Gradium develops audio language models, an audio-native counterpart to large language models designed to deliver natural, expressive, ultra-low latency voice interactions at scale and capable of performing any voice task. Audio language models were originally invented by Gradium’s founders and have since become the dominant paradigm across the industry; today, the team continues to push the frontier of what these models can do. Gradium’s ambition is to become the technical backbone of global voice technology.

Founded in September 2025 by Neil Zeghidour (Meta/Google DeepMind), Olivier Teboul (Google Brain), Laurent Mazaré (Google DeepMind/Jane Street) and Alexandre Défossez (Meta), Gradium represents one of the world’s highest concentration of generative audio expertise ever assembled, translating more than a decade of open research into production-ready systems for developers and enterprises.The team has demonstrated exceptional execution velocity generating its first revenue within weeks, onboarding early adopters across gaming, AI agents, customer care, language learning and healthcare.

“Today, the potential of voice AI is still largely untapped: we’re at the stage where chatbots were before LLMs” said Neil Zeghidour, Founder and CEO of Gradium. “Existing systems remain brittle, costly, and unable to deliver truly natural interactions. At Gradium, our goal is to make voice the primary interface between humans and machines. To achieve this, we’re eliminating the long-standing trade-off between quality and scalability: combining ultra-realistic expressivity, accurate transcription, and ultra-low-latency interactions at a price point that finally makes high-quality voice ubiquitous.”

The platform launches with multilingual support in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese with additional languages in development, and offers flexible plans from developer access to enterprise-scale deployment.

Gradium’s long-term collaboration with Kyutai provides ongoing access to frontier research in generative audio, allowing the team to rapidly transfer fundamental innovations into commercial-grade systems.

For more information, visit gradium.ai

The UK tech sector continues to demonstrate its strength, boasting a combined market valuation of more than $1.1 trillion in Q1 2024. The UK is home to nearly 170 unicorns, including 20 AI-driven startups, solidifying its status as a global leader in innovation and reinforcing the UK’s appeal as a prime destination for investment and cutting-edge technology.

And with a focus on the UK government’s ambitious AI strategy, aiming to spearhead economic growth, in conjunction with Europe’s push to compete on the global stage, this year’s event is a must-attend for technology leaders.

The UK has made artificial intelligence a pillar of its national strategy, with the government outlining bold initiatives in its AI Opportunities Action Plan to accelerate AI adoption across industries.

Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Peter Kyle said:

“Artificial Intelligence is transforming the way we live, work, and innovate across the UK. Making the most of this technology and ensuring that the entire country benefits is central to our Plan for Change. Since this government took office last summer, over £44 billion has been invested into the UK’s AI sector – a clear sign of global confidence in our approach.

“London Tech Week highlights the ambition and determination behind our AI Opportunities Action Plan, showcasing how this government is partnering with world-class innovators and industry leaders to attract investment, unlock growth, and cement our position as a global AI power.”

Carolyn Dawson, CEO of Founders Forum Group and co-lead of London Tech Week, said:

“It’s a pivotal time for UK tech – both on account of the current geopolitical landscape and the myriad opportunities generative AI presents. The UK remains the world’s third largest tech sector and continues to lead Europe’s tech ecosystem – but we cannot be complacent, and we cannot act in silos.

We must unite, think bigger, and act together to maintain the UK’s position as a leading global innovator and international tech hub – and London Tech Week is where we’ll do just that. This year’s LTW will bring together founders, corporate innovators, government, investors, startup operators, and tech enthusiasts from every vertical so we are not only part of the global AI revolution, but leading it.”

London Tech Week 2025 will showcase this vision in action, featuring keynotes and discussions from the world’s top AI founders, alongside CEOs and CIOs from global corporations integrating AI into their operations.

Standout speakers include:

• Arthur Mensch, Co-Founder & CEO, Mistral AI – leading Europe’s charge in frontier AI development
• Allison Kirkby, Chief Executive, BT Group – championing diversity and inclusion for the future of European tech
• Dame Melanie Dawes, Chief Executive, Ofcom – advancing global tech leadership by embedding trust and transparency within online safety
• Mark Read CBE, CEO, WPP – leading global advertising through a bold shift toward AI-powered creativity and media innovation
• Cindy Hoots, Chief Digital Officer, AstraZeneca – collaborating with tech partners and building the future of healthcare
• Jack Stockdale OBE, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Darktrace – a pioneer in AI-driven cybersecurity

