GET TO KNOW...
On the lighter side of things, we ask the
industry experts what makes them tick. . . .
Francis O’Haire,
Group Technology Director, DataSolutions
What made you think of a career
in technology? What do you think will emerge as the
technology trend of 2018 and why?
From a very early age I had a keen interest
in science fiction and all things relating to
space exploration. I was an avid reader of
2000 AD magazine and as a child, firmly
believed that by the turn of the millennium
we would all be travelling around the solar
system on a regular basis. Unfortunately,
this, along with my desire to become an
astronaut, never progressed very far but my
love for technology certainly did. When I was
old enough to have a part-time job, the first
thing I bought was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum
computer. This was my first exposure to the
world of computing and the joy of listening
to programs loading from cassette tapes for
what seemed like hours did not dampen my
enthusiasm. I had never really considered a
career in anything other than technology,
specifically computing. I believe that 2018 will see the evolution
of cloud computing strategies within
organisations. Cloud has often been touted
as the solution to all IT problems, but the
majority of analysts and industry experts
now believe that businesses will end up using
a combination of different cloud providers
for different applications or workloads and
will retain on-premise IT resources for others.
What style of management
philosophy do you employ with your
current position?
I prefer to work closely alongside my team
but avoid micromanagement at all costs.
I accept and appreciate that they are far
more knowledgeable than me when it comes
to their own specialities, so my role is to
help align their activities towards business
goals and to coordinate and encourage
when necessary. While I do set out goals
and targets for them, I like to enable them
as much as possible to make their own
decisions on how the work gets done.
www.intelligentcio.com
costly for applications that are predictable
and are used all of the time. For that reason,
I believe we will see a growing trend in
technologies that help businesses integrate
their IT systems across multiple public cloud
providers and their own data centres. These
technologies will also use machine learning
techniques to analyse usage patterns and
make sure that applications are running in
Cloud is a great place to run applications
that have unpredictable resource
requirements and need to scale up and
down quickly, but its rental model can prove
“
WHEN I WAS OLD
ENOUGH TO HAVE
A PART-TIME
JOB, THE FIRST
THING I BOUGHT
WAS A SINCLAIR
ZX SPECTRUM
COMPUTER.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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