D E E P D I V E community? It’ s interesting to see this intersection of power and AI and data centres play out more.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry? we simultaneously moved to the cloud while making strategic acquisitions which more than tripled the size of the company. I oversaw our massive technological shift from being largely on-prem in our own data centres to having the majority of the environment in the cloud as well as integrating three multibillion dollar acquisitions, so there was a lot happening!
What style of management philosophy do you employ in your current position?
My style is very much trust and enablement with a level of accountability. My goal is to always set the right objectives, creating a structure from which you can measure and hold people accountable. I’ m not a taskmaster – my job is to clear the path for people to be successful by ensuring activities are aligned with the overall company vision. Then it’ s about letting people figure out how they can best fulfill it depending on where they sit in the business.
Maintaining a growth mindset is also a key tenet of my management philosophy. Change is constant so you must be comfortable with making adjustments – never fall in love with a plan or roadmap because it’ s more than likely it will need to be changed. That said, you do need to put in structure around key decisions and strategic investments, but also be flexible and adjust to influential variables while continuing to grow. I think it’ s also important to ensure chaos and being reactive isn’ t an excuse for agility. A big part of my job is to ensure the energy and money we invest in technology is productive.
What do you think is the current hot talking point within the data centre space?
Right now, consolidation is reshaping the data centre landscape. We’ re seeing the hyperscalers and large Fortune 100 companies all leveraging the cloud in some shape or form. The big question is: how does this wave of consolidation impact everyone else? And how do we sustainably power the next generation of data centres with power needs exponentially increasing?
What innovations are emerging from the energy sector to meet these needs? Given that the meteoric rise of AI has led to historical demand for power, how are key players in the power industry responding and re-marketing to the data centre and AI
Without a doubt it’ s AI. In a recent Box State of AI in the Enterprise report, we found that 70 % of organisations believe AI is disrupting their competitive landscape, with early adopters already supercharging productivity. And beyond that, there’ s agentic AI with organisations already integrating intelligent agents directly into content workflows to transform how teams access knowledge, collaborate, and make decisions. AI Agents will unlock completely new technology use cases that weren’ t possible before, driving a major increase in enterprise AI TAM compared to traditional software. Strong data governance and security principles remain of paramount importance for organisations evaluating which AI platforms to invest in.
What are the region-specific challenges you encounter in your role?
Many – I have to consider in-region processing and regulation based on different features and regions. I have to be concerned about where our data is and where it’ s being used, not just from our own product perspective, but any vendor we use also has to be able to fit with our global model.
Let’ s also be mindful that we’ re living in an era of regulatory flux. From the EU AI Act to NIS2, global regulation is evolving. Having a healthy tension between regulation and innovation in the changing AI landscape remains key.
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office?
I stay active. Whether it’ s playing baseball, tennis, basketball, hiking, I love being outdoors. Skiing and surfing are also great ways to detox from the digital world.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the coming months?
I believe that with AI, the CIO role has definitely evolved towards a more strategic nature. CIOs really have a seat at the table with AI as we have the ability to lean in on the topic and to own it. Companies depend on technology to operate every single day.
The idea that the CIO is focused on technology and how it runs and drives the business and the outcomes it’ s producing for the business is becoming more and more prevalent. It’ s similar to the evolution of finance – the market boom brought the industry to the forefront and today the CFO is typically the number two role in a company. We’ re seeing a similar evolution when it comes to technology and I’ m confident we’ re going to continue to see the role of the CIO increase in importance. Particularly now with the agentic workforce, the CIO arguably becomes the Chief Workforce Officer. �
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