A Platform for the Future of Tech

With over 45,000 attendees expected across five days, London Tech Week remains Europe’s leading technology festival, fostering collaboration between innovators, investors, and policymakers. As technology reshapes industries and economies, this year’s event will set the agenda for AI’s future in Europe and beyond.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and founder of Inrupt, comments:

“As AI rapidly reshapes the web, we need to follow the same principles that guided the creation of the World Wide Web – openness, universality, and decentralisation. I founded Inrupt to embed these principles in critical technology like Agentic Wallets, built on the Solid protocol. We’re building the foundation for an AI-enabled web where individuals maintain control of their data while benefiting from intelligent services. The UK has a tremendous opportunity to lead this evolution, combining technical innovation with thoughtful governance.”

Realising Europe’s Potential: Project Europe and the Future of Tech

In a rapidly evolving global landscape, European startups are stepping up to challenge US and Chinese dominance in deep tech and AI. Inspired by initiatives such as Project Europe, the enterprise launched by venture capital leader Harry Stebbings – London Tech Week will highlight the continent’s most promising startups, VCs, and corporate backers.

Janet Coyle, Managing Director, of event co-organisers, London & Partners, commented:

“London Tech Week is where the world meets—bringing together innovators, investors, and policymakers from over 100 countries. This global gathering is no coincidence. London’s unrivalled connectivity—whether through our time zone, six international airports, or a diverse, global talent pool—makes the city the ultimate launchpad for scaling businesses and forging global partnerships. As Europe’s top tech hub and home to nearly 170 unicorns, London blends world-class innovation with deep expertise across finance, creative industries, and professional services. London Tech Week brings these strengths to life, driving our growth and reinforcing the city’s position as the destination of choice for innovation, investment and trade.”

The event’s opening sessions will dive into Europe’s competitive positioning, featuring insights from investors and founders at the forefront of AI and emerging technologies. Key panels will explore:

• How Europe’s AI startups can compete globally
• Funding and scaling strategies for deep tech innovation
• The role of government and policy in shaping AI adoption

Unmissable Sessions and New Features for 2025

London Tech Week 2025 offers an unparalleled line-up of over 400 expert speakers, six stages of content, and an expanded networking agenda to connect startups, investors, and global enterprises. New highlights include:

• AI and Quantum Computing Zones – dedicated spaces for exploring cutting-edge research and commercial applications
• Pitch Stage – showcasing Europe’s next generation of tech entrepreneurs
• Investor Hours – exclusive networking opportunities with VCs and corporate venture leaders
• Tech Nation’s Rising Stars – the grand finale of the OneToWin and Rising Stars pitch competitions for the most exciting B2B founders emerging from all corners of the UK

How to Participate

Registration for London Tech Week 2025 is now open. Secure your place today and be part of the conversation defining the next era of AI and European tech. Visit londontechweek.com for more details.

About London Tech Week

London Tech Week is the most influential tech event in the UK. It’s a huge celebration of tech as a force for good that connects the world’s most inspirational founders, corporate heavyweights, government leaders, investors, and the next generation of tech superstars. It is organised by Founders Forum, Informa and London & Partners. London Tech Week is supported by HM Government and takes place from 10th-12th June 2024. https://londontechweek.com/

Software developers play a critical role in building, launching, and maintaining the applications and digital services that are essential to the way modern organisations operate today, and the pressure on them has never been higher. Globally, 85% of those surveyed report encountering increased pressure to accelerate release velocity, while 77% point to mounting pressure to deliver seamless and secure digital experiences.

But while developers are being expected to deliver new tools and functionality at ever faster speeds, they also find themselves on the receiving end of endless demands to help Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and IT operations teams manage the ongoing availability and performance of applications. The result is teams of developers spending hours in war room meetings and debugging applications, instead of creating code and building new applications.

Lack of Critical Insight into Application Performance

Developers report that the issue is down to their organisations not having the right tools and visibility required to understand the root cause of application issues. They believe this stems from IT departments lacking a full and unified view into applications and the supporting IT stack. Developers are acutely concerned about the potential consequences this could have, with three quarters (75%) of those surveyed fearing that the lack of visibility and insight into IT performance is increasing the chances of their organisation suffering downtime and disruption to business-critical applications.

