The study added that two-thirds of managers were concerned about the impact on workers, particularly with regards to unclear accountability in the case of incorrect decisions.

One example of that playing out now regards Meta, which faces a lawsuit after the Facebook-owner attempted to apply AI to monitoring and managing its own workers earlier this year, taking into account everything from token usage to keystroke monitoring – and reportedly using that data when deciding on a massive round of layoffs.

In response, a group of former and current staff have sued.

"Meta used a constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems – including a system referred to internally as ‘Metamate,’ employee-trained ‘second-brain’ agents, keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, AI-token-usage dashboards, and algorithmically assisted performance ranking and calibration – to score, rank, and select employees for inclusion on the list," a court filing reads, noting the system disadvantaged those on leave, including for maternity or disability.

WatchGuard Technologies has announced the appointment of Allison Clarke as vice president of partner programs and go-to-market strategy.

Clark steps into the newly created role as the unified cybersecurity specialist moves to strengthen its channel-first business model and further streamline its partner experience.

The seasoned channel leader is tasked with leading the strategy, innovation, and alignment of WatchGuard's partner programs and go-to-market initiatives across all routes to market.

According to the vendor, she will work to ensure partners' voices play a key role in shaping business decisions – from programs and enablement to pricing, packaging, and product strategy.

In an announcement, WatchGuard CEO Joe Smolarski said the goal is to make it easy for partners to do business and grow with the company.

"Partners are at the center of everything we do, and Allison's appointment reflects our commitment to building a more connected, frictionless partner experience," he explained. "Her track record of creating programs that help partners grow makes her the right leader to help drive our next phase of channel success."

WatchGuard specializes in unified cybersecurity, with its AI-powered Unified Security Platform providing Zero Trust-aligned network, endpoint, identity, and cloud security in a single, integrated solution. The company says it currently serves more than 25,000 MSPs, who work to protect more than 1.5 million customers globally.

Clarke joins the business with more than 20 years of channel leadership experience, most recently serving as vice president of go-to-market and partner programs at SonicWall.

Prior to that, she spent almost a decade at Sophos, where she shaped the cybersecurity vendor's global channel strategy and partner programs, and has previously helped build and scale channel initiatives at McAfee.

Commenting on her appointment, Clarke highlighted WatchGuard's commitment to its partners as a key reason for joining the business.

"Partners want to do business on their terms, through the routes and motions that work best for them," she said. "My focus is on ensuring every interaction with WatchGuard is as simple, consistent, and rewarding as possible.

"I'm especially looking forward to meeting our partner community at IMPACT in Nashville and hearing directly from them about how we can continue improving their experience and helping them grow."

UK tech leaders are calling on the government to invest much more heavily in sovereign AI.

In an open letter to Andy Burnham and AI minister Kaniska Narayan, executives from defense, financial services and critical national infrastructure firms say there's an urgent need to strengthen public confidence and national resilience.

Signatories include AI lab Cosine, PA Consulting, BT, Telefónica Tech, Leonardo, HPE, Kainos and Sopra Steria.

"AI is now a question of national capability. Countries with reliable access to compute, secure deployment pathways, strategic models, and effective procurement will have greater resilience and influence," the letter reads.

"Countries that lack those capabilities risk becoming dependent on decisions, infrastructure and operating conditions elsewhere."

The group wants to see financial support of at least £20 billion over the next five years, through public investment, procurement guarantees, and co-investment. This, they said, should be targeted at establishing sovereign British AI compute, power, data-center capacity, and network infrastructure for government, defense, academia, and strategic industry.

It's calling for changes to planning laws, energy policy, procurement, and long-term contracts to help AI firms, and a fast-track sovereign AI procurement route for urgent national priorities.

There should be financial backing for UK-led model development, with government, defense, and the NHS gaining access to proprietary British datasets for training these models, with strict privacy safeguards, mandatory audit trails, and interoperability standards.

"No mission-critical public service or critical national infrastructure should depend on a single model, provider, or cloud stack," Cosine said.

