Category: Tech

The government has unveiled 14 Regional Tech Booster projects as part of its £1m programme to provide businesses and entrepreneurs with targeted training and expert guidance.

In partnership with UK Tech Cluster Group (UKTCG), the £1m aims to deliver local expertise and includes a series of investment events under a National Investment Corridors initiative, through which the government is seeking to put local tech centre stage, boosting investment into the UK’s tech talent from beyond the capital. The first two of these events are taking place in Bristol and Leeds later this year.

The Regional Tech Booster programme will also include workshops on tech ecosystem planning and sharing best practices for ecosystem development with authorities across the country. Further Regional Tech Booster programme details, including investment event dates and venues, will be available via UK Tech Cluster Group as they are confirmed.

Tech for growth minister Kanishka Narayan MP said: “We want UK tech to grow and succeed from any and every corner of the country. It’s a no-brainer that supporting projects like these, and encouraging more investment across the UK, will catalyse our tech brilliance to boost economic growth and opportunities for communities nationwide.”

The projects receiving Regional Tech Booster funding include Tramshed Tech’s AI Innovation Challenge, which aims to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) capability and innovation across Wales, and ScotlandIS’s Future Ready in Scotland, which aims to break down the barriers that often prevent tech founders in rural or remote communities from accessing opportunities typically available in more urban or connected areas through creating peer networks.

In Northern Ireland, Tech NI Advocates and AwakenHub’s Activate AI pilot programme aims to boost AI adoption and productivity among under-represented founders and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the region. 

In the East Midlands, Allia Impact’s Building a tech 4 good ecosystem pilot aims to deliver a structured support pipeline, from rapid prototyping and pre-launch programmes to scale-up and funding readiness across the region, while in the West Midlands, TN Naija is providing Build Here, Bridge Beyond, a programme to support immigrant founders in the region to scale locally and globally.

The East of England’s ACT Catalyst pilot from Tech East is targeting startups, scaleups and non-tech SMEs to raise awareness of technologies such as 5G, 6G, AI integration and quantum communications.

The Leeds Digital Startup Studio is offering a peer-to-peer learning model to support at least 30 early-stage and scaling tech businesses across Leeds and West Yorkshire, while in Sheffield, the Pathways off the Plateau scaleup programme from Sheffield Digital Limited is providing targeted support and bespoke action plans to at least 30 plateaued digital businesses in the city and across South Yorkshire.

Other pilots include Digital Plymouth’s Beyond Boundaries Pilot, which is a pre-accelerator programme designed to address systemic gaps in early-stage support in Plymouth’s tech ecosystem, and the Plus X Brighton and Sussex Innovation Centre’s Brighton and Sussex Innovation Partnership for Scale Up Growth, a combined initiative that seeks to strengthen the region’s innovation ecosystem and unlock growth across diverse sectors.

David Dunn, UKTCG lead on Catalyst Pilot Projects, said: “As the projects are delivered, we are excited to share learning across other ecosystems – it is this multiplier effect of knowledge transfer that really makes the Regional Tech Booster initiative valuable.”

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Chris Belasco, chief data officer (CDO) at the City of Pittsburgh, is focused on his team’s triumphs. While some data leaders might like to bask in the glory of their personal achievements, Belasco says success in the fast-moving digital age is very much about taking a collegiate approach: “The complaints should come to me, and the credit should go to the team.”

Belasco reached the CDO position by transferring his evaluation and analytics skills from academia to the public sector. He completed a PhD in public affairs and ran a unit at the University of Pittsburgh that conducted large impact evaluations on democracy and foreign assistance for the US Agency for International Development.

With a young family, he was keen to establish roots locally and joined the City of Pittsburgh in 2018 as enterprise project manager. He moved into the CDO role in 2022 and has relished the opportunity to help his organisation build data pipelines and refine its operational processes.

“I was fortunate enough to have good team members, some of whom are still here,” he said. “I’ve built the rest of the team, which has some incredibly sharp data engineering skills that I feel are a nice way to emphasise the capabilities of what the city has to offer.”

As a reflection of those capabilities, Pittsburgh achieved a higher level of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities Certification earlier this year. The certification recognised how the city has established data capabilities to inform policy, allocate funding, improve services, evaluate programmes, and engage residents. Belasco is proud of the achievement.

“Thirty-eight cities are either gold or platinum in the western hemisphere, and we are punching well above our weight class with the capabilities and practices that we’re able to demonstrate,” he says. “What we’re able to achieve through the work we’re doing, such as partnering with Astronomer, is pretty spectacular.”

Creating a fresh approach

As Pittsburgh CDO, Belasco manages analytic, data engineering, and software development efforts to improve the city’s operations. His team builds the connective tissue for city departments to focus on helping residents, rather than managing data infrastructure.