The situation is significantly affecting morale amongst developers, with 82% admitting that they feel frustrated and demotivated, and 54% increasingly inclined to leave their current job. These findings should ring alarm bells for organisations who are now dependent on developers to create the compelling, intuitive digital experiences that customers and users expect. With demand for developer skills at an all-time high and a finite pool of talent, businesses cannot afford an exodus of talent simply because their IT teams don’t have the tools they need to do their jobs.

“While most IT departments have deployed a multitude of monitoring tools across different domains, they simply fall short when it comes to today’s complex and dynamic IT environments, leaving technologists unable to generate a full and unified view into their applications and the supporting IT stack,” said Shannon McFarland, Vice President, Cisco DevNet. “When things go wrong, it’s incredibly difficult to quickly identify where the root cause lies, often resulting in panic war room situations and developers having to spend hours trying to help their colleagues in IT operations identify the quickest path to remediation.”

The Potential for Full-Stack Observability

Encouragingly, developers are acutely aware that there are solutions available to address these concerns, and as many as 91% feel that they should be playing a bigger role in shaping and deciding on the solutions needed within their organisation. Above all else, developers point to full-stack observability as being a potential game changer, providing SREs and IT operations teams with unified visibility into applications and supporting infrastructure, across both cloud-native and on premises environments.

While developers themselves may not be the primary users of full-stack observability solutions – focusing instead on their specific areas of domain expertise – 78% believe that implementing full-stack observability within their organisation would be beneficial. Developers recognise the benefits of having unified visibility across the IT estate and acknowledge that full-stack observability would make it much easier and quicker for operations teams to identify issues, understand root causes, and carry out necessary remediation. In turn, this would result in fewer technologists from multiple domain teams being required to attend war room sessions, and free up that talent – including developers – to focus on their day jobs.

76% of developers went so far as to state that it’s becoming impossible for them to do their job because SREs and IT operations teams don’t have the insights they need to effectively manage IT performance. This explains why 94% point to full-stack observability as the single thing that would most help them to escape war rooms and focus on innovation.

The Role of AI

Alongside full-stack observability, many developers (39%) also feel that their organisation (and they themselves) would benefit from deploying AI to automate application issue detection and resolution. Rather than relying on manual processes, AI can enable IT teams to cut through overwhelming volumes of application data to identify the most serious issues and apply fixes in real-time.

In addition, developers are ready to embrace new ways of working within the IT department to drive greater efficiency and productivity, and a more streamlined approach to managing application performance. The majority (57%) believe that there needs to be greater ongoing collaboration between developers and IT teams. This is already being seen in shift left testing and widespread adoption of DevOps and DevSecOps methodologies, so that application availability, performance and security considerations are embedded into the development lifecycle from the outset.

“At a time when developer talent is in such high demand, organisations must do everything they can to empower their teams with the tools they need to be able to perform to their full potential and maximise impact,” added McFarland. “Full-stack observability has become mission-critical – without it, IT teams simply cannot deliver the levels of digital experience that consumers now demand.”

Research Methodology

Cisco conducted research amongst 500 global software developers split across the U.S. (200), UK (100), Australia (30), and the rest of the world (170 – including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Japan, Singapore, India). The research was conducted by Insight Avenue in March and April 2024.

The report found many British online dating app users are likely to enlist AI for dating advice, with 51% saying they would consider turning to an AI tool as a dating coach. Some are taking an even more direct approach. More than half (59%) of online daters in the UK admitted they would consider using an AI tool to write a pickup line or conversation starter, introducing an added digital layer to online interactions.

As technology continues to overtake traditional dating methods, some Brits who have used dating apps have stated they would actually prefer to skip in-person dates altogether, with 40% being likely to send an AI avatar go as their proxy. Overall, less than half of single online daters (45%) reported a preference to meet a potential partner offline, in real life.

These findings demonstrate the unquestionable role of tech in romance and a firm reminder about the importance of staying cyber safe. Nearly a quarter of dating app users (22%) reported being targeted by a romance scam with 43% of those respondents actually falling victim.

There is a level of risk awareness among online daters based on an assessment of popular apps and sites. Surprisingly, online daters ranked WhatsApp (69%), Match.com (56%) and Instagram (55%) as the safest platforms, while Grindr was ranked lowest with only 20% agreeing it is safe.

Leyla Bilge, Director of Scam Research Labs for Norton commented, “Our 2024 report signifies a societal behaviour shift around dating. The digital nature of online dating can make the process feel complicated. It’s not surprising that people are looking to leverage AI to simplify and enhance the experience – but it’s important to consider the other side of that.”

