Smarter, Strategic Thinking — tech podcast for CIOs and IT leaders

Weekly conversations on cyber recovery vs DR, edge AI storage, HCI, and sustainable data centres—built to turn complexity into decisions.

Smarter, Strategic Thinking is a UK‑based tech podcast for enterprise IT decision‑makers covering cyber resilience, Zero Trust, immutable storage, HCI, edge AI infrastructure, and sustainable cooling strategies, with practical frameworks and playbooks from operators and vendors.

What you’ll learn

A weekly tech podcast for CIOs, Heads of Infrastructure, and data leaders—covering cyber recovery vs disaster recovery, Zero Trust, immutable storage, edge AI, hyperconverged architecture, and sustainable data centres. Each episode turns complexity into decisions with clear frameworks, benchmarks, and real‑world examples.

Practical frameworks you can apply this quarter.
Benchmarks for RTO/RPO, latency, and capacity planning.
Vendor‑neutral decision criteria that survive the board.
UK enterprise context across regulated industries.

Latest episode

read the notes and transcript for our Lenovo episode.

Read notes + transcript

Explore by topic

Cyber Resilience

Stop reinfection during restore with vault/air‑gap checks, Zero Trust, and on‑box ransomware detection.

Explore cyber episodes

AI & Edge

Keep inferencing local and fast—design storage and GPUs to beat latency where data is created.

Explore AI & edge episodes

Architecture & HCI

Simplify scale and control; size for recovery and performance, not just raw capacity.

Explore architecture episodes

Data management

From backup to compliance, make data easier to govern, search, and restore under pressure.

Explore data episodes

Sustainability & cooling

Do more compute with less energy—consider warm‑water cooling and higher‑density designs.

Explore sustainability episodes

Ops & governance

Reduce patch latency, clarify decision rights, and practice the plan before Friday at 5 pm.

Exploreops episodes

FAQs

Who is this podcast for?

Yes. Alongside strategy episodes, we run deep‑dives on specific products and updates when they solve a real problem for CIOs—covering architecture, deployment patterns, performance, licensing, and total cost impacts. Each product episode includes show notes, a transcript, and links to impartial checklists so teams can evaluate fit quickly.

How do you keep product episodes vendor‑neutral?

We anchor every product discussion to measurable outcomes—recovery time, throughput/latency targets, security controls, and operating costs—so buyers can compare options fairly and avoid feature‑only conversations. Guests are briefed to focus on problems solved, design trade‑offs, and where the product is not a fit.

Can we pitch a product episode?

Yes—if your topic maps to a common enterprise problem such as ransomware recovery, AI/edge performance, HCI consolidation, backup/archiving, or sustainable cooling, we’ll consider it; share customer context, deployment references, and any benchmarks you can disclose.

What’s the difference between disaster recovery and cyber recovery?

Disaster recovery rebuilds systems; cyber recovery ensures clean data by isolating backups in a vault or air‑gap and scanning for malware before restoring to production. This prevents reinfection.