Technology is moving faster than most organisations can adapt.
The question is can your strategy keep up?
Smarter, Strategic Thinking is a podcast for IT leaders, decision-makers, and executives responsible for data, infrastructure, and long-term risk.
Each episode brings practical insight from industry leaders and innovators covering the realities behind ransomware resilience, storage strategy, infrastructure modernisation, and the decisions shaping the future of enterprise IT.
Hosted by Fortuna Data, trusted partners of IBM, Lenovo, Seagate, HYCU, QNAP, Qualstar and many more, this podcast cuts through vendor noise to focus on what actually matters: performance, cost, risk, and scalability.
If you’re responsible for where your data and your business goes next, this is where the right conversations start.
IBM FlashSystem 9600: 20PB Density & 60-Second Ransomware Detection
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, host Ray Quattromini talks to Alex MacIndoe, UK Flash Systems sales lead at IBM, about the newly refreshed FlashSystem range the 5600, 7600 and 9600 launched in February 2026. Want to know more: https://www.data-storage.uk/ibm-flashsystem/?utm_source=Podcast_Flashsystem&utm_medium=Youtube_Video&utm_campaign=Flashsystem The conversation covers how IBM is achieving industry-leading storage density: 20PB in just 18U of rack ...
22 Jun 2026
Private GPT: Stop Sharing Company Data
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, Ray Quattromini is joined by Nipa Soni, AI and HPC Enablement Lead at FSAS Technologies, to explore their fully on-premises private GPT solution designed from the ground up for organisations that cannot afford to compromise on data sovereignty, security, or regulatory compliance. FSAS Technologies is a Fujitsu spinoff operating across the UK and European market, aligned with the EU AI Regulatory Act and its emphasis on data contr...
3 Jun 2026
What Is IBM CAS? The AI Storage Revolution Explained
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Ray Quattromini speaks with Patrick Kay, Product Manager for IBM Content Aware Storage (IBM CAS) at IBM, in one of the most technically detailed conversations on the podcast to date. IBM CAS is IBM's semantic interface for AI-ready data, a solution designed to transform unstructured enterprise data into a searchable vector database, without requiring costly data migrations or duplication. Patrick explains how IBM CAS uses Active File Management (AFM) to conne...
20 May 2026
Why Post-Production Studios Are Going Back to Tape
Send us Fan Mail Ray Quattromini of Fortuna Data is joined by David Fox from JPY, the UK distributor for Archiware, for a deep dive into one of the most underappreciated areas of IT: data archiving, backup, and long-term storage management. David has been in the industry since the early 90s, starting out in pre-press and desktop publishing before migrating into the world of audio, video, and media storage. Today, he helps organisations across media & entertainment, law enforcement, ...
29 Apr 2026
Why the US Cloud Act Is a Threat to Your Data
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Ray Quattromini speaks with Richard Howson, UK Channel Manager at Impossible Cloud, about one of the most overlooked risks in enterprise storage the US Cloud Act. Richard explains why simply storing data in the UK isn't enough if you're using a US-based cloud provider, and how true data sovereignty requires knowing where your data lives, who has legal access to it, and how it's protected. They also dig into the real cost of hyperscaler storage, the growing de...
15 Apr 2026
What Cost per GB Doesn’t Tell You About Long-Term Costs
Send us Fan Mail Is your storage strategy built for the future or setting your business up for failure? In this episode of the Fortuna Data Podcast, Ray Quattromini sits down with Matteo from Kingston Technology to break down what IT leaders, CIOs, and infrastructure decision-makers need to understand about modern storage. With data growing faster than most organisations can control, and AI workloads driving unprecedented demand, the wrong storage decisions today can lead to higher costs, d...
11 Mar 2026
Why the World Is Running Out of Data Storage
Send us Fan Mail Is your archive built to last 30 years? In this episode, we sit down with Charlie Gale CEO & Founder of HoloMem, the startup building a commercial holographic data storage drive designed to complement LTO in enterprise backup and compliance use cases. 📩 Want to see HoloMem in your data center? Get in touch https://www.fortunadata.com/contact-us/ 🔔 Subscribe for more infrastructure innovation We cover: Why holographic data storage finally makes senseHow HoloMem’s drive and...
25 Feb 2026
Are You Overpaying for Your Storage Stack?
Send us Fan Mail How flexible is your storage infrastructure and how resilient is it under pressure? In this episode, we speak David Cayla from DataCore about the role of software-defined storage (SDS) in modern enterprise environments. Want to know more? Contact us today: https://www.fortunadata.com/contact-us/ We explore how SANsymphony enables organizations to virtualize storage across mixed hardware platforms, improve performance, and build high-availability infrastructure without being l...
12 Feb 2026
80% of Data Isn’t Being Used But It’s Still Costing Money
Send us Fan Mail Is tape storage obsolete or strategically misunderstood? In this episode, we speak with Qualstar about the evolving role of enterprise tape libraries in modern data protection and archive strategies. As organizations face: Rising cloud storage costs Increasing ransomware threats Growing compliance and retention requirements Expanding petabyte-scale data growth many are reassessing where long-term data should live. Qualstar explains how modern tape infrastructure provides:...