“My job is mainly about making sure the team has the resources they need to succeed,” he says. “I enjoy helping people make better decisions, giving them the resources they need to be able to do that, and helping to achieve transparency.”

Belasco says the other key element of his job is about ensuring data helps the city achieve its objectives, which are centred on citizen requirements: “My role is about connecting people across silos and departments in our organisation, but also the public and our partners, to make sure that they know the data assets that we have.

“I need to ensure we’re using those assets strategically and that we’re achieving the goals set out by the leadership in the city. We need to give the public some of the things they’ve come to expect from cities in this digital age. That’s about being able to advance our practices by listening to the people who say these are the things you should be working on.”

Belasco says the general direction in terms of digital transformation is towards helping Pittsburgh become a data hub. He says the city made strong progress before he arrived at the organisation, referring to a series of dynamic leaders who were eager to help the city progress in the data space.

Since becoming CDO, Belasco has continued this work. He points to the organisation’s transition to the cloud, suggesting his role in Pittsburgh’s continued digital transformation has involved connecting to best practices in other places and ensuring his team has the runway to land its work effectively.

“We’re about to launch our first open data report since 2017. We’ve been able to release open data sets and partner with our data intermediary partners to do community-driven and community-facing data projects that help equity and justice. We’ve also achieved some safety measures that feel a little unheard of in our domain,” he says.

“We partnered with human resources, the Department of Public Works, which was the pilot leader, and the Mayor’s Office, and we built both the ability to report on safety incidents and the outcome metrics. That work has reduced safety incidents and ensures that employees can go home from work safely, and that’s clearly tremendously important.”

Opening data access

Belasco and his team have also been focused on building real-time citizen dashboards that provide open access to government data. At the heart of this programme of work sits the organisation’s implementation of Astronomer technology.

The Astro platform helps Belasco’s team manage the city’s Apache Airflow data pipelines. Before implementing the platform, the team maintained its Airflow environments on Google Cloud Composer. However, the team struggled with Composer outages and spent valuable time firefighting issues when they wanted to focus on developing innovative citizen services.

Belasco and his colleagues assessed their options and believed Astro could support a digital transformation. The data team began the migration to Astro in early 2024 once they’d demonstrated the case for change to the city’s senior executives.

“I enjoy helping people make better decisions, giving them the resources they need to be able to do that, and helping to achieve transparency”

Chris Belasco, City of Pittsburgh

“We tried to come up with an estimate of how much time we would spend servicing Composer images,” he says. “We were trying to be entrepreneurial about ways that we could help free up time for our people who knew engineering but were spending time on data management. So, Astro was a force multiplier for us to take their time and move it off into something else. The executives understood that we were trying to make our processes more efficient.”

One of the most important initiatives being supported by Astro is the City’s recently launched OneStopPGH Insights tool, a web-based application that allows residents to track neighbourhood permits, code violations and zoning applications online in real-time. Belasco says the pioneering initiative is a great example of how his organisation is working to create data-enabled services for Pittsburgh citizens.

“The site will tell you all the different pieces of information related to the area you’re exploring,” he says, adding that more than 30 permit types are already tracked. “Soon, the platform will also include everything from our Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, such as information related to transportation, rights of way and street segments.”

About 99% of the city’s data activities run in Astro, which has become the city’s unified orchestration platform. The shift to Astro has involved more than four million rows of transformed data across 13 pipelines. The platform also supports the city’s open data efforts, enabling data scientists and the public to use information freely and easily.

“These technologies are the foundations for creating useful visualisations,” says Belasco.

Proving the value of information

Belasco says the work around Astro is a good example of the data-led change that his organisation is attempting to pursue. Across all stages of this initiative and other transformation projects, there’s a continual attempt to build strong bonds with line-of-business professionals.

He gives the example of how this joined-up approach has helped prove the benefits of the OneStopPGH Insights tool to the broader Pittsburgh community: “There’s a project manager in another department who is overseeing the implementation of the software that is used for this programme of work.

“They’re also the person who’s gone out to the community groups to talk to them about using and transitioning to this new software. And the people in the community have had nothing but good things to say. So, this initiative is a triumph of a handful of different teams working together to get the work done.”

When it comes to lessons for other business and digital leaders, Belasco says that modern data chiefs must ensure people across the organisation understand the value of projects that produce insights for line-of-business professionals and external clients. His team stands on the shoulders of earlier work and the recognition of the benefits of transformation in Pittsburgh.

“I feel like everything started with culture changes in technology leadership at the city, which we were able to glom onto and grow. I want to credit the CIOs and past leaders of our organisation who have helped to grow that culture across departments, so that data people in the various departments could get interesting projects moving along,” he says.

