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IT Essentials: A long time in politics

From resignations to reports, companies and governments drag their heels on important issues

In a timely turn of events, coming an hour before my editorial was due, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has just resigned over bullying allegations: a saga that has dragged on for six years and across four different Prime Ministers.

Dire news for the Tory Party (it seems that there's no other type, at present), and happy days for those that had to work under Raab. But I'd like to focus today on the time it took for any progress to be made on the issue.

It's often said that "a week is a long time in politics." If that's true, then how long is six years? Enough time for a new MP to rise from the backbenches to one of the most prominent positions in the land, despite the allegations (and evidence) hanging over his head, it seems.

What does this have to do with tech? I promise there's a parallel; I'm not (just) using my time to throw stones.

This week, we've published a deep dive examination of two of the leading cloud vendor's green moves. In Penny Horwood's analysis, we see that both AWS and, to a lesser extent, Google are failing to practice what they preach when it comes to saving the planet.

Like a certain MP, both cloud giants have got away with it for far too long - and are still doing so. Phrases like "declines to say," "fails to share," and "cannot explain" were all too frequent in the report.

Remember, these are some of the largest and most powerful companies on the planet. They should be setting the standard for others to follow - not, for just one example, using data four years out of date as a model of datacentre efficiency.

Like the UK government, technology firms - and IT departments - must move faster. They should also shout more about their successes: Amazon, for example, is doing some really innovative work with green steel in its datacentres. Watch Computing for a full report on that in the near future.

Weekend reading

As well as Penny's insightful analysis of the cloud market, read John Leonard's look at DevOps' newest role: platform engineering. We'll dig into the research more at DevOps Live next week, so if you haven't already registered for your free place, make sure you do so now.

Also this week, I attended the Oracle CloudWorld Tour in London and heard from CEO Safra Catz on how the company is working with a variety of end-user customers, from Nespresso to Network Rail. For more customer content, also check out how McLaren rebuilt its data strategy post-pandemic.

Finally, make sure to submit your entries for the Women in Tech Awards before they close next Friday.

Have a great weekend.

IT Essentials: A long time in politics

From resignations to reports, companies and governments drag their heels on important issues

Weekend reading

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