"Independent testing, evaluation and monitoring of AI models is essential to enable safe, secure and trusted AI adoption. Mandate tested fallback arrangements, independent alternatives, and human-in-the-loop control for all high-consequence AI systems."

The government, said the firms, should identify the areas of the AI value chain where the UK can become world-leading, then align infrastructure, procurement, research, regulation, and investment behind them. It should create a cross-party ten-year Sovereign AI Strategy with clear objectives, annual accountability, and long-term funding certainty.

Infrastructure, common standards, and interoperable systems should be shared with like-minded nations.

And it should identify the areas of the AI value chain where the UK can become world-leading, then align infrastructure, procurement, research, regulation, and investment behind them. It should create a cross-party ten-year Sovereign AI Strategy with clear objectives, annual accountability, and long-term funding certainty.

"Britain is coming from a position of strength. It has world-class research, deep software talent, strong cyber capability, credible institutions, strong digital infrastructure, and real advantages in science, defence and public services," the letter reads.

"But without a plan for AI sovereignty, the UK risks becoming a customer in the most important technological shift of this era, rather than a serious builder."

Earlier this year, the government launched a £500 million Sovereign AI fund aimed at helping domestic AI companies scale.

This will act as a venture capital fund within the government, making targeted investments in UK AI firms, and providing direct access to the UK's fastest AI supercomputers, along with specialist R&D support and grants.

Nearly half of UK employers are planning to boost their technology teams by the end of this year, looking mostly for security, AI, and cloud skills.

According to new research from Robert Half, 47% of UK employers hope to boost their tech workforce, with 54% looking for cyber security skills, 50% agentic AI skills, 48% generative AI skills, and 44% cloud skills.

Meanwhile, another 25% are expanding contract and project-based hiring.

"Technology remains one of the most active areas of hiring in the UK labor market, with nearly half of employers planning to grow their permanent technology teams before the end of the year," said Matt Weston, senior managing director, UK & Ireland at Robert Half.

"Businesses continue to invest heavily in cyber security, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence, but they're not simply looking for more people. They're looking for professionals with the right blend of technical expertise, commercial understanding and the ability to work effectively alongside AI."

According to the researchers, 45% of UK technology professionals say they're now expected to develop new AI-related skills, while 38% spend more time overseeing and validating AI-generated outputs. At the same time, 53% say AI has cut the time they're spending on routine tasks, and 37% that their roles have become more strategic.

The findings, said the team, point to a growing demand for professionals who can work effectively alongside AI systems, applying human judgment to ensure accuracy, quality, security, and compliance.

"As organizations increase investment in AI, cloud infrastructure and cyber security, we're seeing strong demand for professionals who combine technical expertise with strategic decision-making," said Weston.

"AI is automating some tasks, but it isn't replacing the need for skilled technology talent. In many cases, it's making those skills even more valuable."

With cyber threats continuing to evolve and businesses increasing investment in AI-powered technologies, the firm said it expects competition for specialist talent to remain strong, especially for those with expertise in cyber security, AI, and cloud environments.

The report coincides with the UK government's latest figures on the cyber security workforce, showing that it's expanded by only 2% over the last year – although it, too, finds that most companies are looking to hire this year.

There was a 7% increase in core cyber security job postings – roles where some aspect of cyber security is the main job function – and a rise of 10% for roles that might not be formally labeled as cyber security jobs but that still require cyber security skills.

However, 57% of businesses said they had a basic technical skills gap, up from last year's 49%.

Back in January, the government announced plans to provide 10 million workers with key AI skills by 2030 through free courses available to all, opening a skills hub that's already seen the delivery of more than a million courses. Meanwhile, the NCSC offers training courses for both novices and experienced security professionals, with courses targeted at sectors from board members to schools.

Opengear has signed its first European distribution agreement with Ingram Micro, in a move the vendor said will significantly expand the availability of its network resilience services across the region.

From 1 October, resellers across 20 European markets will have access to Opengear's portfolio, backed by the distribution giant's partner network, regional infrastructure, and logistics capabilities.