“You grow trust out at the department-to-department level and get everybody moving along in one direction as closely as you can. We’ve acted like a subcommittee to help ensure that everyone believes in our work and has a say in what we’re doing. That institutionalisation is a way that we’ve been able to achieve our targets as we’ve moved forward, and then those conversations translate over into products we create.”

Building long-term trust

The data team continues to seek new ways to exploit information. When it comes to artificial intelligence, Belasco says the aim is to explore emerging technology carefully. “We’re working on adapting our activities to ensure that our workforce has the tools to be able to do higher-order work,” he adds. “That’s our pathway.”

Belasco says successful data projects are all about communication and collaboration: “When you say, ‘OK, here’s what we need to do’, and you have someone from a line-of-business department who has a leadership role in the work you’re doing, and they’re telling you, ‘Here’s what I need to see from the project’, then you begin to work together with other people closely to achieve your targets.”

The key to data success is getting the right people from other lines of business across the organisation involved early and quickly.

“It’s all about getting visibility from teams and subject matter experts to help make sure that they have a voice and can contribute,” Belasco says. “You must build trust between your team and the line-of-business professionals and senior executives in the organisation.”

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The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has commissioned a senior lawyer to review whether there was any misconduct by police officers following an independent review that found police unlawfully monitored journalists’ phone data, but found no “widespread and systemic” surveillance.

Jon Boutcher, chief constable of the PSNI, told the Northern Ireland Policing Board that he had appointed an “eminent” legal counsel, John Beggs KC, to review a 200-page report on PSNI surveillance and report back to confirm there was no misconduct or wrongdoing by police officers.

Beggs, a specialist in police misconduct cases, represented the police commanders at the 2016 Hillsborough inquests, and is the co-author of Police misconduct, complaints, and public regulation.

Separately, the police force has referred itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to investigate whether a “defensive operation” by the PSNI to gather journalists’ phone numbers and compare them with internal phone records to identify PSNI staff who may have passed information to journalists was lawful.

Boutcher was speaking following the publication of a 200-page review by Angus McCullough KC, which found that the PSNI had made  data applications to identify journalists’ confidential sources, collated a secret register of more than 1,000 journalists’ phone numbers, and identified four cases where the PSNI had used “directed surveillance” for investigations involving journalists and one involving a lawyer.

Sinn Féin representative Gerry Kelly pressed the chief constable on whether he stood by his public statement that the McCullough Review had revealed no issues of misconduct, criminality, or unlawfulness.

Kelly said there were “unlawful retentions” of two journalists’ data, despite clear court orders that the data should be destroyed, 21 cases of the unlawful use of covert powers to identify journalists’ sources, and a “washing through” operation to identify PSNI employees who had phone contact with journalists that was likely in breach of human rights laws.

“I just think for you to come in and to say that there’s no issue here, I just find it hard,” he told Boutcher.

Code of practice had no public interest test

Boutcher said the Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the PSNI had acted unlawfully in 2013 by obtaining the phone data of journalist Barry McCaffrey, but had found that PSNI officers had acted in good faith.

PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher has appointed a legal counsel to review the 200-page report on PSNI surveillance

This was because the 2007 codes of practice followed by the police “were not fit for purpose” and were changed in 2015 to introduce a public interest test, said Boutcher.

“Proper consideration wasn’t given in the application process around things that weren’t required by the code, but should have been,” he said.

Boutcher said he had asked the ICO to assess the legality of the “washing through” operation.

The PSNI’s professional standards department had stopped the practice in March 2023, and Boutcher had issued a formal notice to discontinue the practice in May 2024, the Policing Board heard.

Boutcher said police should be able to investigate whether staff breached the PSNI’s code of ethics by releasing information to journalists, but investigations should be based on a “specific and precise concern”.

“In all the time that I’ve been a senior investigating officer and dealt with some really complex organised crime operations, I don’t think I’ve ever required comms data for a solicitor or a journalist,” he said. “I don’t understand why the washing through was done, and it’s not going to happen anymore. It stopped,” he added.

He told the Policing Board that the lists of journalists used in the “washing through” operation were inaccessible and would be destroyed when they were no longer needed by cases currently being investigated by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

Police did not act with malice

Boutcher said McCullough had found no malice or that anyone was deliberately trying to inappropriately use the system.

“There were mistakes. There are process issues. There was a lack of legal advice. Special status issues weren’t properly thought through,” he said.

Angus McCullough KC published a 200-page report – The McCullough Review – on PSNI surveillance

Human rights groups Amnesty International and the Committee on Administration of Justice last week called for an independent inquiry into spying on a journalist by MI5, following disclosures that the service unlawfully monitored the phone data of BBC journalist Vincent Kearney.

Boutcher said he could not answer for colleagues in the intelligence services, but that there were frameworks in place, such as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to provide accountability.

The Northern Ireland Policing Board heard that the relationship between the PSNI and the Security Service, MI5, was governed by an Annex in the St Andrews Agreement, the peace deal which led to the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2006.

