In Depth

In Depth

• The end is nigh: Are datacentre operators prepared for a potential no-deal Brexit?

  Datacentre operations are resilient and forward-thinking by nature, yet pitfalls and cost impacts are looming large with a potential no-deal Brexit on the horizon  Continue Reading

• Covid-19 crisis has speeded up contact centre digital transformation

  Pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in many business sectors, including contact centres such as those of the University of Huddersfield and UK Power Networks  Continue Reading

• A safe bet: How Covid-19 is fuelling investor interest in the datacentre industry

  With demand for cloud and colocation capacity soaring on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic, datacentres are looking like an increasingly attractive bet for the investor community. Computer Weekly finds out why  Continue Reading

• How retailers are using tech to cope with changing footfall

  Customer behaviour was shifting long before the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the online shopping boom, so what technology are retailers using to keep stores relevant?  Continue Reading

• This Christmas, Covid-19 heightens retail security risks for everyone

  Do you think it’s only retailers and consumers who need to consider cyber security when shopping online during the holidays? You’re dead wrong. This year, the Covid-19 pandemic and the shift to remote working has thrown a spanner in the works  Continue Reading

• IP surveillance: The storage it needs, on-premise and in the cloud

  Surveillance is changing, with the evolution from simple streams of sequential images to the application of AI to video, as well as an increasing move to use of the cloud  Continue Reading

• Brain researchers get NVMe-over-RoCE for super-fast HPC storage

  French neurological researchers deploy Western Digital OpenFlex NVMe array for super-fast HPC storage with Ethernet-based NVMe-over-Fabrics connectivity across several floors  Continue Reading

• Microsoft Windows’ future is all about users

  We look at how Microsoft is evolving the Windows desktop operating system platform and providing developer flexibility  Continue Reading

• How retailers are using digital to engage with Covid Christmas shoppers

  Christmas is likely to be different this year because of the pandemic, and there is likely to be an altered shopping experience. So how are retailers using digital to cope with this shift in festive shopping?  Continue Reading

• Fix bottlenecks before tackling business process automation

  Business processes evolve over time, and intelligent automation requires a thorough assessment of what is not working optimally  Continue Reading

• Lush’s 25-year journey to digital excellence

  Retailers are increasingly focused on using technology to better serve customers, but for high street cosmetic brand Lush, tech has always been part of the picture  Continue Reading

• Need to know: Five key things about backup testing

  We look at five key things to consider when it comes to backup testing – what to test, how often, making sure backups work, whether recovery is effective and ensuring processes are consistent  Continue Reading

• How to build an effective vulnerability management programme

  As cyber criminals increasingly look to exploit vulnerabilities in software and hardware, businesses must build and implement an effective vulnerability management programme to counter this growing threat  Continue Reading

• How AI is helping to drive business process optimisation

  Automating an inefficient process simply leads to a faster inefficient process. Artificial intelligence needs to be deployed to ensure business processes are optimal  Continue Reading

• Covid-19: How retailers are using technology to respond to changing shopping habits

  As the coronavirus outbreak accelerates the shift in consumer behaviour, how are retailers using technology to keep customers engaged?  Continue Reading

• SD-WAN keeps Darling Ingredients on the table through Covid-19 pandemic

  For some businesses, the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting need to support mass remote working will have accelerated something they began working on some time ago. Darling Ingredients is one such firm, whose SD-WAN roll-out puts it in good stead ...  Continue Reading

• DDoS mitigation strategies needed to maintain availability during pandemic

  The growing prevalence of DDoS attacks combined with the increased reliance on internet connectivity during the pandemic means enterprises can no longer afford to ignore the threat of DDoS attacks. Computer Weekly explores organisations’ perceptions...  Continue Reading

• Cloud RANs offer promise in APAC, but not in near future

  While there is growing interest in cloud-based radio access networks, experts argue that telcos will still cautiously approach the technology in a phased manner  Continue Reading

• Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t

  We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with  Continue Reading

• Spinning disk hard drives: Good value for many use cases

  When it comes to storage media, all talk is of flash, but there are plenty of use cases where – far less costly – spinning disk can do a perfectly adequate job in the enterprise  Continue Reading

• Credential stuffing: When DDoS isn’t DDoS

  Ten years ago, credential stuffing attacks posed a comparatively minor threat, but with an escalating number of data breaches, the threat posed has now increased. What are the solutions to this very human problem?  Continue Reading

• How crowd simulation modelling enables organisations to develop social distancing strategies

  Crowd simulation modelling has a role to play in maximising the Covid security of offices and other buildings by facilitating social distancing to help get people back to workplaces  Continue Reading

• Tackling multicloud deployments with intelligent cloud management

  Organisations are moving to hybrid and multicloud deployments, which complicates software assets tracking and workload management  Continue Reading

• Forrester: Why tagging should be used to manage hybrid assets

  With complex hybrid environments, there is a need to apply IT asset management best practices across cloud and on-premise systems  Continue Reading

• Unified file and object storage: The best of both worlds?

  Unified file and object storage tackles growing volumes of unstructured data in a way that’s compatible with traditional and cloud-era applications, and friendlier to analytics  Continue Reading

• Why securing the DNS layer is crucial to fight cyber crime

  Domain name system security is often overlooked by organisations, but focusing on this layer could actually improve the effectiveness of cyber security strategies. We explore the latest DNS trends and best practice  Continue Reading

• How intelligent workload management tools can help IT admins cut through cloud complexity

  IT administrators have to manage an increasingly complex and varied range of application types and IT environments, and intelligent workload management tools offer a helping hand with that  Continue Reading

• BI not BS: how businesses are building futures with data analytics

  Business intelligence software is finding an intensified mission as companies try to forecast beyond the global Covid-19 health pandemic  Continue Reading

• Baking adaptability into the supply chain

  The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the importance of data and automation in supporting an agile supply chain.  Continue Reading

• Robots delivering the goods for retailers

  Amazon is investing in autonomous robot delivery in the UK, adding to pioneering work undertaken by Co-op and Starship Technologies  Continue Reading

• Morrisons and Pret join UK retail’s growing subscription economy

  Morrisons and Pret A Manger join growing UK retail movement towards subscription models – a space frequented by technology-led players such as Gousto  Continue Reading

• The UK switches on to mobile contact tracing

  Long overdue and attracting descriptions ranging from ‘essential’ to ‘cherry on the cake’, the UK’s contact-tracing app is now widely available – but where will further developments lead?  Continue Reading

• How can CIOs prepare for 12 months of uncertainty ahead?

  Just 12 months ago, nobody could have predicted where we are now. So how can CIOs prepare for the future amid such uncertainty? We asked five IT leaders for their expert advice  Continue Reading

• NVMe-over Fabrics: How NVMe-oF revolutionises shared storage

  NVMe brought super-fast flash storage to the datacentre, but it needs NVMe-oF to allow it to bring the benefits of rapid access and low latency to SAN and NAS shared storage  Continue Reading

• UK government coronavirus data flawed and misleading

  Government Covid-19 coronavirus data has been a miasma of inexactitude, often basically flawed and misleading  Continue Reading

• GPT3 could revolutionise how business can use AI

  OpenAI’s language prediction model that produced an essay could be used to deploy cloud resources and improve the quality of chatbots, among other business use cases  Continue Reading

• How the supply chain is handling Covid-19

  Cost-cutting habits have left supply chains chasing their tails in the wake of the pandemic. We take a look at how they’re coping  Continue Reading

• Backup audit: What is a backup audit and why do we need them?