“We know cybercriminals are also becoming adept at using AI to exploit and scam people. That means scams are more creative, more sophisticated and much harder to spot, and people must remain vigilant in understanding the risks and red flags. The good news is there are simple steps and precautions to take to avoid falling for a scam rather than a match.”

Norton offers tips to help consumers stay safe while online dating:

• Ask for a phone call or video chat to help verify the identity of the person that you’re talking to.
• Do your homework on your potential sweetheart. Check their social media for bare profiles or no connections. You can also reverse image search to see if their photos are on other sites by right clicking their photo.
• Don’t visit links sent to you by people you haven’t talked to for very long. AI scams target people based on their interest and online presence, and scammers will try to get their target to click on links, usually leading to porn or webcam sites, and or even malicious sites that download malware onto your computer.
• Be cautious about what you upload or post online. The more scammers know about you, the more they know how to lure you, especially with the help of AI. If you notice that the conversation you’re having seems a bit off, or the person isn’t answering your questions directly, chances are it’s an AI bot.
• Call in for backup. Education yourself on the resources and tools available to protect yourself. Product such as Norton Genie, a free, AI-powered scam detection app can help identify suspicious texts, emails or web links and warn of potential malicious activity.

For access to full results of the 2024 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report: Special Release: Online Dating, please visit https://newsroom.gendigital.com/norton-cyber-safety-report-2024

About the 2024 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report: Special Release – Online Dating

The study was conducted online within the UK by Dynata on behalf of Gen from March 6th to March 22nd, 2024 among 1,005 adults ages 18 and older. Data are weighted where necessary by age, gender, and region, to be nationally representative.

About Norton

Norton is a leading Cyber Safety brand of Gen (NASDAQ: GEN), a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its family of trusted consumer brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender and CCleaner. Gen empowers people to live their digital lives safely, privately, and confidently today and for generations to come. Gen brings award-winning products and services in cybersecurity, online privacy and identity protection to more than 500 million users in more than 150 countries. Learn more at Norton.com and GenDigital.com.

This announcement increases the flexibility offered to IT professionals and allows in house security teams to harness powerful security capabilities without committing to cloud native application performance monitoring. This new standalone application supports two modules, Cisco’s new Data Security module and Cloud Security module, purposely built to give organisations the flexibility to secure their data and cloud native applications independently or as part of an all-in-one offering.

Observability enables teams adopting a devsecops framework to secure their applications efficiently. However, not all organisations are structured the same way despite having similar security objectives which is why standardised tools like Cisco Secure Application act as a standalone Cisco Observability Platform application to streamline processes in a reliable manner.

Enhanced security measures have never been so important for organisations given the current ramifications for failures in protecting consumers’ Personally Identifying Information (PII) and other sensitive data. Companies can result in hefty fines leading up to €20 million, or 4% of the previous year’s annual revenue for noncompliance of (for example) GDPR processes – not to mention the reputational damage this can cause. The new Data Security module within the Cisco Secure Application helps to reduce the risks of these kind of failures whilst helping teams to regain control and proactively secure their sensitive data. Using leading AI technologies, it helps:

• Unlock deep data visibility by automatically discovering and classifying sensitive data at scale
• Efficiently control and secure data from both internal and external threats with continuous monitoring
• Save time and effort by avoiding manual tasks and ensuring your data is compliant with the latest regulatory standards
• Provide GenAI-powered alerting and guidance to expedite remediation of security issues

Cisco’s Cloud Security Module will also provide real-time vulnerability analytics and business risk observability for cloud native applications. Because of the Cisco portfolio, Secure Application can ensure teams triage the threats that carry the most impact to each business and act with real-time guidance and actions.

To learn more visit https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/full-stack-observability/index.html

“In the past three months, we have seen cybercriminals move from relying only on social engineering to further exploiting trusted digital mediums, be it highly believable deepfake video scams or threats spreading through PDF files,” explains Jakub Křoustek, Malware Research Director for Avast. “This trend not only reflects the ever-changing methods of cybercriminals but also highlights the vulnerabilities inherent in our everyday digital life. Now more than ever, people need to verify what they encounter online and utilise tools to help stay safe.”

Careful What You Open: PDF File Deception

In the last quarter of 2023, Avast blocked more than 10 million PDF-based attacks, protecting more than 4 million users worldwide. Threat actors turned their attention to PDF files in the final months of the year, weaving a complex web of attacks. Avast researchers observed a spectrum of PDF-related threats and scams, ranging from simple lottery and dating scams, to documents containing deceptive information such as phishing links directing people to pages mimicking well-known brands like Netflix or Amazon. Researchers also saw an uptick in complex campaigns delivering more sophisticated threats like password stealers such as AgentTesla.