Under the agreement, PSNI officers are colocated with Security Service personnel to ensure that “intelligence is shared and properly directed within the PSNI”. The PSNI runs the “great majority” of national security agents in Northern Ireland, under the direction of MI5.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal is investigating 10 complaints brought against the PSNI by journalists, lawyers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) over alleged unlawful surveillance.

They include cases brought by the BBC, along with former BBC journalist Kearney and former BBC Spotlight reporter Chris Moore, who exposed MI5’s involvement in the Kincora boys’ home.

Boutcher has written to seven journalists in the wake of the McCullough Review, which found that the PSNI had unlawfully accessed their phone data. Another journalist impacted is no longer alive.

UTV journalist Sharon O’Neill is taking legal action after police covertly attempted to identify a confidential source in 2011. Hugh Jordan, journalist at Sunday World, has also been informed that his phone data was accessed.

Boutcher has also apologised to human rights lawyers Peter Corrigan and Darragh Mackin of Phoenix Law after they were subject to unlawful surveillance.

McCullough is due to produce a second report, expected next year, reviewing the progress of the PSNI in implementing 16 recommendations and complaints against the PSNI currently being considered by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

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BT is ramping up its deployment of advanced mobile telecoms technology at its EE mobile unit to gain a leap in a competitive marketplace, deploying a new generation of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) units with antenna integrated radios that are claimed to deliver maximum network experience and up to four times greater uplink capacity.

The MIMO units come from Ericsson, specifically the AIR 3284, said to be the world’s first 5G triple-band FDD massive MIMO radio used in a European-first deployment. And to make the usage of the technology clearer for customers, BT will in future use the term 5G+ rather than 5GSA.

EE first introduced its 5G standalone (SA) network in September 2004, launching in 15 cities across the UK, including Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield.

At launch, EE said its 5G SA network will set a new standard for connectivity, bringing benefits to customers from day one, and being the first of its kind in the UK to offer near-uninterrupted outdoor coverage in every city it launches.

The operator said 5G SA would offer a smoother, more reliable and more secure mobile connection built for better live streaming, video calling and mobile gaming. In addition, it was attributed with supporting enhanced voice calls in more places, with faster setup times that reduce the delay between dialling a number and the phone starting to ring via voice over 5G (Vo5G) standalone.

Two of the Ericsson units are live in the city of Leeds, with hundreds more said to follow by the end of the decade, and in addition to deploying the technology, BT noted that its ambition was to deliver 99% 5G+ population coverage by 2030, what it said was four years ahead of any other UK MNOs’ current projections.

The deployment is being supported by what are called a series of technology firsts and ongoing network densification efforts. In addition to massive MIMO, BT is also scaling its small cell programme, which now exceeds 1,500 nationwide after 500 units were added in the past 12 months alone. This includes its very first small cell deployments in towns and cities such as Belfast, Bristol, Oxford, Middlesbrough, Preston and Bolton.

Only weeks ago, EE deployed Ericsson advanced radio access network coordination (ARC) technology, which is designed to give 5G users across the UK a significant boost to their connectivity.

Fundamentally, ARC technology is designed to allow nearby mobile sites to remotely pair up and share capacity, with the result of “dramatically” boosting network performance – especially in busy areas at peak times – without the need for additional masts.

BT Group chief security and networks officer Howard Watson said that it was building for the future with smarter technology, backing ambition and growth with bold policy.

“From airports to Wembley Stadium, growing demand at major hotspots highlights why reliable connectivity isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential,” he said. “Connectivity doesn’t just enrich lives; it powers the economy.

“Our recent report with Assembly found that continuous improvements to mobile network quality could unlock up to £230bn in economic growth for the UK,” said Watson.

“Government support is essential if we are to transform our ambition for nationwide 5G+ coverage – and the significant economic opportunity it brings for the UK – into reality,” he added. “At BT, our mission is clear: to be the UK’s most trusted connector, now and in the future. By expanding our 5G+ coverage, rolling out smarter technologies, and leading the way in network innovation, we’re building the foundations for a more connected, more prosperous UK.”

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Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has announced the successful switch-on of a first-of-its-kind Giga Site utilising newly acquired spectrum, marking a step forward in delivering faster and more reliable mobile connectivity across the UK.

The site, in Paddington, London, is based on Nokia dual-band massive multiple-input multiple-output (massive MIMO) technology that VMO2 says will bring customers an enhanced and more reliable mobile experience.

The Giga Site combines low, mid and high-band spectrum with Nokia’s massive MIMO technology, said to use a large number of antennas to significantly improve 5G network performance by boosting capacity, spectral efficiency, data rates and coverage.

