Podcast: The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload - Episode 2

In this week’s episode of the Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast, Brian McKenna, Caroline Donnelly and Clare McDonald dig a little deeper into some of the week’s biggest tech stories and trends, and are joined by special guest – Computer Weekly’s networking editor, Alex Scroxton.

• Alex talks about his time in Barcelona for Cisco Live Europe, discussing the transition of the networking industry towards a software-defined future, and how Cisco is taking advantage of it to change the way it works.

• Caroline shares a story about insurance firm AXA’s use of AI bots, named Harry, Bert and Lenny, to reduce the amount of time human workers spend on mundane tasks, but what does this mean for the future of work? If staff are left open to perform more “analytical tasks”, will they need to work a full week, and where are the skills for these new roles going to come from?

• It is financial results season, and Brian and Caroline discuss why Computer Weekly reports on numbers from big firms such as AWS, SAP and Microsoft, as well as what Computer Weekly readers may hope to glean from these numbers.

• Clare gives a brief overview of NatWest’s launch of an academy designed to train 1,000 of its employees on how to understand and better use data to serve the bank’s customers.

• Finally, Alex discusses the latest ups and downs of Huawei as several network giants plan to cut ties with its technology – but could this be to the detriment of 5G technologies in the near future?