01732 759725 06 Karen Meechan ScotlandIS NEWS half (44%) of executives saw a 2x return on their AI investments in 2023. (source: State of Intelligent Automation Report: Impact of the Economy on AI Priorities, ABBYY) ······ Matching teachers and techies With 37% of Scottish tech businesses reporting a lack of advanced digital skills among their workforces, Scotland’s tech trade body ScotlandIS is extending its Digital Critical Friends initiative across the whole of Scotland and inviting more tech professionals, from IT technicians to software engineers, to take part. Set up in 2021 and currently active in more than six regions, the initiative aims to strengthen links between Scotland’s tech sector and computer science teaching in secondary schools to align teaching better with industry best practices and give students a holistic view of opportunities in the tech sector. Karen Meechan, CEO of ScotlandIS, said: “Given the fast nature of the industry, the changes in how we use and develop technology can’t always be reflected in how the subject is taught in schools. There is no better way to protect the industry’s promising growth trajectory, and job opportunities for school leavers, than to build a direct line of contact between schools and professionals. We’re looking forward to working alongside new industry partners as we work to equip students with industry-relevant skills.” To find out more about becoming a Digital Critical Friend, visit the ScotlandIS website. www.scotlandis.com ······ Ransomware casts long shadow Three quarters (77%) of UK organisations with 500+ employees that have fallen victim to a successful ransomware attack in the last 18 months were forced to reduce staff numbers in the aftermath. In the three months following an attack, surveyed companies lost an average of 35% of their annual turnover. One fifth (20%) considered dissolving within a year of an attack, 32% reported that their staff worked longer hours and 42% said they experienced greater than normal customer losses. (source: Veeam Software, www.veeam.com) ······ Cyber fear on the rise Cybersecurity remains the No. 1 concern for C-suites in 2023 (cited by 63%, up from 58% last year). This puts it comfortably ahead of other issues such as digital transformation (57%), interest rates (48%), retaining/hiring employees (43%) and supply chain/logistics management (38%). Two thirds (69%) of IT decision-makers say the level of concern for cybersecurity has increased in their C-suite over the past 12 months, with 71% saying the C-suite is making more of an investment in cybersecurity (source: Rackspace Technology, Microsoft 2023). ······ Cloud savings on the cards Faced with double-digit increases in cloud costs, 33% of SMEs plan to reduce the amount of data they store in the cloud this year, 24% plan to cut the number of cloud-based services, 21% plan to downgrade some subscriptions to basic services and 17% plan to move data or applications from the cloud to on-premise systems. (source: Making the cloud work for UK businesses report, Beaming www.beaming.co.uk) ······ Finance and IT teams at loggerheads over cloud costs Organisations are being held back from controlling their cloud spending and gaining ROI due to a lack of alignment between finance and tech leaders. So says Vertice, provider of the first optimisation platform for SaaS and cloud spend. The findings of its latest The State of Cloud Cost Optimisation survey show that while cutting cloud spending was the top priority for finance leaders, with 78% citing it as a top three cost-saving goal and 33.5% citing it as their number one priority, only 9% of technical leaders say reducing cloud costs is a top concern. Over half (55%) of finance leaders blame a lack of transparency from tech leaders, with 44% saying they can’t get visibility of cloud costs. Moreover, 39% of finance leaders say they find it difficult to negotiate costs with cloud hosting providers because technical staff own relationships with cloud vendors. To help organisations tackle the challenge of spiralling cloud spending, up by an average of 35% between August 2022 and August 2023, according to Vertice’s analysis, it has launched an automated Cloud Cost Optimization platform that tracks cloud usage and spending in real-time in a unified dashboard for finance and tech, enabling finance leaders to accurately forecast and control spending. Eldar Tuvey, CEO and co-founder of Vertice, said: “There are over 200 AWS products alone, which makes managing and reducing cloud spending complex and time-consuming. Automating cloud cost optimisation leads to bigger savings of time and money and frees up resources for growth and innovation. We are excited by the prospect of helping our customers save up to 25% on their cloud costs.” www.vertice.one continued... Free computers for every primary school The Micro:bit Educational Foundation, in collaboration with BBC Education and Nominet, is giving every primary school in the UK 30 pocket-sized computers and teaching resources to introduce children as young as seven to programming and concepts like machine learning and AI. Through the BBC micro:bit – the next gen campaign, the Foundation and supporters like semiconductor designer ARM, hardware manufacturers Okdo and STMicroelectronics and distributor Farnell will distribute almost 700,000 free micro:bit coding devices to schools across the UK plus tens of thousands of micro:bit classroom sets and teacher training material. A REPORT FROM BEAMING, THE BUSINESS ISP Making the cloud work for UK businesses A REPORT FROM BEAMING, THE BUSINESS ISP Making the cloud work for UK businesses
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