September 2026: TechTalk Newsletter

September 2026: TechTalk Newsletter

In this issue, we explore what it takes to stay ahead in an increasingly complex technology landscape, from modernization and optimization to the governance and operational discipline needed to support innovation.

Can Your Organization Keep Up with the Complexity of AI?

Most organizations are focused on what AI can do. Far fewer are focused on what it takes to manage AI at scale.

As AI adoption accelerates, technology environments are becoming more complex. Cloud platforms, software licensing models, governance requirements, security demands, and consumption-based spending are all evolving at the same time. What once felt manageable as separate initiatives is increasingly becoming interconnected, making visibility and control more important than ever. Organizations that are preparing for the future aren't just investing in new technologies. They're building the operational foundations needed to manage growing complexity across their entire technology estate.

The challenge is that every new wave of innovation introduces additional layers of oversight, accountability, and decision-making. AI may be today's focus, but successful adoption still depends on fundamentals like governance, optimization, security, and lifecycle management. As organizations scale AI across the business, these capabilities are becoming competitive differentiators rather than back-office functions.

Future-ready organizations recognize that innovation and operational discipline go hand in hand. The goal isn't simply to deploy the latest technology. It's to create an environment where cloud, software, data, and AI investments work together to deliver sustainable business value both today and in the years ahead.

Prepare your organization for the AI era

AI Success Begins with a Foundation Most Organizations Still Don't Have

AI ambition isn't the challenge. Execution is. As organizations race to move beyond pilots and proof-of-concepts, many are discovering that fragmented data, inconsistent governance, and aging infrastructure make it difficult to scale AI across the business. The organizations realizing meaningful value from AI are focusing on the foundations first, creating environments that support innovation, security, and long-term growth.

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Regaining Control in the Age of AI

Organizations have spent the last two years experimenting with AI. The next challenge is ensuring those investments remain visible, governed, and aligned to measurable business outcomes as adoption accelerates. New research suggests many organizations are already losing sight of where AI tools are being used, how they're being funded, and whether they're delivering value.

As AI spreads across departments, costs become harder to predict and governance becomes more complex. Individual tools, embedded AI capabilities, cloud consumption, and custom agents can create a growing layer of spend and risk that traditional management practices weren't designed to address. The organizations that succeed will be those that connect visibility, accountability, and optimization into a single operating model.

Bringing ITAM and FinOps together creates a stronger foundation for AI by improving visibility into usage, costs, ownership, and value. With the right governance in place, organizations can reduce waste, make better decisions, and scale AI confidently while maintaining control as adoption grows.

Regain visibility and control over AI investments

AI Readiness Starts with the Right Foundation

Many businesses are eager to capitalize on AI, but success starts with a modern, scalable technology foundation. Cloud migration and modernization provide the flexibility, performance, and agility needed to support AI workloads while reducing complexity, improving cost management, and enhancing resilience. By investing in the right infrastructure today, companies can unlock greater innovation and position themselves to adapt as AI continues to evolve.

The businesses best positioned for AI success aren't chasing the latest technology. They're building the foundation that makes innovation possible.

Accelerate your path to AI readiness

Upcoming Events

Adobe

Together, Optimizing Workflows for Businesses and Schools

SoftwareOne and Adobe team up to offer Adobe Acrobat Studio, the all-in-one PDF and design solution powered by AI. Acrobat Studio enables businesses, educational institutions, and individuals to level up their productivity. With 70+ PDF tools and Acrobat AI Assistant, Acrobat Studio helps users work smarter and faster making edits, unlocking insights, sharing guided experiences, and creating content. Plus, Acrobat Studio features built-in integrations to work seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Dropbox, SLL security to share files with confidence, generative credits to create commercially safe AI images with Adobe Firefly, and multi-device access to use Acrobat Studio on the desktop, in a browser, or with a mobile device.

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Azul

Azul's Java & AI Maturity Benchmark: A 3-Minute Check
Azul's free, interactive self-assessment shows enterprise teams where they stand across five pillars of their Java environment: Visibility, Optimization, Security & Compliance, Operations, and Modernization — plus an AI Readiness Indicator gauging how prepared their infrastructure is for AI-driven workloads.

You'll get a personalized report with pillar-by-pillar scoring and tailored recommendations for closing gaps. It's a quick, low-commitment way to benchmark Java maturity and surface hidden exposure — unpatched vulnerabilities, licensing risk, or missed modernization opportunities.

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Meet the Expert

Michael Faas, Security Team Lead

If a company could take one action today to improve its future readiness, what would it be?

Map your dependencies. Not your assets. Your dependencies.

Almost every company I work with can hand me an inventory. Very few can tell me what breaks when a single vendor, a single identity provider, or a single admin account has a bad day. Those are different documents, and only one of them predicts an outage.

Pick the process that makes you money. Trace everything underneath it, including the things you do not own. The SaaS platform nobody reviewed. The integration a departed engineer built. The one person who knows how the handoff works.

You will find two or three places where a small failure takes down far more than it should. Fix those. That is future readiness. Everything else is a slide.

What's top of mind?

Governance versus control.

Every conversation right now starts with "how do we control AI." I think that is the wrong question. Control assumes you can take a system apart, optimize each piece, and put it back together. Complicated systems work that way. Jet engines. Complex systems do not, and that is what we are actually running now.

Complicated systems can be optimized. Complex systems have to be governed. That means deciding who is accountable, what is allowed, how you would know if something went wrong, and what you would do about it. Those four questions age much better than any tool selection.

The other thing on my mind is honest: the pace. Teams are being asked to secure things they were told about after they went live. That is a governance problem wearing a technology costume.

Licensing Updates

What's changing in the world of software licensing? From pricing announcements to enforcement timelines and promotional offers, explore the latest developments that could affect your organization.

Get the latest insights
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