  Backup and recovery are vital components to protect against data loss, whether technical or causes such as ransomware. So how can a backup audit help protect our key assets?  Continue Reading

• Erasure coding vs RAID: Data protection in the cloud era

  Erasure coding has come to prominence with its use in object storage and, by extension, in the cloud. We run the rule over its pros and cons vs RAID data protection  Continue Reading

• Business process automation expansion could founder on IT drift from business focus

  Business process automation might find new territory to expand into as businesses have become bloated with excess processes since the 2008 crash. But has IT drifted out of business alignment again?  Continue Reading

• Digital safeguarding of physical workspaces can help employees return to 'normal'

  Employees across all sectors are putting their trust in data – not just devices – upon their imminent return to physical workspaces  Continue Reading

• Top five ways backup can protect against ransomware

  Ransomware threatens to put your data beyond reach, so the best way to prepare is to have good-quality data you can restore from backup. We look at the key things to consider  Continue Reading

• Supporting mobile workers everywhere

  With VPNs struggling to serve the unprecedented number of remote workers, we look at other ways of providing reliable remote networking  Continue Reading

• What will increased remote working mean for tech salaries?

  As remote working becomes more popular because of the coronavirus outbreak, people have less need to be near city centres – but what might this mean for tech workers’ salaries?  Continue Reading

• Top five ways to benefit from tape today

  We look at the benefits that tape can bring, including in backup and recovery, long-term and ‘warm’ archiving, compliance and WORM use cases and ‘air gapping’ to protect data  Continue Reading

• Covid crisis shifts supply chain management from efficiency to resilience

  Supply chain management seems to be changing profoundly as the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, possibly shifting from an economy of efficiency to resilience, harnessing trading networks, machine learning and robotic process automation  Continue Reading

• A peek into the future of storage

  Flash-based storage is here to stay and will continue to be enhanced, even as helium and DNA are being primed for use in the distant future  Continue Reading

• CTO interview: Octopus Energy on using cloud power to get consumers to flip the switch on renewables

  Octopus Energy is on a mission to disrupt the global energy market, and is banking on the AWS cloud and an innovative software licensing agreement to help it do just that  Continue Reading

• Double extortion ransomware attacks and how to stop them

  As ransomware attacks increase, hackers are diversifying their tactics to get victims to hand over larger sums of money. We investigate the rise of double extortion attacks  Continue Reading

• Storage analytics: How AI helps storage management

  We look at storage analytics products that measure key metrics in storage hardware, single-vendor and multi-vendor tools, and how AI-based storage management and AIOps is emerging  Continue Reading

• Getting physical with datacentre security

  Whether it is natural disasters, terrorism or break-ins, datacentres will be vulnerable to a range of risks unless they are physically secured. Here’s how you can improve the physical security of your datacentre  Continue Reading

• The art of developing happy customers

  AI is playing a growing role in modern software development, but how well can an AI build applications that deliver great customer experience  Continue Reading

• Hangar 51 supports startups taking off in travel tech

  International Airlines Group’s accelerator programme aims to give travel technology companies a flying start in the sector  Continue Reading

• Digital experience management – web content management for the omnichannel age?

  Digital experience management represents an evolution of web content management for a more omnichannel commercial world. We explore its definition and applicability  Continue Reading

• Coding within company constraints

  We find out how containerised microservices and automated testing, combined with effective collaboration and communication, can drive innovation  Continue Reading

• Aerospace and satellite comms: The next growth frontier for cloud service providers?

  Space projects of the near future are less sci-fi and more about driving efficiencies through business intelligence, edge analytics and cloud technologies  Continue Reading

• A Dell of a deal: What a VMware spin-off could mean for datacentre operators

  Analysts doubt that Dell would be fool enough to entirely divest itself of VMware, which continues to offer massive value to the enterprise. And how would a change affect the datacentre?  Continue Reading

• APAC buyer’s guide to BI and analytics

  In this buyer’s guide, we look at the state of adoption of business intelligence and analytics tools, common use cases and other technology and business considerations  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage costs: How to get cloud storage bills under control

  Many organisations look to the cloud to cut storage budgets, but the potential costs are many and varied. So what are the key ways to cut cloud storage costs?  Continue Reading

• Portrait of the software developer as an artist

  Many programmers see themselves as artists – of a sort. Computer Weekly investigates what it means to be a modern software developer  Continue Reading

• How to achieve resilience – the modern uptime trinity

  IT leaders can take responsibility for ensuring their organisations are resilient during times of crisis. There are no quick fixes, but if you think it is expensive to ensure resilience in your IT systems, try frequent failure instead  Continue Reading

• Is the dial shifting for underrepresented groups in the UK’s tech sector?

