In 2021, Allianz went into live production with a new solution to settle international auto insurance claims involving its 25 subsidiaries in Europe. The blockchain-based solution based on Hyper Ledger Fabric has already settled more than 1 million transactions, automating a process that was painful and slow. In this episode of Tech Insights, Allia…

We recount the discovery of a ransomware attack that’s staged to execute on the network of a mid-sized U.S.-based manufacturer. A day-by-day account of what it’s like to discover ransomware, the severe steps that need to be taken to contain the damage, the cyber-criminal groups looking to profit from the attack, and the lessons learned about securi…

When the pandemic hit, Harvard Business School wanted its students to have an equally rich education experience whether they were physically in the classroom or connecting remotely. To design the technology solution that would make it work, CIO Elizabeth Clark participated in a multi-functional team that put 4K cameras, huge TV screens, and Zoom ro…

During the past year, workers have left their jobs at an unprecedented rate. The mass migration has been dubbed 'The Great Resignation' and it's shone a light on the importance of employee retention. Especially in IT where there is already a shortage of technical talent available on the market, companies should make a serious effort to keep their w…

David Dorman is no stranger to being in the captain’s chair amid a crisis. Previously the CEO at storied telecommunications firm AT&T, Dorman shepherded the firm through the disruption to the industry in the early 2000s. He repositioned the firm in a rapidly modernizing environment and ultimately delivered on selling the firm in 2005 for $16 billio…

Can being present for an epic concert define your relationship with your favorite artists? Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida is kicking off another web3 project with Drrops, an app that allows concert-goers to connect directly with artists and collect unique digital collectibles. Raine helms the company as CEO, and says big things are in store for …

We live in the era of the quantified self, awash in different metrics about our health. Yet barriers stand in the way of using health data in research studies because of the privacy requirements around sensitive medical information and the highly technical skills needed to use data science approaches to yield results. Software vendor SAS is looking…

The pandemic changed the way we work, for better or for worse. At Microsoft, a recently published study in Nature details how remote work created more flexibility for employees, but also created more friction communicating between different groups within the office and hindered innovation. We talk with Jason Brommet, Head of Modern Work and Securit…

Zoho Corp.'s headquarters are Chennai, India and it operates remote offices in the southern rural regions of India as well. The company's flexible approach to work and employee-centric view helped it quickly pivot during the pandemic, and continues to inform the software vendor's approach to its own operating model. In an interview, Chief Strategy …

Clio describes itself as the operating system for the legal industry. A Software as a Service suite that is packed with all the tools a law office could want, Clio's founders had the foresight to build their company with the capability to expand its usefulness. By using an open API approach, Clio acts as a platform that can integrate with other sof…

The golden ratio has been a subject of fascination since the days of Greek philosophers like Pythagoras and Euclid. The ratio is commonly found in nature, and humans have adapted it into beautiful works of art. But the latest discovery of the golden ratio may be the most surprising of all. Bert de Groot, Professor of Economics at Erasmus University…

The global semiconductor supply shortage is slowing down production of many different products and threatening to hamper economic recovery. The consolidation of the semiconductor manufacturing sector is a major factor in why this is happening. Is it time to create a new, domestic supply chain for semiconductors? We revisit our April 12 interview wi…

Has social media become a part of the public square? Sure, the big-name social media firms are all owned by private companies. But have they become so big, and so popular, that they are now entering into the realm of a new, digital public space? If they are, then do companies like Twitter have to respect certain rules that would normally be reserve…

Welcome to the special first-anniversary episode of Tech Insights! As part of NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually beyond, a new space station called the Lunar Gateway will be put into orbit around the Moon. It will play an important role in staging missions to the Moon’s surface and eventually onward to Mars. Canadarm3 will …

*Correction: In the podcast we refer to the federal government's IT budget as $90 trillion. The intent was to say $90 billion. The U.S. federal government is spending more than $90 billion on IT in 2021. That's a lot of Benjamins. When you consider that the Pentagon is reconsidering a $10 billion cloud computing contract on its own, and that federa…

We revisit a previous episode of Tech Insights contemplating how much we are all using screens during the pandemic. Now that it's summer and vaccines are rolling out, we might feel we have more options to get out of the house. But screens can be a hard habit to break. Amber Mac has some tips on managing your own screen time, and managing it for you…

Windows 11 is here! Because it just makes sense. And we're here again to tell you the highlights of the main event. Last week we gave you a preview of what to expect from the new release. Now that Microsoft has given us the official presentation, we have some new details to dig into. And to help me do that, I'm joined by two Info-Tech Analysts that…