The site is said to be able to deliver more than 10Gbps of throughput, which VMO2 noted was more than the entire O2 UK network carried at the peak of the London 2012 Olympics, and is enough to support 2,000 simultaneous 5Mbps HD video streams.

By bringing together different spectrum bands on one mast, the operator says it can offer strong, reliable signal to a large area. The single site is using a combination of low-band spectrum to provide broad coverage, mid-band to offer additional capacity, and high-band to give customers very fast speeds.

The spectrum used includes that obtained as part of VMO2’s recent deal with Vodafone UK to acquire 78.8 MHz of spectrum, bringing the operator’s total spectrum holding to approximately 30% in the UK.

Following what it observed was many months of detailed technical planning, signal at the site was put to use just one minute after it was transferred. VMO2 says it will continue to deploy this spectrum over the medium term. In addition, the operator plans to install 1,000 of these cutting-edge sites across the country next year, boosting mobile connectivity and capacity in the UK.

Robert Joyce, director of mobile access engineering at O2, said: “The switch-on of our first Giga Site here in central London is a really important demonstration of how we are investing and innovating to continue improving our mobile network and customer experience. These new sites will deliver faster speeds, greater capacity and more reliable connections for our customers. As we carry out upgrades and roll out hundreds more Giga Sites across the country, we’ll put our new spectrum to work, helping us keep improving mobile connectivity nationwide.”

Mark Atkinson, head of radio access networks at Nokia, added: “Our partnership with Virgin Media O2 to implement Giga Sites reflects our commitment to helping our customers differentiate with superior performance.

“This is one of Europe’s first dual-band massive MIMO deployments combined with our TDD carrier aggregation solution, which showcases how our latest high-performance radios and versatile carrier aggregation solutions allow operators to fully harness the power of their spectrum, enabling the next wave of 5G services.”

The upgrades are part of Virgin Media O2’s mobile transformation plan, which will see the operator invest approximately £700m in 2025 to bolster its mobile network. The plan is focused on expanding 4G and 5G coverage, a dedicated small cells roll-out to boost capacity in dense urban areas, and solutions to address persistent network pain points including along railway lines, at airports, on motorways, and in stadiums and arenas.

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Verizon is apparently turning to AI to try to lure customers away from its competitors. A new promo, which claims customers can “bring your bill from AT&T or T-Mobile and we’ll give you a better deal” has appeared online and in stores around the nation. The promo involves Verizon looking at your current bill and seeing what it can do to match your carrier’s offerings with a deal of its own. But it won’t be a human going over your bill line by line.

Instead, the trick, some Verizon employees revealed in a Reddit post, is that the promo is managed by AI. By that, we mean that the Verizon employees take a copy of your bill from AT&T or T-Mobile and feed it to an AI service, which then looks for discounts and other ways that Verizon can price match your current carrier’s offering to potentially pry you away.

It isn’t a guarantee, many note, despite the marketing. But it could be a good way to lower your monthly bill, especially if you’re rocking a newer phone like the iPhone 17, which is already having issues with all three carriers.

How to take advantage of Verizon’s deal

Images By Tang Ming Tung/Getty Images

Verizon looking for new ways to engage with customers and pull them away from AT&T and T-Mobile isn’t exactly surprising. Many have long lamented about the price difference between the three carriers, with all of them often marketing themselves as the most affordable service. With this new promotion, you just might be able to get yourself a better deal on your phone line. Based on comments made by people claiming to be Verizon employees, you just need to print out your bill, take it to Verizon, and let them feed it to the AI so they can find the discounts that apply.

There does appear to be some red tape, with one commentor noting that Verizon can’t offer below a certain threshold on discounts. However, the only way to know for sure is to take your bill in and let Verizon look it over. Of course, this might raise some privacy concerns, especially since Verizon plans to feed your bill into an AI tool. Unfortunately, there’s no real information about what the tool is, who built it, or whether or not it was even developed in-house by Verizon’s team. So, that’s a choice you’ll have to make on your own.

Verizon says that whatever price it matches will be locked in for 36 months — though that lock-in won’t include potential changes to taxes and fees. It’s also worth knowing what you’re getting into if you ever plan to upgrade your phone with Verizon.

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A survey by Coleman Parkes for Harness has found that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in software development is on the rise, but there are gaps, which implies that more AI and automation could be deployed.

The survey results, published in Harness’s State of AI in software engineering 2025 report, show that the majority of software development teams believe software delivery will be dominated by AI agents working alongside human engineers within five years.

Almost two-thirds of respondents said they are using AI for code generation, 60% have used AI for documentation, and 57% are using AI for quality assurance and testing. Other areas of software development currently supported by AI were found to include error remediation (55%), security compliance (54%), and performance and cost optimisation (53%).

Areas where the software developers polled are seeing improvements from using AI include the speed of code creation (51%), faster testing and quality assurance (45%), and developer onboarding time (43%).