21 Jan 2026
Data Leaders Are Sleepwalking Into Disaster Titan Warns Why
Send us Fan Mail Cyber risk has changed, has your strategy? In this episode, Ray Quattromini from Fortuna Data sits down with Keith Maskell, Head of Cybersecurity Sales at Titan Data Solutions, to break down what enterprise organisations must prioritise in 2026. From why identity is now the #1 attack vector, to how mid-market organisations can achieve Zero Trust without ripping out their infrastructure — this conversation challenges conventional thinking around resilience, cyber essen...
7 Jan 2026
Why Enterprises Are Moving Petabytes Off The Cloud Qstar Explains
Send us Fan Mail Enterprise data is exploding but most organisations are still paying premium storage prices for information they rarely access. In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, Ray Quattromini sits down with Dave Thompson from QSTAR to unpack how modern organisations can regain control of unstructured data, reduce storage costs, and build archive environments that actually scale. QSTAR has been operating in the archive space since 1997 and works across tape, cloud, object and d...
3 Dec 2025
How Modern Cyber Resilience Really Works With Panzura
Send us Fan Mail Relying on reactive backup alone is no longer enough. In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we sit down with Panzura’s CTO to explore how their hybrid cloud file and data services platform is built for cyber resiliency, data security, governance and compliance. We discuss how Panzura combines real-time anomaly detection based on machine learning, immutability, and detailed audit logging to detect threats quickly and recover from attacks in minutes – often without end...
27 Nov 2025
Why Multi-Cloud Costs Are Rising (And How to Manage Them)
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Ray speaks with Stefan Ferrari from Vawlt, the multi-cloud storage platform built for resilience, predictable costs and zero-knowledge security. You’ll learn how Vawlt: • Stores data across AWS, Azure, GCP, Wasabi & Backblaze simultaneously • Eliminates egress fees and API charges • Protects data even if a cloud provider is breached • Handles outages automatically — users never notice • Enables hybrid cloud with on-prem + mul...
19 Nov 2025
Why Cloud Storage Costs Are Rising (And What to Do About It)
Send us Fan Mail This episode explores how enterprise storage is shifting away from cloud-only strategies and toward hybrid, performance-driven deployments using modern NAS platforms. Tom from QNAP shares insights on: Using NAS as primary data storageNVMe, 25G networking & multi-petabyte scalingRansomware protection with immutable backupsSupporting AI, VMs, and high-demand workloadsReal-world use cases across public sector & mediaThis is a must-listen for technology leaders rethinking...
12 Nov 2025
Why AI Still Can’t Stop Modern Cyber Attacks
Send us Fan Mail Unlock the future of IT with Lenovo. Tim Brazier, UK Data Storage Solutions Specialist at Lenovo, joins Smarter Strategic Thinking to discuss the biggest challenges for businesses over the next 5–10 years and how Lenovo helps organizations overcome them. Learn about: Cybersecurity threats and zero-trust strategiesAI-ready infrastructure and hybrid AI starter kitsEdge computing, video processing, and machine learning at the edgeQuantum computing research and high-performance c...
5 Nov 2025
What Happens When AI Meets Storage at Scale
Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking by Fortuna Data, Ray sits down with Andy from Seagate, one of the world’s leading storage innovators, to explore how AI, data growth, and sustainability are transforming the way businesses manage information. From self-healing drives and AI-powered workflows to the rapid expansion of Seagate’s Live Cloud, this conversation dives deep into the future of enterprise data — how it’s created, stored, protected, and made valuable. Andy ...
29 Oct 2025
How Enterprises Are Rethinking IT Spend and Flexibility
Send us Fan Mail What if your IT infrastructure could scale as fast as your business grows? In this episode of Smarter Strategic Thinking, we sit down with Tim, Lenovo’s TruScale Channel Sales Lead, to uncover how TruScale is reshaping the future of enterprise IT through flexible as-a-service models — from GPU as a Service to AI infrastructure. If you’re an MSP, CTO, or business leader exploring infrastructure-as-a-service, this conversation dives deep into how Lenovo delivers flexibility, sc...
15 Oct 2025
How to Reduce VMware Costs Without Adding Complexity
Send us Fan Mail From Founder's Vision to Software Innovation. The Complete EuroNAS & eEVOS Story with Tvrtko Fritz! We dive deep into: Tvrtko's founding journey and the specific problem that sparked EuroNAS creation. How EuroNAS has navigated the tech landscape for over a decade with core values intact. What sets EuroNAS apart from other software virtualisation companies. The complete product portfolio understanding what software solutions EuroNAS develops. eEVOS breakthrough the game-ch...
7 Oct 2025
Is Tape Dead?
Send us Fan Mail Explore the truth behind tape storage with Insurgo’s Iain Hamilton! We dive deep into: How Insurgo became a global leader in tape management. Innovations in secure, sustainable data destruction. Why tape is still relevant for modern, secure, and cost-effective data strategies. Environmental and compliance challenges, and how to solve them smartly. Get expert advice on building an effective data management plan for your business. Don’t miss this episode of Smarter, Strat...
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Contact Smarter, Strategic Thinking
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Smarter, Strategic Thinking?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