  George Floyd’s death and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement has raised awareness about the disparity in many areas of society, including the tech sector. Many firms claim to be headed for change, but will this change be sustained into the ...  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: Weighing up the responses of the public cloud giants to Covid-19

  The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic had a huge impact on the demand for cloud services from enterprises worldwide, but how have the cloud giants fared behind the scenes?  Continue Reading

• Five on-premise and cloud options for network-attached storage

  We look at five options for file access storage, from ‘traditional’ NAS in a standalone appliance to distributed hybrid cloud file storage and NAS cloud gateways  Continue Reading

• Storage skills in the age of the cloud and convergence

  Storage skills was a discrete area in the IT jobs market, but that’s being eroded by the cloud, hyper-convergence infrastructure, and virtualisation. So, what are the key storage skillsets today?  Continue Reading

• Intelligent ways to tackle cyber attack

  Artificial intelligence-powered security tools should enable IT security teams to achieve more with less  Continue Reading

• Storage pros and cons: Block vs file vs object storage

  Despite the many changes in storage, there are still some fundamentals that hold true. We look at the key defining characteristics and use cases of block, file and object storage  Continue Reading

• Automating IT security

  IT security’s battle with the hacking community has always been a game of cat and mouse, but it’s becoming increasingly automated  Continue Reading

• APAC hybrid cloud adoption still cloudy

  Although there are clear benefits of hybrid cloud, enterprises in Asia-Pacific aren’t making the most of them due to a lack of holistic understanding, strategic frameworks and skillsets  Continue Reading

• Drive to improve flash reliability

  Due to its limited write cycles, flash-based storage can corrupt data. Computer Weekly looks at how flash reliability is being addressed  Continue Reading

• How business software can stay clear of digital addiction

  Consumer software is notoriously and deliberately addictive. Should companies and B2B IT emulate that or take the high ground of avoiding the spread of user digital addiction?  Continue Reading

• Decision points in storage for artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data

  Artificial intelligence and machine learning storage is not one-size-fits-all. Analytics work differs, and has varied storage requirements for capacity, latency, throughput and IOPS. We look at key decision points  Continue Reading

• Auditing for algorithmic discrimination

  Despite the abundance of decision-making algorithms with social impacts, many companies are not conducting specific audits for bias and discrimination that can help mitigate their potentially negative consequences  Continue Reading

• Getting infrastructures in shape for the big return to work

  As firms get used to a partial return to the workplace, what will this mean for those that have been charged with keeping business networks up and running during lockdown?  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: How Covid-19 has elevated the status of the datacentre industry

  The pandemic has served to highlight just how dependent the world is on the datacentre community – and governments, policy-makers and investors are taking note  Continue Reading

• Between a cloud and a hard place: companies change applications tack

  The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has intensified and sped up the migration of business applications to the cloud  Continue Reading

• Black Lives Matter, but do bots know that?

  The volume of content generated each day necessitates automated moderation to curate everything as it is published, ensuring offensive and objectionable material is blocked. But this only works if systems are adequately configured and reviewed  Continue Reading

• How Malaysia’s industries are tapping IoT

  Computer Weekly speaks to four industries that claim to have benefited from various IoT deployments and how it has changed their businesses  Continue Reading

• Will the Covid-19 crisis accelerate a shift in tech talent out of London?