It's a big week for Microsoft. For the first time in six years, a new version of Windows is expected to be released. We expect that Microsoft CEO will take the stage and reveal Windows 11 to the world on Thursday. Of course, that follows a leaked early build of Windows 11 being released last week and making the rounds. So in some ways the cat is ou…

If you're like me, you use the web every day. And you do so just about as easily as you breathe. Reading websites and accessing media is effortless. But imagine if it wasn't. Imagine if you suddenly couldn't read the text on your favourite news website. Or if the layout of that online store you were shopping became so confusing that it was impossib…

If you've heard about Amazon Sidewalk in this past week, it's probably through an article that explains how you should opt out of the new feature that goes live on June 8. "Amazon plans to share your internet with neighbours" proclaims one headline. But what is Amazon Sidewalk? And why did Amazon think it was a good idea to have owners of Amazon Ec…

The ways that technology is transforming the farming industry are striking. Digital transformation has reached out of our urban centers to the farmer's fields in our rural areas. The result is that the future of farming will be about far more than growing and selling the food that you put on your plate. Here today to discuss that future is Wade Bar…

At Google I/O this week, the Silicon Valley giant showed off a vision of what web conferencing might be like in the future. It's called Project Starline and you know they had a dramatic marketing video ready to introduce the technology. We discuss the implications, but Project Starline isn't going to change my experience - or yours - anytime soon. …

With NBA and NHL playoffs starting this week, we're revisiting this episode on how pro sports are modernizing. Originally aired Aug. 19, 2020. COVID disrupted pro sports leagues around the world just like it disrupted the rest of society. The implications for this multi-billion dollar industry are still being realized. At the moment, we have player…

We’ve all heard of the cloud, and many of us have even migrated some or all of our workloads to AWS or Microsoft Azure. But can we trust it? Putting our most important data and resources in someone else’s datacenter and managing them with a fancy new software layer requires a lot of trust. On this episode of Tech Insights, Abdul Kittana, co-founder…

A company called Global Resource Systems came out of nowhere and started announcing that it had control over a huge portion of internet real estate that used to belong to the Pentagon. This internet space is called IPV4, and it's crucial to how traffic is routed around the world. Now this portion of space that belonged to the Pentagon has never bee…

Ever since I saw Spot, the robot dog developed by Boston Dynamics, I’ve wanted to drive it. Well, I finally got my chance. Controlling it through my web browser no less. And I couldn’t even believe it was happening. San Francisco-based firm Formant made it possible. It used Spot to show off its robot command center and the experience was so good I …

The vaccine rollout is hitting full steam in the United States. Hundreds of millions of vaccine doses have been delivered into people’s arms. The vaccine distribution effort is crucial to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. And to get those vaccine doses into people’s arms, you need a good registration system. And to have a good registration system, …

Did you see that the new Apple car came out? Well, almost. The Wall Street Journal did a tongue in cheek arts and crafts project for a video it released on April 5. The video features an iPhone that’s been modified to look like a car. It looks pretty fun. But the really interesting part is the demonstration of how many components an iPhone and a ca…

Since World War 2 there have been three really major economic crises. You can mark these moments by times when gross domestic product growth plummeted down towards near 0 or worse. The energy crisis of 1982 led to a global recession and jobs crisis. Then We made it all the way to 2008 before the next melt-down. Remember, that was the sub-prime mort…

According to Info-Tech's data, 98% of employees say they would like to work from home to some extent. So this past year, we've got our chance. The question is: what happens next? The vaccines are being distributed. We could be free of the worry of COVID-19 infection soon enough. Does that mean we'll all be rushing back to the office? Or have we gro…

Raine Maida is Juno-award winning musician best known as the lead singer of Our Lady Peace and he's also the recipient of the 2014 Allan Waters Humanitarian Award. Now he's the chief product officer at S!NG, an app that wants to help musicians collaborate by using NFTs. Raine and CEO Geoff Osler talk about their vision for S!NG, discuss the utility…

You don't need an AI platform to practice foresight. Futurists are people that make a practice of tuning that trends dial and are able to isolate signals clearly. And you can be a futurist too. In this podcast, learn how to use techniques including: SPLEET analysis, scenario planning, and second-order effects. Here to help us with our desire to pre…

e-Sports are a big deal. The industry has already grown to $1.5 billion in annual revenue. It's conceivable that e-Sports might even overtake actual sports in the future. And just like there is a major betting industry built around traditional sports, there is a burgeoning betting business emerging around e-Sports. Here to talk to us about that tod…