The proliferation of PDF-based cyber threats underscores a significant shift in the tactics of cybercriminals. PDF files are popular due to their platform-agnostic nature, which allows them to be seamlessly opened from any device, making them the ultimate delivery payload. Furthermore, PDF attachments are often allowed by default by spam gateways, adding another layer of vulnerability.

Scams Get More Aggressive, From Push Notifications to Deepfakes

Web threats continued to dominate, with scams, phishing, and malvertising ranking as the top threat types overall. The use of malicious browser push notifications escalated, becoming a preferred tool for scammers across various domains, from adult content sites to technical support scams.

Beyond the methods of delivery for scams, AI continues to help criminals create more believable scams. Deepfake videos, especially those endorsing investment scams, displayed a heightened level of sophistication in the final quarter of the year, challenging the ability to distinguish between real and fabricated content.

Information Stealers Exploit Cookies

The final quarter of 2023 also brought a new and interesting stealing capability which was rapidly adapted by information stealers: abusing the Google OAuth endpoint, which is used for synchronising accounts across Google services, for recovering authentication cookies. This type of cookie can store a unique identifier that verifies a user’s identity and permissions when accessing websites. With authentication cookies, threat actors are able to gain access to login information and other sensitive data. One of the first info-stealers to adapt this technique was Lumma, a rapidly rising malware-as-a-service stealer, with others quickly following.

HP INKmaginary Toys leverage HP Printables, the site dedicated to offering print outs and colouring sheets, to enhance existing toy bricks. With tactically placed circles made for hole punchers, children can transform their print outs from one dimension artwork into fully fledged, creative, 3D toys that offer older toys a new lease of live. Clipping the paper onto the toy bricks is as easy as it is satisfying!

This launch of HP INKmaginary Toys catapults home office printers from a necessary work appliance into an essential tool for toy creation.

The initial batch of designs seek to inform children around endangered UK species – these include:

• Hedgehog
• Greater horseshoe bat
• Northern pool frog & lilypad
• Bumblebee
• Grasshopper
• Monarch butterfly
• Juniper tree
• Capercaillie

Each animal comes with its own guide on how to build the brick element, as well as how to forge the paper component to the toy brick frame.

The HP INKmaginary Toys announcement coincides with the launch of HP’s paper add-on service for Instant Ink. This allows for pre-paid cartridge recycling and automated FSC-certified paper delivered to your door meaning the collection of HP INKmaginary Toys can grow sustainably and effortlessly.

With 79% of parents agreeing that printed educational resources make it easier for them to collaborate with their child on things like homework assignments – essential services like HP’s paper add-on service for Instant INK allows for unparalleled convenience.

Paper Add-On Service can be added to any Instant Ink subscription. All plans include high-quality, forest-conscious HP Paper designed for a wide range of everyday printing. It is also certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which means that paper is only sourced from responsibly managed forests to contribute to a forest positive future for generations to come.

This sudden seasonal increase in digital purchasing makes it crucial for online store owners to prepare early if they want to attract an influx of holiday shoppers. Black Friday can bring significant revenue to businesses, but to tap into this potential, businesses must ensure a smooth online shopping experience for their customers.

So, if you’re aiming for better sales this Black Friday, start your preparations now by focusing on the following five areas.

Scalability: Bring Everyone to the Table

The holidays are all about bringing people together, and as a site owner, you want to ensure every potential customer who lands on your site has a seamless experience from start to finish.

This can be harder to implement as more site visitors arrive, all at once, putting added strain on your server. For sites that aren’t set up to perform well at scale, this could translate into anything from slow-loading pages to all-out downtime.

To that end, it’s important to ensure your site has the needed resources to perform well at scale should you experience a spike in traffic, thus guaranteeing every one of your site visitors has a seat at your digital table.

To determine where you stand, you can take stock of how your site is performing now and make sure it’s ready for holiday visitors by testing it for high traffic.

Load testing

Load testing is something you can do to determine how many visitors your site is prepared to handle at once.

Proper load testing will help you assess important aspects of site performance like scaling capabilities, lifecycle hooks, security risks, automatic code deployment, health checks, and target tracking, among other factors.

