The Techstrong.IT stories enterprise IT leaders actually read.
Volume 341, Issue 4 · 7 articles from 3 issues
84% of IT professionals say AI ROI in ITSM has met or exceeded expectations, but workloads are rising.
A SolarWinds survey of 844 IT professionals reveals strong AI adoption in IT service management, with 84% reporting ROI that meets or exceeds expectations.
However, AI is increasing rather than reducing workloads as teams manage integrations, validate outputs and handle data quality tasks.
Most organizations still measure traditional metrics such as tickets and productivity. Only 21% track business outcomes, indicating a need for better measurement strategies.
Expensive GPU workstations should be treated as shared infrastructure rather than individual desk assets.
High-performance workstations with GPUs costing $15,000 or more sit idle when engineers perform non-computational tasks.
Modern architectures let these systems run AI workloads during off-hours, improving utilization. Centralizing workstations in secure data centers reduces cost and simplifies IT operations.
The result leverages expensive hardware for both engineering and AI tasks, delivering greater value per investment.
Legal ownership of data means little without the operational ability to recover it when a vendor fails.
Nine PBS needed court intervention to recover 50TB of archival material after its storage provider stopped responding. The case illustrates that owning data differs fundamentally from controlling recovery infrastructure. Organizations require independent backups across separate vendors, portable formats and preserved metadata. Regular restoration testing is what maintains genuine operational sovereignty over information.
Lucidity extends its cloud storage optimization platform to object storage, starting with Microsoft Azure.
Lucidity extended its cloud storage optimization platform to support object storage alongside block storage, initially for Microsoft Azure with additional providers planned.
The platform analyzes storage inventories and access patterns to recommend retention and tiering policies. Storage now represents 20-30% of the average cloud bill.
As AI applications drive exponential data growth, IT teams lack visibility into inefficient consumption across thousands of containers and millions of blobs consolidated into single billing line items.
Developers have requested 1,066 GW; Wood Mackenzie expects utilities to commit to about 28% of it.
Data center developers have requested more than 1,066 gigawatts of power across the US, but Wood Mackenzie estimates utilities and grid operators will ultimately commit to roughly 28% of it.
Part of the gap comes from developers filing duplicate applications with multiple utilities for the same project, which artificially inflates interconnection queues. Utilities are responding with stricter approval processes, larger upfront payments, and collateral requirements to filter speculative proposals.
Texas has moved most aggressively, with Governor Greg Abbott ordering an audit of data center connections as ERCOT tracks about 474 gigawatts of requests, more than five times state peak demand.
Convertr launches a governance module to ensure customer data meets compliance requirements before CRM entry.
Convertr introduced Convertr Govern, a governance module designed to enforce data compliance policies across campaigns, sources, and markets. The tool requires named approvers and documented decisions when records fall outside policy parameters, generating auditable Evidence Packs that track data sources, applied controls, exceptions, and approval rationales.
As AI agents increasingly access organizational data at machine speed, chief product officer Greg Jordan noted that the era of employees being cavalier about how data is collected, stored, and used is ending. Organizations face mounting compliance mandates, with future audits likely conducted by AI agents, making preventive governance frameworks essential.
Edge platform decisions should turn on what an organization can actually operate, not on ideology.
Organizations evaluating VMware alternatives feel pressure to choose between open source and proprietary platforms, but that framing misses what matters at edge locations.
The real question is what an organization can realistically maintain, secure, and support across distributed sites with no local IT staff and unreliable connectivity.
Open source offers flexibility but demands ownership of repositories, vulnerability tracking, and updates, while proprietary options shift that operational burden to vendors through validated packages and support.
The right choice matches platform to organizational capacity and operating model.
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