The company said the move broadens its existing reach in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, while bringing its network resilience platform to additional markets – including Switzerland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

In an announcement, Alan Stewart-Brown, Opengear's vice president of sales for EMEA and APAC, described the agreement as a "significant milestone" in the firm's EMEA growth strategy.

"Ingram Micro gives us the regional scale to put Opengear products and expertise closer to our partners," he explained. "That means increased regional availability, local support, and a simpler way to protect critical infrastructure across EMEA."

Headquartered in Utah, Opengear specializes in out-of-band access to network infrastructure. The firm's technology is designed to help IT teams monitor, manage, and recover critical assets when the primary network is unavailable, while offering strong presence and proximity to connected network devices.

Through the new European distribution deal, Ingram Micro will provide pre- and post-sales support via its partner network across EMEA, with partners gaining access to training, accreditation, channel enablement, and incentive programs.

Meanwhile, Opengear said resellers will also be able to add its network resilience solutions to their existing enterprise networking portfolios.

Commenting on the deal, Renke Krüger, executive director at Ingram Micro's Pan Europe division, said the increased access to Opengear's offerings will enable more businesses to strengthen their response to operational disruptions.

"Opengear addresses a growing need in today's market: helping organisations to maintain resilient, secure and recoverable networks in an increasingly complex operating environment," he said.

"We're proud to extend the reach of Opengear's market-leading solutions across EMEA through our partner ecosystem, enabling resellers to deliver proven, trusted technologies that safeguard business continuity during disruptions and simplify and strengthen day-to-day network operations."

NetApp CEO George Kurian believes that despite the hype surrounding AI, achieving success with the technology still rests firmly on time-tested transformation tactics.

Speaking to ITPro at NetApp Insight 2026, the chief executive said that long-running adoption challenges with the technology show that it can’t become a case of the tail wagging the dog.

Indeed, grounded leadership and clear cut strategies are still vital to successful adoption projects.

“Like all transformations, AI transformation is a leadership and business transformation,” he told ITPro. “It’s not a technology transformation. It’s enabled by technology, like the desktop computer or client-server computing, or the internet. But it is a business and leadership-led transformation.”

Kurian’s comments come in the wake of repeated studies highlighting the challenges faced by enterprises adopting AI over the last three years.

A study from MIT in August 2025, for example, found 95% of AI projects were failing. Similar research in January this year, meanwhile, found that half of agentic AI projects were stuck at the pilot stage.

The result is that executives have become increasingly irate at the pace of adoption, with firms failing to push projects from pilot to production. Analysis from PwC found just one-in-eight CEOs reported cost and revenue improvements.

Getting AI data ready

Enterprises have faced a series of common recurring pain points when it comes to AI adoption, all of which are typically centered around data quality and infrastructure capabilities.

Research from IDC identified data quality as a leading problem on this front, with more than half (52%) of companies highlighting this as “the most important factor for AI projects success”.

On the infrastructure side, IDC’s study also found seven-in-ten business leaders cited data silos as the “biggest challenges for AI adoption”.

NetApp is now focused intently on both these fronts, emphasizing the importance of both modern storage infrastructure capabilities while providing customers with an array of data management tools.

The firm’s ONTAP data management software, for example, is designed specifically to help eliminate data silos and improve visibility. The NetApp Console, meanwhile, offers users a centralized management tool to monitor and optimize infrastructure processes.

At NetApp Insight this week, the company unveiled yet more capabilities on this front, including new AI-powered features aimed at improving automated storage management.

New AI features will provide customers with predictive maintenance insights and automated remediation, for example, while users can also integrate their own large language models (LLMs) within the console.

Kurian told ITPro that while these capabilities are vital for enterprises modernizing their IT estates and ramping up AI adoption, the basic transformation fundamentals still remain crucial.

“I think with regard to data prep and data quality, there are capabilities like what we are introducing, but also that the LLMs provide to be able to solve those challenges better,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that because the technologies are there that it magically gets solved.”

Kurian added that NetApp engages closely with customers on this front, in particular by showcasing use-cases and best practices by leading organizations.

“I think it is an organizational question, and so we work with our clients to show them what is possible and the best practices of the high-performing organizations that have been successful with it. And there are more and more of those.”

