Mary Burns

At Zero Day Con 2025, Martin Carry, Systems Engineer Manager at Palo Alto Networks, pointed to a recurring theme in Irish CEO surveys: technology and AI are expected to drive business growth. But he also highlighted a common failure in digital transformation. Teams build something users love, momentum builds… then security reviews it at the end and shuts it down. Innovation stalls instantly. Martin’s point was: security has to be part of the strategy from day one, not a last-minute gatekeeper. A simple shift, but essential for organisations that want to innovate at speed. #ZeroDayCon #SecurityEngineering #DigitalTransformation

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Insights from the IIBA Ireland Chapter: A day in a life of a BA in IT Management. Glad and Honoured to meet professionals within the Business Analytics workspace at the IIBA Ireland Chapter event held at DCU Business School The event was about a day in a life of a BA in IT Management presented by Omar Portillo (PhD, MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CBAP, Scrum Master). Key Takeaways: Prioritizing Stakeholders: It's a Business Analyst role to prioritize stakeholders who hold greater power and interest within the project ( Power-Interest Grid ). Prioritizing Tasks: This is essential for a Business Analyst as it helps determine the tasks that need urgency ( MosCow Principle ). This simply means a must have, could have or should have in a project. Essential Tradeoffs: A Business Analyst should clearly explain the Tradeoffs to the Stakeholders to clearly understand the value and costs that comes from implementing changes and new systems where necessary. Photo: Myself and James Dean #IIBA #BusinessAnalytics #Agile

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🔥 ServerlessDays Belfast was buzzing with energy — and AWS brought the heat! 🔥 A huge thanks to Ronan Prenty, Principal Solutions Architect at AWS, for his powerful message during the event. With a standout presence from AWS — including the Lambda team, product managers, engineers, and partners — Ronan highlighted the growing impact of serverless technologies on cost savings, scalability, and rapid feature delivery. 💬 “It’s incredible to hear how our customers are using serverless, particularly on AWS, to reduce costs, scale with user demand, and ship new features faster.” Ronan and Julian Wood also took the stage to explore serverless super agents — pushing the boundaries of what's possible with modern cloud architecture. Check out the talk here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eK6pcCVe #ServerlessDays #AWS #ServerlessArchitecture #TechCommunity #BelfastTech #Lambda #CloudInnovation #EventRecap

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Another great initiative from EI and when combined with the Operational Excellence grants, Irish businesses will be able to create the time to invest in developing and improving their business rather than catch-up and firefighting.

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I’ve been spending time recently meeting Irish tech companies to see where AI is being applied in practical ways. This week, I met Michael Wilson and Zngly, a platform focused on secure content orchestration for sales engagement. They aim to help teams in regulated industries find, govern and share the already existing content and then layer AI on top to personalise, publish and track it. The use cases they highlight are direct sales engagement: RFP responses, targeted outreach, and ensuring the right content is accessible and compliant. What stood out is the focus on removing friction (no more attachments, firewall issues or scattered intranet links) and locking content down securely so financial institutions can adopt it. It’s not about creating more content (though the platform does plenty of that too); it’s about making existing assets usable and compliant. From a CCaaS perspective, the parallel is compelling. In CCaaS we talk about orchestrating conversations; Zngly is orchestrating content. Different problems, but the same structural challenge: too many silos, too little governance, too much friction. The open question is how long those use cases remain separate or whether orchestration of content and conversations ultimately converges inside the CCaaS stack. And it raises another question for communications service providers: if you’re already selling CCaaS, could you also sell secure content orchestration as an extension of that service? Or does this remain a specialist play? #AI #CX #CCaaS #SalesEngagement #ContentOrchestration #IrishTech #CustomerExperience

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❌ Amazon Web Services (AWS) is moving ahead with 350 redundancies in Ireland, as part of a global restructuring, The Journal reported this week. The tech giant had announced last month that it planned to cut 16,000 roles globally, in an effort to prioritise AI and increase efficiency. https://lnkd.in/dEhDsNUk

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Minimum Wage Ireland – A Look at the Housing Crisis, and the Apple tax Policy Failure No One Wants to Admit. KEY TAKEAWAYS. Key Point Summary Minimum Wage Increase offers limited real improvement Wage gains are mostly absorbed by rent. Housing costs, not wages, determine living standards With supply very low, higher wages do not translate into improved affordability. Apple’s €14bn windfall Immediate, strategic investment in social housing infrastructure, would have created long-term affordability for everyone. Without reform, future wage rises will remain mostly ineffective…...

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Irish businesses have proved that AI boosts productivity, but bottom‑line impact and trust still lag. The job now is to focus, measure and scale. In the Business Post, Robert Byrne, highlights five practical moves to convert AI pilots into enterprise value. Read the full piece here.

