Explore every episode of the podcast CDW Canada Tech Talks

In this episode, host KJ Burke is joined by guests Daniel Pinsky, CSO & Head of Information Security, CDW Canada and David Shipley, CEO and Cofounder, Beauceron Security Inc. to discuss the need to educate our users on cybersecurity best practices and how we can build a security minded organization. To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, host KJ Burke and guest Jim Love discuss some of the insights coming out of the 2024 Hybrid Cloud Report.To learn more, visit cdw.ca

What are some of the traditional uses cases for HPC and AI that the Federal Government uses currently?

·        What are some of the identified use cases that have been difficult to implement?

·        What challenges have stalled those implementations historically?

·        How has the current state of HPC and AI changed so that some of those use cases can now be realized?

·        What needs to be done so the federal space can implement the remainder?

·        How have traditional HPC and AI technologies changed and how has that made things easier for implementations?

·        How have things become more complex or challenging?

·        What types of investments are being made for infrastructure to support modern HPC and AI platforms?

·        How has the density of HPC and AI created challenges for IT teams?

·        How are large hosting providers and public cloud providers handling AI at scale challenges?

·        What has the advent of Generative AI done to change the HPC and AI landscape?

·        Let’s talk about deterministic vs probabilistic models.  How are they different?

o   How does this difference make them more suitable to different use cases?

·        When we think about data governance and AI governance it becomes a bit of safety vs innovation.  How do we create a healthy balance between those two? 

·        How can we mitigate risk but still drive forward innovation of AI?

·        As we look to the next 2 to 3 years what are some of the new use cases that you think will drive investment and also provide value?

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• Up until recently access to AI was really restricted to fewer people.  The need for specialized tools, knowledge and technology created hurdles that many organizations were not able to clear.  How have you seen access to AI and the perceived value of AI change across different consumers?
• One of the ways we have been segmenting generative AI with customers has been drawing a distinction between the targeted consumer of the AI tools and the risk profile of the data that data consumer will be accessing.  How has the need for data governance become a barrier for broader AI use cases?
• How has the hype around generative AI changed the types of traditional AI conversations you are having?
• In addition to better establishing more mature data governance practices what are organizations doing to reduce the risk of over sharing data?
• Do organizations view digital sovereignty for AI services differently that other types of more traditional data and application services?
• What does the current distribution of AI workloads on premises, at the edge and in the public cloud look like?
• How sensitive is the data being used for the initial phase of generative AI services we are seeing organizations build today?
• Are some verticals more prepared to take advantage of their data with AI?
• How are organizations deciding between operating on premises vs in the public cloud for AI services?
• Are we able to put the factors that influence the decision-making process in order of importance?
• How do the traditional methods of managing data and technology limit our ability to integrate AI into our organizations quickly and effectively?
• What are some of the ways we can change to adapt to the new demands of AI?
• How can AI development platforms accelerate an organization’s AI journey?
• How does managing AI assets differ from traditional application deployment management?
• How will organizations decide to be a consumer of AI vs a creator of their own AI assets?
• What is the importance of measuring the efficacy of your AI model?  How do you see AI assets being measured for efficacy and compared between iterations?
• As we look to the future what are some of the trends that we predict in this space?
• What excites you about the future of AI and the tools that you will get into the hands of organizations and users?
• How can our listeners become advocates for AI in their organizations and where can they go to learn more to stay on top of all things Ai related?

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What has the role of supercomputers been historically?
Has the advent of GPU clusters changed the role of HPC?
How is the technology changing to meet new needs of researchers and organizations?
As we look at supercomputing across different verticals, what parts of the technology and software stack stay similar and where does that stack depart from being similar?
How do we continue to innovate the technology and software but also address the sprawl of new technology offerings?
What is the role of a manufacturer in supporting open-source tools vs building tools optimized for your own hardware?
How are we managing the cooling challenges more effectively today?
As we move forward, what is the role of supercomputing?
Will we see general access to supercomputing via generative AI like we are seeing with foundation models?
What are some of your favourite supercomputer use cases that you have been involved with?
What excites you about the future of supercomputing and AI?
We can modify as needed but this gives us a starting point.

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• Why do organizations use staff augmentation and managed services?
• How do you differentiate and decide between filling roles that are internal, external consulting or managed services?
• What are some of the considerations that management focuses on when they build a plan to leverage managed services?
• What makes a good managed services partner?
• What are some of the risks of taking on a bad managed services partner?
• How do you incorporate a managed services provider into your IT management plan effectively?
• What is the best possible state for a managed services relationship to be in?
• How does the type of technology affect your decision making for how to support it?
• Where do you see managed services and consulting providing value to your team in the future?

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In this episode, we discuss smart retail innovations and how they lead to a better and more cost-effective environment for retail storefrontsTo learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss technology innovations impacting the way patients are cared for, where they are cared for, and how effective that care ultimately is.