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AMD has announced its second intended acquisition of 2026, signing a definitive agreement with World Labs valued at $8.2 billion.

World Labs is an AI software firm founded just two years ago by Stanford University professor and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li. It specializes in “spatial intelligence” AI technology, which allows AI models to understand the three-dimensional world.

Its relationship with AMD started in 2025, with model training and inference optimization on the company’s GPUs. AMD also invested in World Labs in February 2026, and Li spoke during the AMD keynote at CES 2026.

World Labs’ first product, Marble, was launched in November 2025. In a blog post announcing the launch, the company explained: “Our human experience of the world is inherently multimodal: we use all of our senses to make sense of the world around us.

“World models should… be massively multimodal, able to lift whatever input signals are available into a full 3D world, and they should be able to iteratively update their understanding of the world as new information becomes available.”

While Marble doesn’t entirely fulfil this brief, it “[makes] strides towards this vision”.

More recently, on 1 September 2026, it released Atlas, an “omni model that [World Labs] pretrained from scratch to natively operate on text, images, video, and 3D”.

AMD’s “physical AI” ambitions

The acquisition of World Labs underlines the role physical AI plays in AMD’s plans for the future.

In the official AMD announcement of the proposed deal, AMD said: “As AI expands into reasoning, robotics, simulation, and physical AI, the demands on compute infrastructure become more diverse. World Labs’ expertise in developing advanced models will give AMD deeper insight into how workloads are evolving and help shape its future technology roadmaps.”

In a blog post explaining the decision to join AMD, Li said the company needed to move “closer to the hardware” in order to solve the problems it has been working on using software alone.

“Without having a focused hardware effort, AI is hobbled in efficiency. And scale. And for our purposes, remains trapped in the digital world,” Li said.

“We've seen up close how Lisa [Su, AMD CEO] is boldly leading AMD as a major player in the hardware ecosystem with incredible momentum,” Li continued. “As our teams worked together, we realized what a natural fit it would be to bring together our AI ecosystem of software and hardware, foundation models and applications.”

The all-stock acquisition is expected to close before the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approval.

Workers with scarce skills and strong AI capabilities are pulling away from the pack, being rewarded for innovation while the bulk of their colleagues go largely ignored.

That's according to PwC's 2026 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears report. A survey of nearly 50,000 workers across 48 countries that classifies workers into four groups: front-runners, AI insurgents, indispensables, and the AI learning curve.

Front-runners, with scarce skills and strong AI abilities, account for 14% of employees, while 18% are classified as AI insurgents, whose skills are less scarce but who are using AI to deliver more.

Indispensables, with scarce skills that employers value highly but who are not far along the AI learning curve, account for 11%.

However, PwC said it's the 'engine room' workers who make up the bulk of employees, lacking scarce skills, and further behind on the AI learning curve. Of these, only two in five say they have access to the learning and development resources they need.

And, the researchers said, it's these workers – the majority of the workforce, responsible for most of the day-to-day work within an organization – that should be getting more attention.

"There is a real risk that the global workforce is starting to move at different speeds. More than half of workers are not yet benefiting from AI and skills in the same way, while those with scarce skills and strong AI capabilities are becoming more confident and more mobile," said Pete Brown, PwC global workforce leader.

"Leaders need to think hard about where they invest in skills, how they give people the opportunity to adapt, and how they hold on to the capabilities they most need."

As for the front-runner employees, they're more confident in their job security, more likely to trust management, and more confident about their ability to learn new skills.

They are one-and-a-half times more likely than average to be rewarded for challenging existing ways of working, and 1.2 times as likely as average to learn new skills.

Nearly seven-in-ten daily AI users report confidence in their job security, compared with 57% for infrequent users, and are also more likely to ask for a promotion. However, 29% of front-runner employees with strong AI capabilities and scarce skills say they are very or extremely likely to change employers in the next year.

Overall, workers are feeling significant pressure. Only a third report having money left at the end of the month, down 8% year on year. Meanwhile, 29% say they have significantly less bargaining power than three years ago, more than double the number who disagreed. For fully remote workers, the proportion is 10 points higher.

