A podcast for CIOs, CISOs and IT leaders

Modern Cyber Resilience: Why Backups Alone Are No Longer Enough

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with Panzura about why traditional backup strategies are no longer sufficient in the face of modern ransomware and cyber disruption.

For years, backups were treated as the final safety net — a technical safeguard teams assumed would be there when needed. Today’s threat landscape has exposed the limits of that thinking. Ransomware targets backups directly, recovery windows are shrinking, and organisations are discovering that having copies of data is not the same as being able to restore operations.

This conversation explores what modern cyber resilience actually looks like in practice: designing infrastructure so recovery is possible under pressure, decisions are clear, and dependencies are understood before an incident occurs. We discuss why resilience must be embedded into architecture and operating models — not bolted on after something goes wrong.

This episode reframes cyber recovery as a leadership and design challenge, encouraging organisations to move beyond backup-centric thinking toward resilience that holds when it matters most.

Multi-Cloud Storage: Strategy or Accidental Complexity?

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with Vawlt about why many multi-cloud environments emerge through accumulation rather than intent — and how that quietly erodes visibility and control.

Multi-cloud is often presented as a strategic choice, promising flexibility, resilience, and vendor independence. In practice, many organisations arrive at multi-cloud architectures incrementally, without a clear framework for governance, data movement, or recovery. Over time, this creates fragmented estates that are harder to secure, manage, and explain.

This conversation breaks down where visibility is typically lost in multi-cloud storage, why recovery paths become unclear, and how organisations can regain control without introducing additional risk or operational overhead. We explore how architectural intent, policy consistency, and simplicity play a greater role in resilience than the number of platforms in use.

This episode challenges leaders to ask whether their multi-cloud strategy is truly deliberate — or the result of unexamined decisions that have compounded into complexity.

Reducing Cloud Costs Without Sacrificing Recovery or Control

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we explore how organisations are reassessing cloud economics with QNAP, and why cost optimisation efforts often create new risks when recovery and control are treated as secondary concerns.

As cloud estates expand, many organisations find themselves paying for capacity they don’t actively use, while simultaneously introducing complexity around data movement, recovery paths, and governance. Cutting costs without understanding these trade-offs can leave teams exposed when something goes wrong.

This conversation offers a clear framework for thinking about when hybrid NAS makes sense, how to avoid cloud sprawl, and how to design architectures that reduce ongoing cloud spend without compromising resilience or operational visibility. We also discuss why “cost optimisation” should be measured not just in monthly savings, but in confidence that data can be accessed, protected, and recovered when it matters.

This episode reframes cloud cost reduction as a control and recovery problem — not just a financial one — and challenges IT leaders to optimise spend without eroding the foundations they rely on in a crisis.

Future-Proofing IT: Cybersecurity, AI & the Edge

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with Lenovo about how cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, and edge computing are increasingly converging — and why treating them as separate initiatives is creating long-term risk.

As organisations push AI closer to the edge and distribute workloads across more locations, traditional security and infrastructure models are being stretched. Decisions made today around where data is processed, how it is protected, and how environments are managed will shape whether future growth is sustainable — or whether costly re-architecture becomes inevitable.

This conversation explores how IT leaders should think about sequencing and alignment across security, AI, and edge strategies, rather than pursuing each in isolation. We discuss why visibility, consistency, and architectural intent matter more than chasing the latest capability, and how organisations can avoid locking themselves into fragmented environments that are difficult to secure and scale.

This episode reframes “future-proofing” not as predicting what comes next, but as making infrastructure decisions today that remain defensible as complexity increases.

Simplicity Is Becoming the Real Infrastructure Advantage

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with EuroNAS about why infrastructure complexity is quietly becoming one of the biggest operational risks facing enterprise IT.

For years, scale was treated as the primary marker of progress. As environments grew, complexity was accepted as an unavoidable by-product — something teams would manage through additional tools, processes, and expertise. That assumption is now being challenged.

As data volumes increase and estates become more distributed, complexity is no longer just an operational inconvenience. It slows decision-making, increases the likelihood of failure, and makes recovery harder when things go wrong. In many organisations, complexity itself has become the risk.

In this conversation, we explore why simplicity is emerging as a strategic advantage — not because it limits capability, but because it restores clarity, predictability, and control. We discuss how reducing moving parts can improve resilience, lower operational strain, and give teams confidence that their infrastructure will behave as expected under pressure.

This episode reframes simplicity not as a compromise, but as an intentional design choice for organisations that want infrastructure to support the business — not quietly undermine it.

Why “As-a-Service” Isn’t About Cost — It’s About Control

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we explore Lenovo TruScale and why as-a-service models are often misunderstood as a financing play rather than a strategic control mechanism.

For many organisations, as-a-service is framed as a way to smooth spend or avoid capital expenditure. But that lens misses the bigger shift taking place. TruScale is changing how IT leaders think about ownership, lifecycle management, and the ability to scale infrastructure in line with real business demand — without locking themselves into rigid architectures or long-term assumptions.

As environments become more complex and growth less predictable, control has become more valuable than cost savings alone. Leaders are under pressure to balance flexibility with accountability, ensuring infrastructure can expand, contract, and evolve without creating operational or financial drag.