It’s important to make sure you’re not load testing your live site—instead, use a separate development environment like Local. Then, you can perform the following types of load tests to make sure your site is ready for Black Friday (and beyond):

• Stress testing: Also known as fatigue testing, this test reveals how the system behaves under highly intense loads. You can simulate “stress” for your site by using a third-party tool to send a set number of concurrent HTTP requests to a website and watch how it responds.
• Spike testing: This type of stress test evaluates how the site performs when there’s a sudden increase in traffic, also known as a “spike.” This will show you how your site would respond if, for instance, a large percentage of your customers navigate to your site simultaneously after receiving a push notification or email about a seasonal sale.
• Soak testing: This test is all about the endurance of your site. Sometimes called “longevity testing,” soak testing is similar to stress testing, but focuses more on how the system reacts to a high volume of traffic over an extended period of time.

Experts at BlazeMeter suggest that your site is considered “under load” when 80% of your server resources are being used and that you should test your site for at least 20% more than the amount of traffic you actually expect.

Searchability: Help Site Visitors Find What They Want

A good search experience is critical to the success of an eCommerce site, as it significantly affects user satisfaction and conversions.

Consider these key points:

• 43% of eCommerce visitors head straight to the search bar.
• Visitors who use the search function are more than twice as likely to become customers when they find what they’re looking for.
• While WordPress offers basic search capabilities out of the box, enhancing your eCommerce site with optimised search solutions presents a competitive advantage.
• WP Engine customers saw an increase of 18% in sales simply from improving the search experience with Instant Store Search, a custom implementation of ElasticPress that’s included in WP Engine’s WooCommerce hosting solution.

On the other hand, neglecting search can lead to underwhelming results, as customers expect Google-level search experiences across the web.

During peak seasons like Black Friday, your users will demand more comprehensive search functionality to find specific products, and tools like Instant Store Search can help them find what they need.

Powered by ElasticPress, this powerful search optimisation can be enabled with one click and provides relevant search results and autocomplete suggestions in real time as users type their queries. That means shoppers can quickly find what they’re looking for, add it to their cart, and proceed to checkout.

Instant Store Search is capable of searching large volumes of data quickly and provides scalable search operations for your site, making it especially beneficial during peak shopping seasons when you’re seeing an uptick in traffic.

Performance: Clean House and Get Ready for Guests

Cleaning up your site in anticipation of holiday traffic can encompass a lot of different areas, but the first thing site visitors will notice is how well your site performs.

It’s important to optimise your eCommerce site for optimal performance at every stage of the buyer’s journey—from fast-loading pages that capture browsing shoppers to seamless cart functionality (regardless of concurrent traffic), all the way through to a swift and secure checkout process.

Prune back plugins and unnecessary code

Some plugins can significantly slow down your site’s performance. By disabling or removing unnecessary plugins, you can improve the site’s speed and performance. Also, getting rid of unused features and trimming down your code can lead to a more streamlined site with faster loading times.

Disable cart fragments

Many eCommerce sites use cart fragments, which is a bit of code that updates a user’s cart without refreshing the page. But when that script is present on static posts, pages, custom post types, or feed pages that contain no eCommerce functionality, it can decrease cacheability and slow down your site. By disabling cart fragments and choosing a different tool, like WP Engine Live Cart, you get the functionality of dynamic carts without bogging down site performance.

Focus on cache

Implementing a suitable caching system, like WP Engine’s EverCache for WooCommerce, can help you maintain impressive site speed. It knows when to ignore the cookies used by WooCommerce, optimises cache delivery for static pages, and automatically bypasses cache when it has the potential to break functionality.

On-page optimisation

From your product descriptions, content, titles, reviews, pricing, links, and all other on-page aspects, every element should be double-checked and optimised to include the keywords your customers may be searching. Check for broken links, outdated pricing, and poor-quality images, and abandonment. You can also compress large media files to keep your site performance high without sacrificing image quality.

A correctly generated site map also ensures easy readability for search engines as they crawl your site for relevancy, and regular backups will ensure any changes made to your site can be reversed if you notice unintended consequences.

Outreach: Try a New Tradition

The holiday season is often a make-or-break period for many businesses. It’s a time when consumer spending increases drastically, and many businesses rely on this heightened traffic to meet their annual sales goals.

To maximise profits during this time, many companies use the holiday season as a period to try out new sales strategies. Whether it’s implementing a Buy-One-Get-One (BOGO) offer, lowering prices by a certain percentage, or initiating holiday sales early due to anticipated shipping delays, testing these strategies in the weeks leading up to Black Friday can give you invaluable insights into your customers’ behaviour and preferences.