 

• The current state of healthcare. Where are we at and what is currently in flight as far as technology innovation that we are seeing?
• How is innovation in technology changing the way patients interact with their care providers?
• What is happening with technology from the provider side that patients may not be aware of that is changing the way they receive healthcare services?
• The idea of the “home hospital” where patients and especially the elderly can minimize the impact to their daily lives by bringing more services to the home. How are technology empowering healthcare providers to bring more services to the home and why is that so important?
• What types of technology will we see in the next few years that will really focus on improving the effectiveness of our healthcare providers?
• How will tools like natural language processing empower better communication?
• What are our expectations for innovations within AI and high-performance compute and how will that fundamentally change healthcare?
• What does the technology and care gap look like between highly innovative healthcare providers and providers that have struggled to keep pace with technology innovation?
• The innovation centres that CDW uses, and how we use those to help healthcare providers really see what technology innovation can mean to them and their patients?
• Future state of healthcare. What excites you about the future of healthcare?

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In this episode, we discuss...

• The hardware ecosystem from device to data centre and platform
• NPUs and endpoints
• Cloud platforms for AI
• Access to tools
• Future of AI – Multimodal – Multisensory - sora

 

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In this episode we discuss...

• Current state of cybersecurity 
• Types of AI are impacting cybersecurity
• How  bad actors are leveraging GenAI to be more productive
• What is the measurable impact of GenAI to the risk profile of businesses?
• What keeps you up at night when you think about AI as a cybersecurity risk?

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss…

• The current and expected future state of the economy
• How that state affects business investment planning
• Discuss the unique aspects and benefits of CAPEX
• Discuss the unique aspects and benefits of OPEX
• How public cloud has changed the way businesses plan spend
• How IT can communicate with the business more effectively to secure funding
• What is FinOps?
• How businesses creating financial visibility

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

Join us this season as we engage with industry leaders in technical discussions around key innovations that are affecting all our lives in business, and in many cases our daily lives as well.

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In this episode, we discuss…

• How to identify the best place to operate applications
• Three best practices for looking at technology decisions
• Challenges that customers are facing with migrating workloads to the cloud, and what’s driving them to build cloud-like environments in their data centre
• Data activation over time, and how it could be a potential issue
• The need for specific talent and technologies within a multicloud environment and how businesses are leveraging managed services providers to fill the skills gap
• How does choosing where to run applications change when you’re using containers or VM-based solutions?
• Intel IT’s Multi-Cloud Strategy: Focused on the Business

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss…

• How customers are approaching security across the hybrid cloud
• Increased complexity that organizations face as they move into the hybrid cloud
• Shared responsibility model and how providers apply security controls to their services
• How remote work impacts security in the cloud
• How customers are approaching SASE solutions to provide security in the hybrid cloud
• Are applications safer in the data centre or in the public cloud?
• How identity, data loss prevention and compliance have become more challenging in the hybrid environment
• How has breach response planning evolved to include the hybrid cloud?
• What Cisco is doing to help customers speed up recovery after a breach

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss…

• What is operational trust, and why is it a roadblock for many organizations?
• How to break down barriers for organizations trying to implement infrastructure as code
• How can infrastructure as code address differences between public cloud and on-premises, VM-based solutions and container systems?
• How infrastructure as code can drive business value through repeatability
• What conversations you should be having when you start implementing infrastructure as code
• Leveraging application as code, infrastructure as code and configuration management to retain workloads in the public cloud
• How infrastructure as code helps drive the operating model in the data centre
• Supporting project managers as well as developers through self-service and predictability
• Training and retaining employees with automation and infrastructure as code

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss…

• How CDW reorganized internally to remove silos between its public cloud and enterprise data centre teams
• Why CDW needed to move to a hybrid cloud strategy to better support customers
• Where CDW is seeing benefits from bringing teams together and changing the focus from technologies to business outcomes
• How the culture around hybrid cloud is changing
• Challenges we’ve seen from customers in adopting the hybrid cloud, and how to resolve them
• How to build high-performance teams: Investing in the right people, empowering them and supporting them with the right tools
• How to inspire change as a leader within an organization

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss…

• How Cisco is helping customers tackle visibility across the hybrid cloud
• Key challenges with gathering real-time metrics in the hybrid cloud and how to address them
• The rise of open-source platforms and the new challenges and opportunities they bring
• How to get started with real-time analytics and application observability
• How AppDynamics helps customers identify problems and take corrective action
• Serverless applications and what’s going to happen with observability over the next couple of years
• How AppDynamics can be injected into the DevOps and CI/CD pipeline
• Agents of Transformation 2021: The Rise of Full-Stack Observability -  https://www.appdynamics.com/resources/reports/rise-of-full-stack-observability 

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

In this episode, we discuss…

• Microsoft's Developer Velocity report: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-ca/overview/developer-velocity/
• How do you define modern applications?
• Why “risk mitigation” should be the seventh R in app modernization
• What separates top-performing companies from bottom-performing companies
• How do you define success in adopting application modernization platforms?
• How to get started with app modernization
• What is Microsoft doing in this space?