The biggest risks to job security, they say, are economic volatility (57%) and AI taking on more tasks (44%), with Gen Z more anxious across all these metrics.

And 58% of those who have experienced change in the workplace feel there has been more change in the last year than in previous years, with almost one-third saying that their productivity is suffering thanks to fatigue or burnout.

"Workers are under growing pressure from rising workloads, rapid change and external uncertainty," said Brown.

"But those using AI every day are more confident, more ambitious and more positive about their careers and prospects. The challenge for leaders is to keep developing those people – but not at the expense of the rest of the workforce."

Intelligent AI infrastructure specialist Zeta Global has announced an expansion of its operations in the UK, with the appointment of Lalitha Stables as country president and the opening of a new London hub.

The move brings together more than 120 employees at the new capital location with the aim of strengthening the firm’s ability to help enterprises build intelligent AI infrastructure. Zeta said the move will also help accelerate its own growth and expansion across the UK.

Lalitha joins the business as president for the UK and will oversee growth strategy, enterprise customer relationships, and local go-to-market organization.

A seasoned industry leader, she brings nearly 30 years’ of leading enterprise technology organizations and previously served as HubSpot’s general manager and country manager for the UK.

Prior to that, she was senior vice president of Salesforce’s EMEA Marketing Cloud business and held leadership roles at Google earlier in her career.

In her new role, Stables will partner with Simon Davies, who oversees Zeta’s EMEA media business from London, with the aim of bringing complementary expertise to customers.

In an announcement, David A. Steinberg, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global, said the company is expanding its investment in leadership, talent, and intelligent AI infrastructure to help more UK enterprises drive growth from AI technologies.

“Lalitha brings an exceptional record of building enterprise technology businesses,” he said. “With Lalitha leading the U.K., Simon overseeing media across EMEA and our new London hub bringing the teams together, we’re strengthening our ability to deliver better outcomes for U.K.-based businesses and accelerate our growth in the market.”

Founded in 2007, New York-headquartered Zeta Global specializes in helping enterprises transform proprietary data into enterprise intelligence, offering solutions that connect enterprise knowledge with advanced AI to drive improved decision-making.

The company’s UK expansion follows a period of strong growth, with the firm achieving a series of major milestones over the last year – including general availability of its conversational AI marketing agent Athena and strategic collaborations with OpenAI and Palantir. It also outperformed market projections and raised forward outlooks for 20 consecutive quarters.

Off the back of that success, Zeta said it is continuing to expand its UK team across enterprise sales, customer growth, solutions consulting, and marketing as it looks to strengthen support for both customers and partners across the country.

Stables said her appointment as UK president comes as enterprise marketers are dealing with an increasing amount of data and customer signals.

“The competitive advantage is how quickly they can turn those signals into intelligence, and intelligence into meaningful action,” she explained. “Zeta combines an exceptional data asset with AI, activation and solutions to help enterprises act with greater precision and learn from every outcome.

“Our investment in the UK gives customers the local expertise to put those capabilities to work.”

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Nutanix has announced the acquisition of Ryax Technologies, a France-based specialist in AI-driven compute orchestration and management.

The deal will see Ryax’s advanced GPU utilization and smart scheduling capabilities integrated directly into the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) as well as the firm’s Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI) offering.

The addition is designed to strengthen Nutanix’s ability to help organizations build, run, and govern agentic AI as enterprise demand for efficient inference workloads continues to increase.

According to the company, many organizations have split their compute across private data centers, hyperscalers, and neoclouds in order to find available capacity amid GPU shortages and fragmented infrastructure issues.

Additionally, many enterprises are struggling to push AI projects into production due to the significant infrastructure integration and manual configuration that is required.

By integrating Ryax’s technology, Nutanix said it is adding the ability to automate the underlying infrastructure, data, hardware, and code to help customers deploy their AI projects faster, more reliably, and at a more manageable cost.

"Our acquisition of Ryax helps to directly answer the challenges enterprises face today with agentic AI infrastructure management,” said Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami . “The acquisition marks an exciting milestone in our commitment to simplifying enterprise AI at scale.”

