Buying software used to be relatively simple. You either paid a one-off fee, or an ongoing license, or sometimes a combination of both.

With the advent of cloud and SaaS, however, things have become rather more complicated. Usage based pricing is more common, plus in a difficult economic climate there's a spotlight on software costs.

Cybersecurity is usually viewed as something to be addressed via software. In recent years though we've seen a hardware element start to creep in -- Windows 11's requirement for TPM capability for example.

Can we expect to see more hardware-based security measures? And what benefits do these offer? We spoke to Ed Maste, senior director of technology at the FreeBSD Foundation (the non-profit organization supporting the open source FreeBSD operating system) to find out.

It's become common for businesses to use more than one cloud, however, service providers have no incentive to offer unified management tools as they want to keep customers for themselves.

This means enterprises end up relying on multiple tools as their cloud footprint expands which is not only inefficient but can be costly. We spoke to Rod Stuhlmuller, VP of solutions marketing at Aviatrix, to find out how organizations can monitor and control their cloud usage and costs at a time when budgets are coming under increased pressure.

One of the popular buzzwords in development circles in recent years has been 'deployment at scale'. Now, while it's nice to have a universally recognized term, opinions about what deployment at scale actually means tend to vary.

So what exactly does 'at scale' mean in the development community and how can companies define their own approach? We spoke to Adam Frank, VP, product and marketing at Armory.io, to find out.

Generative AI has been getting attention recently for its novelty, unique applications and potential impact on the business world.

But, like any new invention, there's some confusion around what it actually is and what it can do. We spoke to Scott Varho, chief evangelist of 3Pillar Global, who argues that companies shouldn't be rushing to adopt generative AI without considering their needs and potential value.

Web scraping, automatically harvesting and extracting data from websites, can be a useful tool for businesses to learn about their customers.

But it's easy to fall into the trap of harvesting data just because it's there, leading to information overload not to mention privacy concerns for the consumer. To find out more about web scraping and how it can be used in an ethical way we spoke to founder and CEO of Rayobyte, Neil Emeigh.

In recent years, the software bill of materials (SBOM) has become a key element of software security and software supply chain risk management.

We spoke to Tim Mackey, head of software supply chain risk strategy at Synopsys to find out more about the benefits and challenges of SBOMs.

As developers come under increasing pressure to deliver projects quickly, there's a rising level of conflict between development and security teams. And attackers are taking advantage of this conflict in order to target software supply chains.

So, what kind of threats do enterprises face and what can they do to protect themselves? We spoke to Pete Morgan, co-founder and CSO of supply chain security company Phylum to find out.

While social media sites like Facebook remain popular, many people have worries about how their data is is being collected and used by the companies behind them.

Bret Cox is founder and CEO of True, a social network which doesn't monetize user information and focuses on people you really know. We talked him to find out more.

Data science involves analyzing and interpreting large, complex amounts of data and turning it into valuable insight to achieve business goals. Though not exactly a breakthrough field now, it has changed many aspects of how markets conduct business.

In a conversation with Jerry Johnson, founder and president of Marketing Data Science Associates and director of Cascade Strategies, we talk about data science, its applications in marketing, and its future with the emergence of AI.

When it comes to software development, quality testing is among the first items on the chopping block during budget cuts. It is often viewed as a cost center, and nothing more than a box to tick on the road to getting software out the door.

Chief quality architect Mush Honda of quality management platform Katalon, sees it differently. We spoke to him to find out why he thinks quality testing is an essential catalyst for company growth by helping companies retain customers, who can easily switch to competitors at the first sign of online hiccups.

Traditionally used by intelligence agencies and the military, the OSINT technique is used to gather information about people, organisations or companies from freely accessible sources, then analyse the data obtained and draw useful conclusions and information from it.

But IT security experts can also benefit from the technique to discover potential vulnerabilities and remediate them before they're exploited by attackers.

Developers need access to many devices and internal services in order to build software. But many of these devices and services are exposed to the public web, creating gaps in security.

Add in the challenges of securing remote working and it's clear that there's a tricky balancing act needed to enable development while keeping the organization secure. We spoke to Avery Pennarun, CEO and co-founder of VPN service Tailscale, to find out how this can be achieved.

Digital transformation projects often rely on the updating or replacing of apps, but that can put a brake on the speed of progress.

Many enterprise apps rely on established systems like Java which have been around for a long time but still remain popular. We spoke to Kim Weins, VP of products at open source web development platform Vaadin, to find out more about the challenges of bringing enterprise apps up to date.

The cybersecurity world is a constantly evolving one. In recent years though we've seen the rise of new technologies like AI and quantum computing that, while they may revolutionize legitimate businesses, also have worrying implications for security.

We spoke to Kevin Kennedy, vice president of products at detection and response company Vectra AI, to find out more about the risks and what organizations can do about them.