The survey found that, on average, organisations use eight to 10 distinct AI tools for software development. Some are using far larger numbers of tools, which suggests there is a risk of AI tool sprawl, introducing complexity that could lengthen the time it takes to get new members of the software development engineering team fully onboard.

Harness noted that tool sprawl and vibe coding can amplify operational risk. It warned that fragmented toolchains and inexperienced developers utilising AI assistants are creating governance challenges, increasing incidents and incurring hidden costs. It recommended that IT leaders consolidate tools into a unified platform and establish AI-powered guardrails to reduce complexity and keep teams focused on innovation.

According to the Harness study, organisations have high AI use for coding, but immature testing, deployment and governance. Harness recommended that IT leaders pair AI coding assistants with automated testing, deployment verification and security checks to prevent risk, cost overruns and manual toil.

The poll suggests that automation maturity is the main barrier, limiting the speed with which software engineering teams can deliver software. The biggest performance gap is not in code creation, but in delivery. According to the Harness survey, continuous delivery (CD) and governance remain under-automated.

The speed boost from AI-assisted coding is creating a pressure wave that is crashing against a wall of under-automated, legacy downstream processes. While developers are writing code faster than ever, the systems meant to test, secure and deploy that code are struggling to keep up. Only 6% of the IT professionals surveyed said their organisation’s CD processes are fully automated. This has led to the emergence of what Harness calls an AI velocity paradox.

For organisations with less than a quarter of their CD workflows automated, only 26% have seen an increase in the frequency at which code is shipped to production from their use of AI coding tools. This jumps to 57% in those that have between one and three-quarters of CD processes automated. According to Harness, moving from low to moderate automation in CD, therefore, more than doubles the likelihood that organisations will see a velocity gain from AI coding tools.

Harness recommends that IT leaders invest in downstream automation to translate AI-driven code velocity into business velocity.

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Sacha Vaughan, chief supply chain officer at houseware manufacturer Joseph Joseph, is in a fortunate position – her board recognises the critical role of the supply chain in a digital age, which she suggests isn’t always the case.

“Many brands see the supply chain as simply moving boxes from one place to another,” she says. “The consensus is often that, ‘It’s not that difficult.’ However, we’ve had some pain in the past. The board realises that the supply chain is more than just moving boxes from A to B, and it’s a huge lever for cost control. Therefore, they treat the supply chain strategically.”

Vaughan says this recognition of the importance of product fulfilment isn’t just a result of internal cost pressures. She suggests supply chain chiefs have had an interesting decade, characterised by a series of disruptions, including the coronavirus pandemic, Brexit and the implementation of new tariffs following the change in US administration.

“We’ve been fortunate and unfortunate at the same time,” she says. “The world has been particularly volatile from a supply chain perspective. However, the impact of these disruptions has helped to elevate the supply chain from the basement into the boardroom.”

Embracing supply chain transformation

Vaughan joined Joseph Joseph in February 2025. Having fulfilled senior operations roles with Forma, Charlotte Tilbury and Shiseido, her previous position was as global operations and manufacturing director at Dyson. She was approached about the opportunity to become chief supply chain officer at Joseph Joseph and was impressed after a discussion with the firm’s co-founder, co-owner and CEO, Richard Joseph.

“I was sold the moment I met him,” she says. “He’s super smart and a great businessman who’s really clear on what he wants. He was someone I knew I could work for, and I bought into his vision. I absolutely love the product, and the founders – both Richard and Anthony – are delightful to work with.”

Vaughan recognises there are similarities between her current and former employers, as both are design-led businesses where the founders remain heavily involved. However, climbing higher up the career ladder at Dyson required a move to Singapore. She says joining Joseph Joseph allowed her to achieve her career aspirations in the UK at an organisation she admired.

“Chief supply chain officer was definitely my trajectory – it was the role I wanted,” she says. “And they were offering that opportunity at an exciting time. They were looking for someone to completely transform their supply chain, not do more of the same. I really believed in that vision. And seven months later, that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

Vaughan says the supply chain she inherited was a bit underdeveloped. She describes the existing supply chain as sedentary and traditional – she was given the remit to drive changes and create a modern, technology-enabled approach. Vaughan is focusing on transformation with the aim of developing an award-winning supply chain.

“That’s the motivation,” she says. “We’re not there now, but we will be. The talent within Joseph Joseph is quite phenomenal. I have a team of 50 people. We’re not a huge company, and yet we’re taking the supply chain seriously. And within that team, I have some smart individuals that I’m just grateful to work with every day.”

Making the most of digital and data

Vaughan reports to Richard Joseph and is a member of the executive board. She manages the end-to-end supply chain and the strategic sourcing of the firm’s products, which draws on the specialist procurement team under her wing.