The vendor said it will integrate the Ryax platform into future releases of NKP and NAI, with the Ryax team to join Nutanix in France

“We are thrilled to welcome the talented Ryax team to Nutanix as we continue to deliver on our promise to help customers safely run AI, applications and data anywhere," Ramaswami added.

Targeting critical architectural capabilities

With its acquisition of Ryax, Nutanix said it is expanding its platform around two critical architectural capabilities: intelligent resource optimization and AI-aware smart scheduling.

On the intelligent resource optimization front, Ryax’s technology will enable customers to effectively leverage available computing resources – including GPUs and CPUs – to improve performance and reduce waste.

Meanwhile, the integration will also enable organizations to automatically place AI workloads on cost-effective hardware to help maximize performance and budget.

According to the companies, these capabilities are geared towards helping customers advance their AI initiatives through improved infrastructure efficiency, managing costs, as well as more efficient use of existing hardware.

“The Ryax platform was built to give enterprises seamless execution across hybrid infrastructure, like private data centers, hyperscalers and neoclouds, handling the backend complexity so teams can deploy, scale and manage AI workflows from day one,” commented Ryax CEO Andry Razafinjatovo.

“By combining our technology and talented team with Nutanix and its hybrid cloud platform, we will further empower organisations to accelerate their agentic AI initiatives seamlessly, wherever their infrastructure lives.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but Nutanix said the financial impact is not material to the business.

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Salaries in the UK tech sector are rising rapidly for those with AI and data literacy skills, according to new research, but demand for softer skills is declining rapidly.

New data from Michael Page's 2027 Salary Guides shows the AI boom is having a strong effect on pay, with the top salary for an AI or data architect in London up by 20% compared with last year.

Head of AI roles are now paying around 11% more, and machine learning/AI engineers are up by about 8%.

“Applied AI skills are driving movement in the market. The people who can take AI from experimentation to secure, scalable production - AI engineers, data architects and cyber specialists - are commanding a meaningful premium," said James Barrett, UK practice director, technology, at Michael Page.

"The value lies not in generic AI awareness, but in combining deep technical capability with governance, data and real-world delivery."

Declining soft skills

Notably, soft skills are in far less demand, with creativity, communication, and analytical thinking all having dropped out of the top five desirable skills in the last year.

“Businesses are investing in the skills that modernize core technology and deliver measurable value," said Barrett.

These people can be hard to find, however, with most AI specialists reluctant to switch roles. Just 38% of technology professionals are actively looking for a new role, well below the 50% national average.

Similarly, 59% of technology hiring managers cite limited availability of skilled candidates as one of their biggest barriers to hiring, while three-in-ten tech companies said they found matching candidates' salary expectations 'challenging' when recruiting new talent.

“Candidates in high-demand areas know their value and they’re negotiating the whole proposition: pay, flexibility, progression, and the quality of the work," said Barrett.

"Employers are responding with more creative packages, from flexible hours and additional leave to AI training and accelerated development pathways. Many are redesigning roles around skills rather than perfect experience."

The in-demand UK tech roles

According to the survey, tech roles in most demand include:

• Applied AI architect/engineer
• Data architect/engineer
• DevOps/SRE
• Cybersecurity architect/engineer
• Business change manager

Looking ahead, the firm said there's likely to be growing demand for AI transformation leads: not just strategists, but people who can identify viable use cases, redesign workflows, manage risks, and drive adoption.

Many organizations are looking to temporary staff to fill the gap. AI consultancy now commands the highest day rate of any tech skill set – around 24% above cloud architecture, 24% above cloud architecture and 16% above program management.

"Employers are using permanent and interim hiring together as part of the same workforce plan, with interim often the fastest route to expertise while the permanent team is built alongside it," said Barrett.

The findings partly align with the results of ServiceNow's recently-published 2026 Workforce Skills Forecast.

This survey found surging demand for Python-related capabilities and test management roles. Conversely, the ServiceNow study highlighted increasing demand for more 'human' skills such as leadership, problem solving, and collaboration.

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