An underappreciated aspect of enhancing IT security is the impact on an end user’s comfort and trust in the services provided. In the case of health care services and support, making the patient feel welcome and safe can be a game-changer as they seek access to needed services and care.  The next BriefingsDirect security innovations discussion examines how Macmillan Cancer Support in the United Kingdom (UK) places the ease of use and sense of security in the services provided as a top IT -- and community service -- requirement. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Here to share their story on how to develop and deliver a cloud-ready security bubble around all users, their activities, and the sensitive data they share is our guest, Tim O’Neill, Head of Information Security at Macmillan Cancer Support in London. The interview is moderated by  Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Bitdefender.

A special breed of company -- even though it has a relatively small number of employees -- does very big jobs with those lean and often distributed workforces. A perfect example of such a concentrated and efficient business is A-Core Concrete Specialists, which builds large and complex structures across the Western United States. When it comes to managing IT, the lean-and-mean mantra also holds true. The jack-of-all-trades requirements means that the IT leadership of it is often the head of security. As a prime example, that’s another way that A-Core Concrete shines. Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Today’s BriefingsDirect security innovations discussion examines how A-Core Concrete has created a security culture that relies on centralized administration, proactive insights, and rapid remediation to successfully assure that the whole company operates at peak performance. Here to share the story of how to best balance resilient security with the efficient use of human capital and resources is Andy Black, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at A-Core Concrete Specialists Inc., in Salt Lake City. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Bitdefender.

We’re all now part of a massive worldwide experiment about the very definition of work. Remote, in-office — or tightrope walking along some sliding scale between the two? How each business and each worker finds the next new work-life balance remains an ongoing "work in progress." In the post-rapid adoption of remote work world -- a full two and half years after the onset of COVID -- there’s no definitive answer on which approach to hybrid work works best. And the technology tools and solutions — many designed for an earlier in-office era — are not necessarily up to the task. The perceptions and preferences of bosses and workers alike are in a seemingly unending transition. Nothing quite seems fit for the new, still-to-be-defined purpose.  So, what is the eventual end-state of hybrid work? Will the process of finding it provoke new forms of innovation, opportunity, and technological success? Or will productivity and work-life balance suffer amid a period of tension, power plays, and years of seesawing trial and error approaches to hybrid work? Stay with BriefingsDirect to explore here the drivers and opportunities to get the future of hybrid work right -- perhaps sooner rather than later. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy.   To learn more about what makes hybrid work move to an arc of opportunity, and not wallow in a trough of complexity and confusion, please welcome Amy Haworth, Founder and CEO of Nobody Makes it Alone, and Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy at Citrix. The conversation is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.   Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Citrix.

For those tasked with delivering unwavering performance of their apps and data, there have never been more unknowns to account for and manage. That’s because today’s hybrid clouds and mixed-network environments come with a multitude of dynamic variables -- and an unprecedented degree of complexity. Yet modern digital business demands that the entire constellation of these far-flung cloud services, resources, and application constituent parts coalesce perfectly. The end result must be real-time and always-on user experiences that delight, and business transactions that are both highly secure and never fail. Bridging the gap between such daunting complexity and awesome performance and security requirements means gaining the best visibility into all aspects of the hybrid- and multi-cloud continuum. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Watch the video. Stay with us as BriefingsDirect explores the ways that deep observability moves past the limitations of metrics, events, logs, and traces to deliver far richer and faster data-driven insights. By exploiting these new means of pervasive deep observability, the highest levels of security, performance, and agility can be attained by nearly any business and organization. To learn how, please welcome Bassam Khan, Vice-President of Product and Technical Marketing Engineering at Gigamon. The interview is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. View the video. Sponsor: Gigamon.

The growing prevalence of complex multi- and hybrid-cloud environments has opened a Pandora’s Box of unseen risks around security and performance.  But unlike when IT and network operators had the tools and access to track their own internal systems and data, the mixed-cloud model of today is much harder to know and secure. Pandora’s Box is open but observing what’s going on in and around it is cloaked by inadequate means to gain actionable insights amid all the distributed variables. Enter deep observability and its capabilities, which are designed to provide rich access to multi-cloud and mixed-network behaviors. Such observations and data gathering can be analyzed to rapidly secure end-to-end applications and protect sensitive data. Stay with BriefingsDirect as we explore the latest advances around deep observability, and show how a neutral deployment approach for observation technology spans more infrastructure and services to best protect and accelerate digital business success. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. To learn how deep observability puts cloud chaos and hard-to-know risks back under control, BriefingsDirect welcomes Shane Buckley, President and CEO of Gigamon. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Gigamon.

