What happens when workplace technology can configure itself, repair problems, and respond to security risks before an employee opens a support ticket?

In this episode of Across the Tech Pond, David Marshall from VMblog.com, Antony Savvas from IT Europa, and I speak with Bharath Rangarajan, Chief Product Officer at Omnissa. We examine the company’s autonomous workspace vision and its three operating principles of self-configuring, self-healing, and self-securing endpoints.

Bharath explains that Omnissa coined the term several years before the generative AI boom. Its development began with telemetry agents covering laptops, phones, servers, and infrastructure. Omnissa then created distributed operational storage, an analytics data lake, and machine learning models for anomaly detection and root cause analysis. That data foundation now supports automation and AI-driven workplace operations.

The practical examples are particularly interesting. Bharath describes zero-touch PC provisioning across retail stores, automation supporting healthcare workflows, and over 10 billion workflows processed through Omnissa’s no-code Freestyle platform. He also discusses an organization that reduced help desk tickets by 50 percent and another managing hundreds of thousands of devices with two IT employees.

We also consider the limits of autonomy. Desired State Management allows organizations to define an intended outcome and correct configuration drift, but AI governance now requires input from IT, security, legal, privacy, and compliance teams. The level of acceptable automation also depends on the task. Resolving a routine support request carries a very different risk from automatically deploying a software patch across thousands of devices.

Bharath also explains Omnissa’s channel-first model, its relationships with Microsoft, Google, Apple, AWS, Azure, Nvidia, HP, and Dell, and what customers and partners can expect from Omnissa One in Orlando, Amsterdam, and Japan. The discussion closes with the growing problem of tool sprawl and Omnissa’s finding that a typical end-user computing team uses over 11 tools to manage its environment.

Which workplace decisions would you allow AI to make autonomously, and which would always need human approval? We would love to hear your thoughts.

What would happen if a ransomware attacker reached your backups before your security team realized an attack was underway?

In this episode of Across the Tech Pond, David Marshall, Antony Savvas, and I are joined by Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid, and Marc Crespi, Director of Business Development and Chief Evangelist. Together, we examine why backup storage has become an increasingly important part of enterprise cybersecurity, recovery planning, and long-term infrastructure economics.

Bill begins by explaining the differences between primary storage, inline deduplication appliances, and ExaGrid’s tiered backup storage architecture. His argument is that storage designed for production applications may become expensive as retention requirements and data volumes grow. Inline deduplication can reduce storage consumption, but it may also affect backup and recovery performance because data is processed before being written and rehydrated during restoration.

ExaGrid’s approach combines a front-end landing zone for recent backups with a separate repository tier. According to Bill, this design aims to preserve backup and restore speeds while reducing the storage required for longer retention periods. The repository tier is also intended to remain inaccessible to attackers operating through the production network.

We discuss ExaGrid’s expanded support for Cohesity DataProtect and why compatibility across over 25 backup applications matters. Subscription licensing allows businesses to reconsider their backup software every few years, but changing the application should not automatically require another storage replacement. Supporting platforms including Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, Cohesity, NetBackup, and IBM Spectrum Protect can give customers greater flexibility.

The conversation also examines consolidation across the backup market and the growing relationship between data protection and cybersecurity. Backup applications already have agents operating across business systems, while ransomware groups increasingly target recovery data before encrypting production environments.

Marc describes how ExaGrid applies AI to abnormal deletion detection. The system learns the patterns created by routine backup retention and can respond when deletion activity falls outside normal behavior. Bill gives the example of a regular 30-terabyte purge suddenly becoming a request to delete 100 terabytes. Such a change could provide an early indication that an attacker is attempting to remove the company’s recovery options.

We also discuss how much autonomy customers are prepared to give AI. Marc says organizations are interested in practical, governed applications but remain cautious about systems taking independent action. Detection and temporary protection may earn confidence faster than unrestricted automation.

Bill and Marc finish with practical purchasing advice. Companies should map their workloads, recovery requirements, data growth, security needs, support expectations, and performance demands before selecting backup technology. Marc also urges buyers to assess the complete economic life of the platform rather than concentrating exclusively on the purchase price.

Does your organization evaluate backup storage as part of its cybersecurity and business continuity strategy, or does it remain an afterthought behind the backup application? Listen to the conversation and share your thoughts with us.

What happens when backup data stops being a passive insurance policy and becomes an active intelligence engine for cybersecurity, compliance, and AI resilience?

In this episode of Across the Tech Pond, we sit down with HYCU founder and CEO Simon Taylor to unpack one of the most ambitious product announcements we have heard in the data protection space for some time. HYCU has built its reputation on SaaS data protection through its rCloud platform, protecting more than 103 SaaS, cloud, and on-prem data sources for thousands of customers worldwide. But now the company is pushing far beyond backup and recovery.

At the center of this conversation is the launch of HYCU aiR, a new AI-powered resiliency platform that lets organizations interact with their backup data using natural language. Simon explains how HYCU spent the last two years building a contextual AI engine capable of analyzing backup data across entire organizations to identify insider threats, data exposure risks, identity drift, compliance gaps, and operational vulnerabilities. Instead of having backup data sit untouched until disaster strikes, HYCU wants enterprises to actively interrogate and learn from it every day.

Throughout the discussion, Simon explains why he believes the cybersecurity industry is entering a machine-speed era in which human-led defenses alone can no longer keep pace with AI-powered threats, ransomware automation, and rogue agents operating across SaaS ecosystems. The conversation also explores why mid-market companies are increasingly overwhelmed by fragmented security tooling and how HYCU sees an opportunity to consolidate visibility, compliance, and resilience into a single platform extension layered on top of existing backup investments.

We also discuss early customer reactions to HYCU aiR, including examples of organizations uncovering previously invisible regulatory exposure and risky user behavior within days of testing the platform. Simon explains how channel partners are now reframing backup conversations around cybersecurity posture, governance, and AI readiness rather than focusing solely on recovery workflows.

Elsewhere in the episode, the team explores the wider implications of AI within enterprise infrastructure, the growing importance of context-rich datasets, and why Simon believes the future of cybersecurity will depend on connecting protection, detection, visibility, and recovery into a single intelligent ecosystem.

From Dell Tech World announcements to insider threat analysis and AI-native backup experiences, this episode offers a fascinating look at how one company is attempting to redefine the role of backup data in the AI era.

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