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• The difference between data gravity and data inertia
• How data can be moved across clouds, and from on-premises to the cloud
• Why having a solid data fabric helps empower businesses and adds business value
• How to change data from being a business detractor to a business enabler
• How to address security in the cloud while keeping data portable
• How NetApp is embracing containers and the open-source community
• The direction of data across the hybrid cloud, AIOps and NetApp’s focus for the next five years

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• Four technologies that you need to support AI workloads
• Whether it makes sense to move AI data into the cloud or to run certain workloads on premises
• Why processes need to change to support AI programs and what IT teams can do from an infrastructure standpoint to support their data science team
• The three different levels of maturity for organizations that are adopting AI, and how Dell Technologies can help
• Functional use cases for AI across healthcare, retail and customer service
• How to use real-time data collected at the edge and sensor data to support AI programs
• Structured and unstructured data sets and how to gather insights around them
• How pervasive do you want to make artificial intelligence in your organization, and where is that data going to live?
• The importance of public cloud usage models, and keeping track of costs over time
• The state of AI now and in the future

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• Understanding what workloads are running in an environment, and what the dependencies are between applications
• How to structure applications to make them portable to transition to the public cloud, or to multiple clouds
• Do containers and VMs work differently across the public and private cloud?
• Understanding what multicloud actually means, and does it make sense to move to a multicloud environment?
• Can you expect your staff to be experts in multiple cloud providers?
• How VMware can help reduce complexity in the cloud and build developer productivity
• A step-by-step process to evaluating your multicloud environment

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• What’s driving application modernization for organizations?
• Identifying which legacy applications to move into the cloud – how much refactoring makes sense?
• The state of app modernization in Canada
• Avoiding mistakes around vendor lock-in, cloud security and backup
• Best practices that are driving success with app modernization, and the benefits that organizations are seeing
• The benefit of common platforms and doing the architecture one time versus many times
• Finding ways and technologies to bring development teams and operations teams together
• How is app modernization going to impact organizations over the next five years?

To learn more, visit cdw.ca

• How to minimize the complexity of hybrid cloud networking
• Avoiding some of the pitfalls and getting the most value from hybrid cloud networks
• How CDW and Cisco work together to help customers with network design
• Normalizing the cloud operational model in terms of provisioning, management and security
• How to re-evaluate your network in an environment that’s changed drastically due to the pandemic
• Technologies that can help solve challenges in the hybrid cloud

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• What do hybrid cloud and hybrid IT mean?
• Are workloads better suited for the public cloud or in the data centre?
• Evolution from “cloud only” thinking to locating data where it brings the most value
• Moving back to the data centre when things are more expensive to run in the cloud
• What to consider when turning your data centre into a hybrid cloud, and what benefits will you receive?
• How IT can get the most out of the hybrid cloud, and where they need to focus
• How to approach challenges in the hybrid environment

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• Is the zero trust framework essential for security? 
• How has zero trust security become embedded in organizations?
• How to find the right balance between usability and security
• Best practices for security policy development 
• How does zero trust enhance user experience?

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• Walking the fine line between data privacy and data security 
• How to minimize the risk of sharing too much personally identifiable information (PII)
• When should a business leader reach out to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada after a data breach?
• Why GDPR has more name recognition than Canada’s PIPEDA
• What’s the next chapter for data privacy in Canada?

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• How to become more informed about AI and machine learning
• How are cybersecurity companies using AI and ML?
• Ethical considerations when using AI and ML
• Will AI and ML fully replace an organization’s cybersecurity team?

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• What small business owners should keep in mind when it comes to cybersecurity
• Do smaller businesses have any cybersecurity advantages over larger companies?
• How to communicate the importance of cybersecurity to small business employees
• How the increase in remote work impacts data breach defences 

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• Why are people the best defence against a cyberattack?
• How do you make cybersecurity training a positive experience for employees?
• How to develop good cyber hygiene in both your personal and professional lives
• Changes made by organizations in response to the latest cybersecurity threats

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Key topics in this episode

• Can working from home be just as secure as working from an office?
• Pros and cons of a VPN when it comes to network security
• Cybersecurity threats related to videoconferencing
• The importance of creating strong, unique passwords
• Email security and how to spot a phishing attack
• Security best practices for smart home devices

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Listen to the trailer for the new cybersecurity podcast series hosted by CDW and Cisco, Get IT: Cybersecurity insights for the forseeable future. Episodes coming soon! To learn more, visit cdw.ca