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Optimise to Innovate

Optimise to Innovate

Written by: Alex Galbraith & Jason Gray
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Not every technology investment leads to innovation, but it should.


Welcome to Optimise to Innovate, the podcast from SoftwareOne for technology leaders who want to turn cloud, AI and software investments into measurable business value.


Join Alex Galbraith, Jason Gray and expert guests as they explore why well-intended technology programmes can sometimes become costly, complex or difficult to scale, and what organisations can do to get them back on track.


Across the series, we discuss cloud investment, AI adoption and Agentic AI, software estate management, SaaS sprawl, FinOps, cloud cost control and the practical decisions that help businesses move from optimisation to innovation.


Each episode brings honest conversation, real-world lessons and practical guidance for leaders who want technology to drive progress, not create more friction.


Have a topic you would like us to discuss? Email Alex and Jason at o2i@softwareone.com.


Follow Optimise to Innovate on your favourite podcast platform to get the latest episodes first.


New to the show? Start with these three episodes

For AI leaders: Agentic AI Is Not Really About Agents
For CIOs/CFOs: FinOps, You Can’t Tool Your Way Out of Bad Cloud Habits
For IT and procurement leaders: Are You Oversubscribed?

© 2026 Optimise to Innovate
Episodes
  • Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Agentic AI Without Context
    Sep 25 2026

    Get in touch with Alex & Jason!

    AI has changed the rules for data. You may not need perfectly clean data, a huge data lake, or months of preparation before you can start getting value from it.

    In this episode, Alex and Jason are joined by Ehsan Emamirad, data and agentic AI expert, to challenge some of the assumptions that still shape Data & AI projects. They discuss why context matters more than ever, how unified data platforms and semantic models are changing the route to value, and why your organisation’s real advantage may not be the data it owns, but what that data actually means.

    Book Recommendation:
    AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own by Verity Harding

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    56 mins
  • Vibe Coding for Grown-Ups - AI in Professional Software Development
    Jul 22 2026

    Get in touch with Alex & Jason!

    What happens when professional developers stop just writing code, and start leading teams of AI agents?

    In this episode, Alex and Jason are joined by Sebastian Brandt and Paweł Stuczyński to explore how AI is changing software development beyond the vibe-coding hype.

    From faster prototypes and AI-assisted reviews, to smaller pull requests, security scanning, QA, cognitive load, agent overload and token costs, this is a practical look at what happens when development gets faster, but the need for quality, governance and good engineering judgement becomes even more important... because AI can help you build more, but someone still needs to know whether what you’ve built is actually any good!


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    57 mins
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