As businesses worldwide seek to maximize their value to their customers and communities, the total value equation has expanded to now include the impact on sustainability for the environment. The ways that companies, along with their partners, suppliers, and employees best manage and govern their resources and assets speaks volumes about their place among peers. And it allows them to take a leadership position as stewards and protectors of the future. The sooner the world’s industries develop a commitment to reach a net-zero carbon emissions posture, for example, the better for everyone in gaining environmental sustainability. Stay with us as BriefingsDirect examines how Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has newly accelerated its many programs and initiatives to reduce its carbon emissions, conserve energy, and reduce waste -- including far earlier net-zero dates and more impactful emission-reduction milestones. Listen here how HPE’s newest living progress report provides a blueprint for other organizations in and outside of the HPE orbit to also hasten and improve their sustainability efforts. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy.  Here to share the latest on HPE’s plans and goals for broad and lasting sustainability is John Frey, Chief Technologist, Sustainable Transformation at HPE. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

The world’s office workers have more clout and influence now than ever over where and how they do their jobs. Those who have worked from home and want to continue are spurring on their employers to do more than just embrace hybrid work. They’re seeking to reinvent the very nature of employment. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Stay with BriefingsDirect as we explore new research into how innovations such as contingent labor exchanges and intelligent workspaces are changing the future of work forever. To learn more about how flexible work models are the new normal for workers and businesses alike, please welcome Andrew Bartolini, Founder and Chief Research Officer at Ardent Partners in Boston, and Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Business Strategy at Citrix, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Citrix.

Closing the gap between the applications and services a company needs -- and the ones they can actually produce -- has long been a missing keystone for attaining digital transformation. For increasingly software-driven organizations, the speed by which developers produce the needed processes, data flows, and business transactions has been much too slow for much too long. Fast-forward to the pressing new requirements of pervasively digital business in 2022, and it’s abundantly clear that something has to change. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Stay with us now as BriefingsDirect explores the latest capabilities and burgeoning strengths of Low-Code software development. To learn how the current maturity of Low-Code development will revolutionize the delivery of essential business applications, please join Matt Calkins, Founder and CEO of Appian in Reston, VA. The interview is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Appian.

Just as cloud computing initially seeped into organizations under the cloak of shadow IT, application programming interface (API) adoption has often followed an organic, inexact, and unaudited path.  IT leaders know they’re benefiting from APIs -- internal, via third parties, and often outwardly exposed -- they just don’t know where they are, how much they support key services, and how they’re being used … or abused. As a result, developers and business architects alike don’t know how organically adopted technologies like APIs are adversely impacting their businesses -- until something like the Log4j and Log4shell vulnerabilities have run amok. Stay with us now as we explore how API-intensive and API-experienced businesses are bringing maturity to their APIs’ protections through greater observability, tracing, and usage analysis. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. To learn how Twitter, a poster child for business-critical API use, makes the most of APIs by better knowing and managing them across their full lifecycles, we’re joined by several guests to discuss the latest in API maturity: Please welcome Rinki Sethi, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Twitter, and  Alissa Knight, recovering hacker and partner at Knight Ink. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Traceable AI.

Predicting the future took on a whole new degree of difficulty the past two years. And while we can’t always know what Mother Nature will throw our way, we can learn from what worked -- and what didn’t work -- in 2021.  Clearly, adjusting swiftly to persistent change and leveraging digital -- and often virtual -- tools, environments, and processes were major benefits. Now, how will 2022 shape up as we extrapolate on the trends around shifting work models? How will technology, both tactically and strategically, improve the ways businesses operate and enable employees to remain productive and content, regardless of where they are? Stay with us as we explore the ways work continues to be reinvented while -- at the same time -- digital technologies enhance and disrupt the means through which we all collaborate and operate in our jobs.  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. To learn more about the ways that 2022 will set the stage for the next decade of innovation and work adaptation, BriefingsDirect sat down with Christian Reilly, Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy at Citrix, and Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Business Strategy at Citrix. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Citrix.