In this conversation, we discuss how TruScale reframes infrastructure consumption around governance and intent — giving organisations clearer visibility into capacity, performance, and lifecycle decisions, while reducing the risk that growth outpaces control.

This episode challenges the idea that as-a-service is simply a budget conversation, and instead positions it as a strategic approach for IT leaders who need to stay in control as complexity increases.

AI Data Growth Is Hitting Physical Limits — And No One Is Ready

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with Seagate about why AI is no longer just a software challenge — and is fast becoming a physical infrastructure constraint.

AI initiatives are accelerating data creation at a pace most organisations were never designed to handle. While much of the conversation focuses on models, platforms, and algorithms, the underlying reality is more fundamental: data still has to be stored, powered, cooled, protected, and retained — at scale.

As global data volumes surge, IT leaders are running into hard limits around capacity, energy consumption, sustainability targets, and long-term retention. Storage is no longer a background consideration; it is emerging as one of the primary bottlenecks that will shape how far and how fast AI strategies can realistically go.

In this conversation, we explore why treating AI as a purely digital problem creates blind spots in infrastructure planning, and what leaders need to rethink about storage architecture, lifecycle management, and physical constraints before growth outpaces what their environments can support.

This episode reframes AI readiness as an infrastructure question — not just an innovation one — and challenges organisations to confront the physical realities behind their data ambitions.

How Enterprises Are Rethinking Archive Strategy in a World of Ransomware and Exploding Data

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with QStar about why archive strategy has moved from a background storage decision to a front-line business concern.

For years, archive storage was treated as a solved problem. Data that wasn’t considered “hot” could be moved to slower, cheaper tiers and largely forgotten — accessed only when compliance, audits, or legal requirements demanded it. That assumption no longer holds.

As ransomware attacks increase and unstructured data continues to grow at scale, organisations are realising that archived data is no longer passive. It is discoverable, valuable, and, if poorly managed, a significant risk surface. Archive now plays a direct role in cyber recovery, data governance, and operational resilience.

In this conversation, we explore how enterprises are rethinking archive as an active layer of the data estate — one that provides visibility, policy control, and confidence that data can be located, accessed, and recovered when it matters most. We also discuss why treating archive as “cold storage” creates blind spots that only become visible during incidents.

This episode reframes archive not as a place data goes to disappear, but as a strategic foundation for organisations that need to stay in control of their data — even when they hope they’ll never need it.

How Enterprises Are Rethinking Archive Strategy in a World of Ransomware and Exploding Data

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we sit down with Titan to explore why archive strategy can no longer be treated as a “set and forget” decision.

For years, archive storage was viewed as a solved problem. Data that wasn’t considered business-critical could be moved to slower, cheaper tiers and largely ignored, resurfacing only when compliance or retention requirements demanded it. That model no longer reflects reality.

Ransomware, regulatory pressure, and the sheer growth of unstructured data have fundamentally changed the role archive plays in enterprise environments. What was once passive storage is now part of the active security, recovery, and resilience conversation.

In this discussion, we unpack how organisations are rethinking archive not just as a cost-containment exercise, but as a strategic control point — one that influences cyber recovery, data visibility, and long-term risk exposure. We also explore why many legacy assumptions about archive are now creating blind spots that leaders only discover when something goes wrong.

This conversation is less about technology choices in isolation, and more about how leaders should be thinking about data they hope they’ll never need — but absolutely must be able to trust.

Why Air-Gapped Storage Is Back on the Boardroom Agenda

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with Qualstar to examine why long-term data storage strategies are being re-evaluated across the enterprise.

As organisations clean and rationalise data in the cloud to control costs, a growing challenge remains: how to retain large volumes of inactive data securely, affordably, and for decades. The conversation explores why tape-based archives are increasingly being used as a deliberate architectural layer — complementing cloud rather than competing with it.

Topics include the economics of cloud retention, rising energy costs, ransomware resilience through air-gapped storage, real-world adoption of LTO-9 and LTO-10, and where archive storage fits within modern data governance strategies.

This episode is essential viewing for IT leaders responsible for data growth, compliance, risk, and long-term infrastructure planning.

Why Software Defined Storage Is Reshaping Enterprise Infrastructure Strategy

In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we speak with DataCore Software to explore why software defined storage is becoming central to modern enterprise architecture.

As organisations inherit multi-vendor storage estates, face volatile hardware pricing, and plan for sustained data growth, the limitations of appliance-led infrastructure are becoming more visible. The conversation examines how virtualising storage at the software layer enables organisations to consolidate silos, extend hardware lifecycles, and regain architectural control without being locked into specific vendors.

Topics include SANsymphony block storage virtualisation, hardware-agnostic infrastructure, transparent migration from legacy systems without downtime, continuous data protection and immutable snapshots for cyber resilience, S3-compatible object storage with Swarm, and intelligent tiering through Nexus to balance performance and cost.

This episode is essential viewing for CIOs, CTOs, and infrastructure leaders evaluating software defined storage as a strategic foundation for performance, resilience, and long-term flexibility.