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The challenge for business leaders is that cyber risks are often invisible until something goes wrong ⏳ We’ll be exploring this in more depth at our upcoming RDI Hub event, where industry experts will look at the real threats facing Irish businesses today and the practical steps organisations can take to strengthen their defences. 📅Thursday, 23rd April 2026 📍RDI Hub, Killarney Join us to find out where your business is most exposed: https://lnkd.in/d8HWDsTE Cyber Ireland | Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) UK & Ireland | International Women in Tech | NexGen Cyber Limited | Megan Daly-Tyrrell

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The mistake many people are making when looking at AI is seeing it as something divorced from historical process of technological development, of advances in machinery, under capitalism. Now, if it can realise the productivity gains claimed is one thing - but employers certainly want to make it happen, need to make it happen, and are locked into a vicious cycle of runaway capital investment doing so. "There is still another respect in which the capitalist employment of machinery lowers the condition of the working-class. It is this: the tool of the mechanic of former times was cheap and it was subject to few changes that would render it useless. It is otherwise with the machine; in the first place, it costs money, much money; in the second place, if through improvements in the system it becomes useless, or if it is not used to its full capacity, it will bring loss instead of profit to the capitalist. Again, the machine is worn out, not only through use, but through idleness. Furthermore, the introduction of science into production constantly causes new discoveries and inventions to take the place of the old ones. So, because they cannot compete with the improved machinery, now this machine, now that, and often whole factories at once, are rendered useless before they have been used to their full extent. Therefore, every machine is in danger of being made useless before it is used up; this is sufficient ground for the capitalist to utilize his machine as quickly as possible from the moment he puts it in operation" Karly Kautsky, of the German Social Democratic Party, wrote this in 1892. But it rings through today. Big Tech has invested eye watering amounts in AI tools, they have no choice but to make the tools work - everywhere and all the time.

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Interesting read: The IT sector has seen a 20% increase in job growth, with Software Engineers, Data Engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers among the most in-demand roles in the country. Nearly 4 in 10 Irish tech employers are planning to grow their headcount this year — with AI engineering, data science, cybersecurity, and cloud computing leading the charge. Employers are increasingly valuing candidates who combine technical expertise with strong soft skills — leadership, problem-solving, and collaboration. The days of hiring purely on stack knowledge are fading fast. And candidates? They're holding their ground too. 71% of candidates say they would consider leaving a job that doesn't support flexible working Irish Jobs, making hybrid and remote options less of a perk and more of a baseline expectation. For hiring managers, the challenge is clear: 96% of Irish employers have faced skills shortages in the last year, and just 5% feel they have all the right skills in place to make the best use of AI technologies. The gap between where companies want to go and the talent available to get them there is real. Closing it means investing in upskilling, not just recruiting.

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If you haven't noticed yet, the tactics some companies use to bypass meaningful redundancy consultations have reached a disgusting low. Ultimately, companies have a choice to treat their workers with respect, yet many choose not to until forced. The voluntary industrial relations system does NOT work. Companies will never pick their employees over stakeholder interests.

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AI Transformation: Why 70% of Irish Executives Are Losing Sleep 🇮🇪 ​I’m currently at an IBM partner event, and the data on the screen tells a compelling story. While the world is buzzing with AI hype, the reality on the ground is much more grounded: ​70% of Irish executives worry that their AI efforts will fail due to poor integration with core business activities. ​Only 12% of organizations are currently using AI orchestration platforms. ​The Great Disconnect There is a massive difference between "AI Adoption" (simply bolting tools onto existing, broken processes) and "AI Transformation" (rebuilding processes around new AI capabilities). ​By 2030, enterprises will be running thousands of AI agents across multiple models. Without a "Security-First" foundation and seamless orchestration, this complexity will lead to inefficiency rather than innovation. ​At KanTec Platform Engineering, we bridge this gap. We believe that true business uniqueness is created when data, systems, and processes integrate seamlessly. We help companies move beyond the "fear of integration" to build scalable, sovereign, and high-performance platforms that deliver real ROI. ​Don't let integration be the bottleneck of your innovation. Let’s make it your competitive advantage. ​#KanTecPlatformEngineering #SovereignCloud #CloudNative #SecurityFirst #IBM #AI #IrelandTech #PlatformEngineering #DigitalTransformation ​YES

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The Power of Data Report 2025 is live 🚀. How are organisations unlocking the value of data? Find out here: https://lnkd.in/dxJ5QNvG The Information Lab Ireland #PowerOfData2025

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Ransomware is one of the fastest-growing cyber threats facing Irish businesses today. An attack can lock you out of critical systems, disrupt daily operations, and expose sensitive data in a matter of minutes. Many organisations underestimate the damage ransomware can cause until they are forced into costly recovery decisions under pressure. Learn how ransomware impacts Irish businesses and how to reduce your exposure: https://lnkd.in/dviWH69s

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