  As the coronavirus pandemic has forced firms to work more flexibly, threatening traditional large office spaces in London, will tech talent make a long-term shift away from the capital?  Continue Reading

• Diversity in coding bootcamps

  Coding bootcamp operators must actively engage with issues of access, diversity and inclusion if they want to stop reproducing the same gendered, racialised and class-based outcomes the tech sector keeps promising to address  Continue Reading

• Digitally mapping for solidarity and cooperation

  How digital mapping tools can be used to promote solidarity and cooperation between enterprises, groups and individual organisers with a strong social purpose  Continue Reading

• APT groups’ mobile momentum finally faces resistance

  State-backed APT groups are increasingly targeting mobile devices as Covid-19 puts the spotlight on remote working infrastructure security. We explore how the industry is fighting back  Continue Reading

• David vs Goliath: How the smaller cloud firms have weathered the Covid-19 storm

  The toll the coronavirus pandemic has taken on the hyperscale cloud community is well documented, but how have smaller providers fared in the face of soaring demand for their services?  Continue Reading

• Making the most of coding bootcamps

  Computer Weekly explores how aspiring developers can make the most of coding bootcamps, with a focus on how to avoid being duped by a programme that promises more than it can deliver  Continue Reading

• How to apply zero-trust models to container security

  Containers have become a common fixture in software development, but they have resulted in new concerns for security teams. Is zero-trust the answer to tackling them?  Continue Reading

• Cloud flash storage: SSD options from AWS, Azure and GCP

  We look at the flash storage options available from the big three cloud providers – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform – that can help narrow the gap between on-site and cloud workloads  Continue Reading

• Dealing in data

  Lessons learned from pandemic data reporting will help forge new analytics techniques to improve data quality  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage on-site hardware: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud

  We look at the big three cloud vendors’ on-site offerings: AWS’s Outposts, Gateway and Snow hardware, Azure’s Stack and Arc appliances, and Google Cloud’s software-defined Anthos  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: How to go back to the office safely and securely

  Security teams should be used to supporting remote workers effectively by now, but what’s going to happen when people start returning to their offices? We look at the risks and how to address them.  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage 101: NAS file storage on AWS, Azure and GCP

  We look at NAS file storage options in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. All three offer native-based and NetApp-based file storage, with Azure adding single namespace cache services  Continue Reading

• Accurate data in, better insights out

  The coronavirus pandemic has propelled data into the headlines, but it has also shown the challenges of dealing with incomplete datasets  Continue Reading

• Collaboration technology is breeding burnout – keep it real

  The Covid-19 pandemic has inevitably caused the use of collaboration platforms to spike. But as fatigue sets in, organisations try to keep their use cases focused  Continue Reading

• Keeping the lights on: Managing datacentre engineers through Covid-19

  The coronavirus pandemic has seen datacentre engineers reclassified as “essential workers”, but how are their employers ensuring they can continue to do their work in a safe and secure way?  Continue Reading

• The datacentre chill-factor: Finding the right conditions

  Computer Weekly explores a variety of cost-effective, energy-efficient services currently using innovative methods to keep datacentres cool  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage 101: File, block and object storage in the cloud

  We run the rule over file, block and object storage from the big three public cloud providers: AWS, Azure and GCP. We look at what’s on offer and the use cases they are aimed at  Continue Reading

• Constructing the future for engineering – finding the right model where one size does not fit all

  Design and engineering has rapidly evolved to be all about interconnected devices. We see how one of the leading manufacturing software suppliers is meeting the challenge  Continue Reading

• The Billion-Year Archive project: A post-apocalyptic disaster recovery plan

  The Arch Mission Foundation’s Nova Spivack opens up about its Billion-Year Archive project, which aims to provide the Earth with an apocalypse-level disaster recovery plan  Continue Reading

• GDPR at two: How far we’ve come, how far we still have to go

  Marking two years of the General Data Protection Regulation, industry voices weigh in on the state of data protection and privacy, consider what has changed, and what still needs to change  Continue Reading

• Mainframe storage: Three players in a market that’s here to stay

  Far from disappearing, the mainframe market and the storage it needs is here to stay for some time. The three key array makers compete with high-end flash-equipped products  Continue Reading

• 2B or not 2C? That is the question for 5G

  A flurry of 5G network launches in all major markets in Asia, North America and Europe, focused on consumer applications and services. This looks set to change in 2020 as the operators get down to business  Continue Reading