“So, the beautiful designs that we come up with in London, we go and find somebody who can manufacture that product to our high standards,” she says. “It’s about ensuring we can do that task at the right price and time.” Other areas of responsibility include demand and supply planning, customer service and order management.

Digital and data play a crucial role in modern supply chain operations at Joseph Joseph. “Technology becomes more critical every month as things move on,” she says. “Ultimately, the world is too complex these days for us to have someone handing around pieces of paper. We need to be systemically controlled.”

“Technology becomes more critical every month as things move on. Ultimately, the world is too complex these days for us to have someone handing around pieces of paper. We need to be systemically controlled”

Sacha Vaughan, Joseph Joseph

The company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system runs on SAP. While this platform is critical for day-to-day operations, Vaughan says other areas of IT supporting the supply chain need work. However, dealing with that situation carefully is part of her long-term plan to transform the company’s operational activities.

“I’ve purposely kept us a little bit undeveloped this year because I want to work out how we want to run things here. I think some organisations jump into picking the new shiny technology and then try to bend their processes around what that technology can do, and you end up with suboptimal supply chains,” she says.

“What I want to do is be super clear on aims. Then we’ll go shopping for the right systems that meet those requirements, as opposed to buying a demand planning system that doesn’t deliver what the business needs. I want end-to-end integrations with systems that all work in the same direction and talk to each other seamlessly.”

Vaughan says that making those decisions will rely on working out how to integrate with customers and suppliers, allied to a careful consideration of how suppliers can help the business manage its inventory in the future: “We are looking at everything as an area of opportunity while we work out how we do things around here.”

Working with trusted partners

When it comes to the general direction of travel for supply chain technology at Joseph Joseph, Vaughan says application programming interfaces (APIs) are already the standard way of communicating with partner organisations. She’s interested in exploring the potential of emerging technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), at the right time for the business.

“We have some elements of AI in our demand planning area, where we make predictions about what our customers are going to buy and when they’re going to buy it,” she says. “I think that’s a basic way of using AI, but there are more possibilities that we can leverage. However, they’re not firmly on our roadmap at the moment.”

Vaughan says any decision to use emerging technology is made in concert with the company’s IT director. Her team works closely with the technology department. While the IT department might like to move faster, Vaughan says it’s important to temper expectations as she sets her supply chain strategy in stone.

“They’re like, ‘Oh, Sacha, this is all the great technology out there that we could use.’ And I’m saying, ‘Yeah, that looks good. However, just let me get my house in order.’ I don’t want to put sticky plasters over things and have a problem recur in six months. [I want to] take a step back and fix our business challenges with technology forever,” she says.

I don’t want to put sticky plasters over things and have a problem recur in six months. [I want to] take a step back and fix our business challenges with technology forever Sacha Vaughan, Joseph Joseph

One of Vaughan’s most important moves was to establish a new partnership for third-party distribution centres in the UK. Her team ran a major procurement exercise after she joined in February. In July, Joseph Joseph’s end-to-end supply chain partnership with XPO Logistics became operational, and technology plays a key role in the approach.

“Everything’s got to be well controlled,” she says. “I was looking for a third-party partner who could ensure that we’re properly, systemically controlled. The data interface between us and XPO is seamless, with the right data in the right place at the right time, and interfaces that support our business, rather than a scrambled approach.”

Focusing on core activities

Joseph Joseph ships its stock to XPO’s third-party distribution centre in Rugby, where the logistics firm manages omnichannel fulfilment, warehousing, pre-retailing and distribution services for customers – both major retailers and individual consumers. Vaughan says the partnership allows her team to focus on growing the business rather than firefighting.

“You’ve got to know where your business is and what is core to you and where you want to focus,” she says. “I firmly believe that if you get the right partner, then logistics becomes a quiet part of the business. Because it’s the end of the chain, it can be super noisy. However, when fulfilment goes well, nobody talks about it, it’s super quiet, and you can get on with the stuff that’s going to control your costs and grow your business.”

Vaughan recognises that some companies choose to take control of fulfilment internally. In many cases, particularly for large firms, she says that’s a misguided approach. Successful digital transformation is a tricky process, and using the knowledge of an expert like XPO Logistics means her team can help Joseph Joseph deliver better customer experiences.

“Warehouse management systems are expensive – they take a lot of development, and a lot of technology is required to make things seamless,” she says. “It’s a lot of work running the distribution centres, and it’s a distraction from your core business. Giving this responsibility to people who are experts, and who can do it in a sustainable, repeatable, scalable way, is much more efficient, especially for a growing business.”

Vaughan reflects on the changes she’s seen during her time on the operational front line and is positive about the role of supply chain officers in the digital age. As more boards wake up to the opportunity to use high-quality fulfilment as a strategic lever for growth, she says the opportunities for her peers are significant, so long as they recognise the important role of digital transformation.