Because shoppers are already in the buying mindset during this period, they are more receptive to sales and discounts. By trying out different sales strategies to see what resonates with your customers before Black Friday, you’re ready to optimise your offerings and maximise your profits when holiday shopping hits.

“This research highlights the opportunity business leaders have to strengthen the world’s relationship with work – in ways that are good for both people and business,” said Neil MacDonald, UK&I Channel Director, HP Inc. “It is our role as leaders to demonstrate and encourage workers to find the balance between productivity and happiness. The most successful organisations have healthy cultures that enable employees to excel in their careers and thrive outside of work.”

The study analysed 50+ aspects of people’s relationships with work, including the role of work in their lives, their skills, abilities, tools and workspaces, and their expectations of leadership. The study also examined the impact work has on employee well-being, productivity, engagement and culture. Through this, HP developed its Work Relationship Index, which is a measure of the world’s relationship with work to be tracked over time. It found that just 25% of knowledge workers currently have a healthy relationship with work; more details on the Index can be found here.

Unhealthy Relationships with Work are Impacting Employees’ Mental, Emotional, and Physical Well-being

In this first-of-its-kind study, HP engaged with business leaders, IT decision makers, and knowledge workers to gain insights into the factors that drive meaningful, productive, and purposeful work experiences. The findings spotlight the negative impacts an unhealthy relationship with work has on an employee’s life and an employer’s business.

When employees are not happy with their relationship with work, it takes a toll on business:

• Morale and Engagement: UK knowledge workers report more disengagement at work (47%) and greater feelings of disconnection (49%).
• Retention: Even when employees feel neutral about their relationship with work, more than 71% consider leaving the company. When they’re not happy at all, that number rises to 91%.

Unhealthy relationships with work can impact UK employees’ well-being:

• Mental: More than half (57%) of these employees struggle with their self-worth and mental health, reporting low self-esteem and feeling like they are a failure.
• Emotional: These issues naturally affect other aspects of their lives, with 45% noting that their personal relationships with friends and family suffer, and more than half (57%) are too drained to pursue their personal passions.
• Physical: Mental and emotional health can make it harder to maintain physical well-being. 65% of employees report trouble with maintaining healthy eating, working out and getting sufficient sleep.

Identifying the Drivers Behind a Healthy Relationship with Work

Employees’ expectations of work have changed significantly, particularly over the past two years, according to nearly 47% of respondents. Fifty percent surveyed noted their expectations of how they are treated at work and in the workplace also have increased.

The research examined more than 50 factors contributing to a healthy relationship with work, identifying six core drivers that represent critical focus areas – and key imperatives – for business leaders, and comprise the Index that will be tracked over time.

1. Fulfilment: Employees yearn for purpose, empowerment, and genuine connection to their work, but just 24% of knowledge workers currently experience these aspects consistently. To adapt to evolving workforce expectations, businesses must prioritise employee fulfilment through increased voice and agency.

2. Leadership: New ways of working demand new leadership styles, according to 66% of business leaders; yet only one in five workers feel leaders have evolved their leadership styles accordingly.  Cultivating emotional intelligence and transparent, empathetic leadership is crucial for today’s workplace.

3. People-centricity: Only 25% of knowledge workers consistently receive the respect and value they feel they deserve, and even fewer are experiencing the flexibility, autonomy, and work-life balance they seek. To address this, leaders must put visible emphasis on putting people first and placing their teams at the centre of decision-making.

4. Skills: While 77% of knowledge workers value strong power and technical skills, only 32% feel consistently confident in their proficiency in either. ‘Best-practice’ businesses have an opportunity to gain a vital skills-development and employee engagement edge by investing in holistic training and support.

5. Tools: Today’s workers want a say in the technology and tools their employer provides – and want that technology to be inclusive. However, confidence that companies will implement the right tools to support hybrid work is low, at just one in five. No longer just a utility, the technology portfolio is emerging as an important driver of employee engagement, as well as connection and enablement.

6. Workspace: Knowledge workers want a seamless experience as they move between work locations – and a choice in where they work each day. Effective hybrid workspaces, easy transitions, flexibility and autonomy will be pivotal in demonstrating trust in employees and fostering a positive work experience.

