Alice Chambers

Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) 2025 opened at Fira de Barcelona in Spain with an urgent message from city leaders and policymakers: the time for cities is now.  Ugo Valenti, managing director of the event, reflected on how far SCEWC has come since its first edition.   “From 2011 to today, we have grown into a global movement,” he said, noting that the congress now has editions in other cities around the world, and how 1,200 exhibitors, 900 cities and 25,000 professionals have...

Microsoft has introduced new features to Microsoft 365 Copilot, allowing employees to build apps, automate tasks and create custom agents using simple natural language. App Builder helps users create and deploy apps within minutes, without coding or a database setup needed. With it, users can design dashboards, charts, calculators, lists and other interactive tools, all based on content from Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The new Workflow Agent...

Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) is the annual technology show for the systems integration and audiovisual industry, returning to the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via in Spain from 3-6 February 2026. ISE 2025 spanned over 92,000 square metres of show floor, hosting 1,605 exhibitors, and broke records attracting 85,351 unique visitors from 168 countries. For 2026, ISE invites visitors to immerse themselves with the technology on the show floor and attend the content programme filled with...

OpenText Cybersecurity is making it easier for businesses to use AI safely and securely with its new set of cybersecurity tools, designed to help protect data, manage user access and meet strict compliance rules. “Enterprises want to harness the speed of AI without sacrificing security,” said Muhi Majzoub, executive vice president of security products at OpenText. “To keep pace with AI’s velocity, we are giving security and IT teams the tools to work faster, smarter and with greater...

Phishing is the most common type of cybersecurity attack, according to the National Cyber Security Centre and the US Government Accountability Office. Software passkeys provide a convenient way for many organisations to protect their data and assets, but physical keys provide unmatched security, privacy and operational reliability. Unlike software passkeys, YubiKeys provide physical proof of presence and deliver the highest assurance phishing-resistant authentication, ensuring that only...

AI is shaping ‘frontier marketing’, according to Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president of industry marketing at Microsoft, who discussed the topic during panel sessions at both IBC and Sibos in recent weeks. Mitford describes ‘frontier marketing’ as blending creativity, data-driven insights and automation to generate measurable business impact. Mitford was joined by Kevin Towes, director of product engagement at Adobe, at IBC and Joerg Kluerckmann, head of marketing at Finastra, at...

What happens when AI evolves from a tool into a trusted co-worker? According to Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index, that’s already the reality for ‘frontier firms’: a new wave of organisations where humans and AI agents collaborate to drive innovation and performance.  “A frontier firm is an organisation that combines human expertise with AI agents to improve efficiency, accelerate growth and create new value,” says Dalia Ophir, director of business strategy for worldwide financial...

Asda has expanded its partnership with Microsoft in one of the UK retail sector’s largest technology deals, using Microsoft’s solutions to finetune its product pricing, improve product availability, and free colleagues for higher-value work. The supermarket, with more than 1,200 stores and around 140,000 employees, is pursuing a cloud-first, AI-powered strategy. Microsoft Azure underpins Asda’s data, analytics, security and integration platforms, while Microsoft 365 Copilot helps...

Quantexa’s Cloud anti-money laundering (AML) offering, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product delivered on Microsoft Azure, is helping mid-size and community banks to get access to contextual data, analytics and AI for financial crime detection and prevention. Financial institutions managing between $5 billion and $200 billion in assets can use the solution for 80 per cent faster investigations and reduce false positives by up to 75 per cent. “For too long, mid-size and community...

AI is transforming content creation, distribution and monetisation in the media industry, argued Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president of global industry marketing at Microsoft, at IBC 2025. She opened her keynote session, titled ‘The Frontier of Creativity’, with a personal story from the night before, when she was out to dinner and found herself surrounded by people talking about The Leopard – a new limited series based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel, released in...