She says: “We need to think about key questions, such as, ‘How can you start with the customer and work back to make things frictionless?’ That’s where technology and supply chain should be focused. More and more, that’s the direction of travel, and supply chain leaders who are successful will be the ones who are really focused on the customer.”

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Backup provider Nakivo has moved to version 11.1 of its Backup & Replication software. Key additions include expanded capabilities in the Proxmox virtualisation environment – an emerging VMware alternative – that include disaster recovery (DR) orchestration. It also adds a much simplified connection to the customer infrastructure for managed service providers (MSPs).

Nakivo also responded to questions about a security vulnerability discovered earlier this year by a third-party security company (see box below).

Nakivo offers backup for virtual machines (VMs) and physical machines, and can protect sources that range from datacentres to edge devices, as well as cloud files and applications. It offers replication and disaster recovery for some environments, with automated failover. All of this is admin-able from a single-pane-of-glass user interface.

According to vice-president for product management Sergei Serdyuk, Nakivo offers data protection at “roughly half the price of competitors” in the backup space.

The company claims 16,000 customers, which include Coca-Cola, Cisco, Siemens, Honda and Radisson, where they are deployed in at least some departments, if not the whole customer environment, according to Serdyuk.

Core among the additions in v11.1 is MSP Direct Connect, which allows service providers to connect to customer environments without the need for open ports and network configuration on the customer side. According to Nakivo, this will allow backup for VMware, Hyper-V, Proxmox VMs and physical machines, as well as working with Nakivo’s site recovery feature.

“Providers can install our solution at the customer site. It can connect to the solution installed at the MSP, and basically off they go. This is to simplify and speed up deployments for MSP customers,” said Serdyuk.

Meanwhile, the new version sees expanded Proxmox capabilities. These include the ability to create VM replicas, boot VMs from Nakivo backups, verify backup integrity and recovery readiness, and restore from tape.

“With the new version, we can create Proxmox VM replicas in the same or different locations,” said Serdyuk. “So, customers can, in case of a disaster, just switch to a replica VM instead of spending time on restore from backup.”

Additionally, Nakivo claims to be the only backup provider that offers disaster recovery for Proxmox environments.

According to Serdyuk, that translates to having in place a site-level workflow that is dependent on replication.

Further additions to the latest version of Nakivo include real-time replication for VMware, which was in beta but is now generally available.  

There is also the addition of granular physical backups for Windows and Linux physical machines. This allows for backup of specific files and folders without full backups, and storage of backups in any location, including as copies to comply with 3-2-1 backup plans.

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A new AI device could be key to unlocking easier computer usage for individuals in busy environments or those who have lost access to audible speech. The new device, which is designed by Boston-based AlterEgo, is a neural interface that the company claims is less invasive than traditional brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), as it isn’t a BCI itself.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of AlterEgo, though. The idea for the device debuted in a 2018 MIT paper from one of the company’s co-founders, Arnav Kapur. Since then, it seems Kapur has been trying to make the device a reality, recently highlighting it in a video shared on X.

Introducing Alterego: the world’s first near-telepathic wearable that enables silent communication at the speed of thought.

Alterego makes AI an extension of the human mind.

We’ve made several breakthroughs since our work started at MIT.

We’re announcing those today. pic.twitter.com/KX5mxUIBAk

— alterego (@alterego_io) September 8, 2025

The company claims that the device itself is a “near-telepathic wearable” and that it can detect the various signals that your brain sends to your body’s speech system. This, Kapur says, will let you “type at the speed of thought” while also not feeding the thoughts you don’t intend to speak to the device. We’ve seen similar thought-to-speech devices in the past, though many of those appear to be heavily based around helping individuals with ALS and other speech-impacting situations.

Not a brain-computer interface

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this device, though, is that it isn’t a BCI. Most BCIs are implanted in the brain, where they can interface directly with your brain and the various signals that it sends. That isn’t always the case, of course, as there are BCIs that don’t require invasive surgery, such as the Synchron Switch that allows paralyzed patients to type iPhone messages.

AlterEgo, on the other hand, is a surface-level device that could reportedly achieve 92% accuracy back in 2018 just by using surface electromyography (sEMG) to read the activation of muscles in your body. The muscles that the device reads are specifically related to your body’s speech system, and we use them for both audible speaking as well as something scientists call subvocalization — the internal speech you make when reading or mouthing different words.

The device’s system then maps those movements to a text output system, which allows it to translate your thoughts to text, in a way. And with the developments to make the device a real product, the accuracy could have improved even more since then.

Of course, there’s still a bit of debate about whether or not the device is as good as the founders of the company claim. Details are also still pretty sparse, though the company’s decision to market it as a “near-telepathic” device has raised some eyebrows about its legitimacy.

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