Trust and emotional connection are now key in attracting and retaining workers

The Work Relationship Index shows that this is a pivotal time to redefine the world’s relationships with work. Greater trust and emotional connection in the workplace were strong and recurring themes across the six core drivers.

Almost three in four business leaders acknowledge that emotionally intelligent leadership is the only way a leader can be successful going forward. Significantly, the study found that emotional intelligence – and increased trust and agency – hold considerable weight with employees: 74% say they’re willing to earn less money to find an employer that values these factors.

• Strong workplace culture: UK knowledge workers would take an 6% pay cut to work somewhere with empathetic, emotionally intelligent leadership, and above-average employee engagement and fulfilment.
• Flexibility: The same group would give up 8% of their salary to work somewhere that lets them work where or when they want.

For more information on the Work Relationship Index and to access the full report, please visit the HP Press Centre.

The new report, The Age of Application Observability, reveals the levels of complexity that technologists are encountering as they implement cloud native technologies alongside existing on-premises applications and infrastructure. And with widespread recognition that hybrid environments are here to stay, technologists point to an urgent need for application observability to deliver the seamless digital experiences that customers now demand.

Crippling complexity is impacting end user experience

Rapid adoption of cloud native technologies is bringing overwhelming volumes of metrics, events, logs and traces (MELT) data into the IT department, which traditional monitoring tools just aren’t designed to handle. In fact, 78% of technologists state that the increased volume of data from hybrid environments is making manual monitoring impossible.

The shift to hybrid environments is also leading to an expansion of attack surfaces and heightened vulnerability to cybersecurity threats. Most IT departments are still deploying separate tools to monitor on-premises and cloud native applications, and this means they have no clear line of sight of the entire application path across hybrid environments.

For IT teams, it’s becoming extremely difficult to troubleshoot issues before they impact end user experience. And the potential consequences of this are profound – an increased likelihood of disruption and downtime to applications, which in turn can lead to a loss of customers, reputation and revenue.

Organisations risk an IT talent exodus

The increased complexity caused by hybrid environments is also being felt more personally by technologists who find themselves operating under relentless pressure. Silos are emerging between IT teams and morale is worsening. 36% of technologists claim that silos and ineffective collaboration are already leading to team members leaving their organisation, and 46% believe that churn within their IT department will increase if silos persist.

Evidently, IT leaders need to act quickly to avoid a talent exodus within their IT departments, something that no organisation can afford when IT skills are in such high demand.

Observability is critical to optimise application performance and validate cloud investments

As organisations continue to operate with hybrid environments, they need to move beyond traditional monitoring approaches and implement application observability. Crucially, they need to implement a solution which provides flexibility to span across both cloud native and on-premises environments – with telemetry data from cloud native environments and agent-based entities within on-premises applications being ingested into the same platform.

Technologists believe that this level of unified observability – providing a single source of truth for all IT teams – will bring a wide range of benefits. These include deeper insight to detect and solve the root cause of issues, and the ability to bring together dispersed IT infrastructure and applications. They also feel that application observability will help to improve productivity in the IT department, forging closer collaboration between teams and uniting all technologists around a shared vision and common goals.

Crucially, given that 81% of technologists report heightened scrutiny on cloud investments within their organisation, application observability allows IT leaders to correlate IT performance data with business transactions so they can track the impact of their innovation initiatives in real-time. Organisations can approach innovation in a more controlled and sustainable manner, directing their time and investment where it will have the biggest impact.

Application observability is now an urgent, strategic priority for organisations

Momentum around application observability is building, with 85% of technologists stating that this is now a strategic priority for their organisation, and more than half reporting that their organisation is already exploring solutions.

This is hugely encouraging and reflects a strong desire amongst technologists to finally get to grips with the complexity that has become such a drain on IT teams over the last few years.

Application observability is now critical for organisations to deliver always-on, seamless digital experiences and to achieve their ambitions for rapid and sustainable innovation. IT leaders must act quickly and decisively to implement the right observability solution for their organisation.

Managing application availability and performance in hybrid environments with Cisco AppDynamics

Cisco AppDynamics is a leading provider of Application Observability and Application Performance Monitoring technology. AppDynamics helps customers observe what matters inside and beyond their IT environments. Combined with the power of Cisco, AppDynamics enables organisations to deliver exceptional user experiences by centralising and correlating data into contextualised insights of key business metrics – providing them with the power to prioritise actions based on business needs.

To find out more about how Cisco AppDynamics is helping organisations optimising application performance to deliver sustainable innovation click here.