Podcast: The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload – episode 27

In this week’s episode of the Computer Weekly Downtime Upload Podcast, Brian McKenna and Caroline Donnelly are joined once more by networking editor Alex Scroxton to discuss the past week in tech.

• The episode kicks off with a three-way assessment of prime minister Boris Johnson’s new-look cabinet and their tech credentials, and a quick run-through of who went where in last week’s reshuffle.
• From here, Alex shares what he has learned about the technology background of Johnson’s special advisor, Dominic Cummings, who is renowned for being one of the masterminds behind the Vote Leave campaign. This includes the revelation that Cummings once embarked on an abortive attempt to set up a Russian airline, and is renowned for being a big admirer of some of the tech space’s biggest household names and pioneers. He is also thought to be a practitioner of Silicon Valley management techniques.
• At the time of the recording, the new government had been in place for about a week. Caroline shares some early feedback she’s received – in survey form – from the IT contractor community about what they make of the ragtag bunch of MPs who make up Johnson’s cabinet. The poll revealed a distinct lack of faith among contractors for the new government, and – in particular – its appreciation of the contribution they collectively make to the UK economy.
• In a complete change of subject, Caroline shares her thoughts on the news that professional social networking site LinkedIn is embarking on a multi-year move to the Microsoft Azure cloud, and what this might mean for the former’s positioning as a champion of open source datacentre hardware innovator.
• Alex talks the team through Huawei’s half-year results, which marks something of a departure for the company as it appears to have done away with its traditional quarterly reporting processes after a tumultuous few months for the company.
• Brian rounds out this week’s chat with a couple of smart city-related features that have recently appeared on Computer Weekly, and how developments in both the networking and datacentre space are shaping this work.