During the U.S. election last fall, tech giants hosting user-generated content finally felt they had to take action against the misinformation being hosted on their platforms. That lead to other lesser-known platforms courting the banned users as a strategy to increase their user base and overall audience. What are the risks of misinformation gaini…

It's Black History Month and today we're going to focus on what companies need to do to improve their ability to hire people of color, and then retain them. Like so many things, good diversity practices are driven from the top of the organization. You need executives to be open to doing things differently, to working with different types of people.…

Remember the movie Hidden Figures? It was an award-winning movie from 2016. It was even nominated for best picture at the Oscars. It is about three black women who broke through a very white, male culture at NASA and contributed mathematics that helped get Americans into space, and eventually to the moon. It's been a long time since the '60s and th…

The theme for Info-Tech's 2021 CIO Priorities Report is resilience. Guest Travis Duncan, a research director in applications at Info-Tech explains the priorities and why they are at the top of the list: #1 Create an appropriate budget reserve #2 Refocus IT risk planning #3 Strengthen organizational change management capabilities to maximize technol…

Throughout the pandemic, we've seen many efforts to express gratitude for healthcare workers. And they deserve it. Treating patients with COVID-19 means that healthcare workers are risking their lives every day, just by going to work. A study that came out in The Lancet in November demonstrated that healthcare workers, and especially nurses, have a…

We're discussing Info-Tech's new IT Talent Trends for 2021 with report author Rebecca Factor, a senior research analyst at Info-Tech. The five trends are: Remote Work is Here to Stay The Rise of DEI in the Workplace A Greater Emphasis on Wellbeing A Shift of Skills Priorities Uncertainty Unlocks Performance…

If you don't expose the problems in your infrastructure, they can quickly overwhelm your employees and your business. The concept of technical debt has its roots in the agile approaches honed by software developers in the '90s. It's the root of many IT problems including way too much time spent on maintenance. Just like real debt, the interest can …

The headlines were everywhere. Hackers infiltrated the U.S. government and some private firms by exploiting vulnerabilities in SolarWinds' network management software. More than 250 networks were pierced and it's believed that Russia's S.V.R. intelligence service is behind the attack. Other vendors like Microsoft and FireEye also say they were brea…

Salesforce launched Einstein, its artificial intelligence tool, in 2016. It was memorable because of the marketing materials, featuring a cute cartoon of the world's most misquoted-scientist. It was also memorable because of the unique capabilities Einsten brought to the table. This wasn't some sort of algorithm builder for data scientists. It was …

Digital technologies can help get us meet the IPCC goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Typically technology is only considered from an emissions-producing viewpoint. Computers need electricity, and in most cases using electricity means creating carbon emissions. But what's not often considered is the impact that digital technologies could ha…

Toronto has a legacy of citizens volunteering their time to contribute technology solutions for local problems. In recent years the City has actively embraced that trend and now maintains a huge open data portal. Aside from transit data, you can find data about waste collection, bicycle sharing, child care, water quality at the beach, and events ac…

Kenneth Grange is a British industrial designer behind many famous household items. He was prolific over his 40-year career, designing everything from Kodak cameras, to Imperial typewriters, and even the nose cone of the British Rail high-speed train. But the story my colleague keeps telling me about is how Grange revolutionized the design of the s…

Cloud spending is still growing. Just not as fast as it was a year ago. But many expect that will change next year, with the return of growing growth. (If that makes any sense). Why? Well IT budgets might be better off if the economy returns to life. And many companies are realizing they need access to cloud services to stay competitive. If you can…

The cloud has totally changed the way we pay for IT. Its operating costs model where you pay for what you need, when you need it, has its advantages. You don't need to invest in expensive servers to deploy an infrastructure, you just have to sign in to your Amazon account. But there are downsides too. Most businesses have a hard time estimating jus…

Urbancoolab’s AI machine is collaborating the next wave of tastemakers from a crosswind of creative fields in including those in music, fashion, visual arts, technology, sports, food and everything in between. You might ended up picking a piece that is co-designed by machine with people such as Kiesza, Smif-N-Wessun, Command Sisters, Chris Crack, S…

Today, we're going to look at a vision for the year 2035. It's a vision that still has AI at work as a focal point. But not humanoid robots. It's a survey of 500 executives and 1,000 employees about what they think work will look like in 15 years. The study was conducted by Oxford Analytica and Coleman Parks with the support of technology vendor Ci…

Here we are more than six months into the pandemic and I've got something on my mind. COVID-19 means more staying at home, and staying at home means more screen time. What are the effects of that on our mental health? I know that I feel a lot better when I've had time to disconnect and get away from screens. I suspect you might feel the same way. B…