Meet Matt Downing: Engineering to Architecture

Speaker 1 0:18

Hi , I'm Paul Price with ISA , and this is the Argument my podcast and webcast series with architects from around the world . Today , we're going to be talking with Matt Downing about hybrid infrastructure , and I could probably go on for an hour on this podcast . But , matt , why don't you introduce yourself ? I've been lucky enough to know you for a while and you have to tell everybody about the cats .

Speaker 2 0:47

Okay , brilliant . Thanks , paul Matthew Downing here . The 30-plus years in technology starting at university level I was doing chemical engineering Fell in love with technology when I got to do a whole lot of things like MATLAB and various programming languages to solve engineering problems . And over time , the techniques I've learned there , plus problem solving techniques I learned in engineering , has really helped me drive a career through IT and technology , which has now ultimately led to me going that architect route .

Speaker 2 1:25

I didn't want to be a specialist in one particular area , you know , I didn't want to be a developer . I didn't want to be a systems admin . I wanted to always play the whole enchilada , if you like , and by doing that I felt like I had more connectivity with people . I got to understand the way process and business works , what the purse string holders care about and , more importantly , what the purse string holders care about and , more importantly , what the customers care about and how does technology enable that . So that's kind of how my career has developed into architecture .

Speaker 2 1:56

What I've seen more recently which has really been amazing , with the whole advent of cloud and the adoption of really hosted systems in different data centers , which is cloud , and then the evolution further into clever data models , clever networking . You know AI is coming in clearly strong . You know all of those have just really feathered that cap around technology , delivery and business value . I think that this hybrid course is probably a good timed course in terms of people have had a taste of cloud Good , the bad , the ugly . People have probably spent a fair bit of money on budget . People have probably experienced the whole shift of skills you need to do and you know all of

The Evolution of Hybrid Infrastructure

Speaker 2 2:45

these sort of things play into the dynamics of it .

Speaker 1 2:50

So I'm going to ask you a question , and this , I think , is because we've spent all of our time on , you know , public cloud versus old data centers , and I just think that that is a very nearsighted question . In 10 years , how many locations is a corporation going to be running compute ?

Speaker 2 3:13

Well , it really depends on their customer model that they are trying to reach . So you know , if your market is distributed all over the show and you really want to reach them , and if it's really content intense , you may have quite a massively distributed network . If it's not as distributed or if it's very low touch for customer , you might actually still remain in a fairly centralized model . And there's everything in between . So , between the sublime and the ridiculous , really everything in between . So between the sublime and the ridiculous really .

Speaker 1 3:44

But this is where I really get into the question of what does compute mean anymore ? In an edge world , in a world where smart devices , in a world where literally everything has a processor , we're used to thinking like big IT , which just means we think about finance workloads , hr workloads and boring workloads right , but manufacturing has workloads running in devices .

Speaker 1 4:13

This big right , and I'm not talking Raspberry Pis , I'm talking people's shoes and belts and cars and their handheld specialized equipment and satellites . Right , what does it mean if the world of infrastructure for a corporation needs to expand to infrastructure for humanity , right to roads and buildings

Compute Everywhere: Beyond Traditional IT

Speaker 1 4:40

and stuff like that ? You know what does that mean for us ? How does that look to an infrastructure architect or to a person thinking about this right now ? I think ?

Speaker 2 4:50

for the ever optimist , lots of excitement because there's a connected world and you can get to everything and everything's abstracted and you've got all this great stuff . For the slightly more skeptic probably a few sleepless nights as you're worrying about costs , you're worrying about operational impact , you're worrying about security and I think you want to find that good , comfortable space in between . So , yeah , be excited . You want to get into newer technology , you want to be able to reach customers in better and smarter ways , but at the same time , bring in a healthy level of skepticism , figure out where to land in that model . And then , of course , you need to meet your budgets , and that's always the hardest pieces . Where do I get the new toys while still maintaining the old toys and driving my skills to get there and still be ?

Speaker 1 5:43

within budget . So we'll get to the pessimism soon . Let's get to the optimism first , right . So what are the new toys that we need to be thinking about ? What are right ? If I'm scaling out my operations and data and support systems for the applications that my organization are going to need to compete in this world , what do I got to do ? What's hot ?

Speaker 2 6:05

I think . So a few things I'm seeing from anywhere , from the fitness world through to even telecoms providers , is sensory devices . You know it's IoT plus , if you like . You want to be able to service your customer and give them better experience , but proactively , as opposed to just responsive to something . So I'll give you an example . You're a broadband customer 99 , almost all the time You're the one calling in saying oh , it's down , I can't . You know , I can't get back online .

Speaker 2 6:34

So imagine if you had broadband piece that has other connectivity and other sensors , that recognizes that there's an issue in the area , create some sort of ticket in , you know , encourages some sort of communication to you whether it's to your phone or some other method , depending on all the devices you have and resolves the problem for you in in a succinct manner , at a low cross point . You know that that kind of thing is great and then you can go to the more trendy stuff . You know your fitbit type of idea or you know , not trying to sell fit , but but you get what I'm saying . You know your fitness devices . You've got a lot of century pieces there now .

Speaker 2 7:08

Those are getting exponentially better where they're tending more to health rather than obsession of looking at oh , you know how many sleeps did I have , how many steps I took . It's actually looking at oh , what's your actual energy consumption ? What is your actionable impact on your body from a health perspective ? Those are all developing

Smart Sensors and Proactive Technology

Speaker 2 7:25

significantly Now . Those . You could then extend that into things like insurance . You can extend it into life cover , all of these sort of things . There could be drivers that will help you either get a discounted insurance or help you in a medical sense of balancing between getting a discounted insurance and having the right medical piece to cover you on both ends .

Speaker 1 7:50

That's an ever-expanding universe , in my opinion . What kinds of tools are good for capturing this ? I mean , and how does that connect with , say , a more kind of an industrial scenario where you've got tractors or you know other sensory data that isn't human , or maybe , maybe staff members that you're keeping track of , or stuff like that ?

Speaker 2 8:06

so I was just thinking in terms of , just say , take agriculture , if you like , especially extensive agriculture . You know you've got gigantic water systems , you've got all sorts of stuff there . That's dealing with agriculture . Now , if you imagine , if you have some sort of vision technology , that's there . It's monitoring the health of your crop . It's also determining whether it needs to be watered , at what time of the day , when does it need to be fed , you know when's best to harvest . And it's not to drive down the need for people , it's more to drive up the accuracy and predictability of your productivity , of your farm . And that's an example .

Speaker 2 8:44

I think that ultimately , people are just coming up with such smart ideas to address what sometimes might seem like trivial challenges , and I always weigh up the trade-off in my mind . I remember doing some work in the Middle East years ago and we were trying to sell an accounting package for argument's sake and the key stakeholder I was dealing with said to me well , I can hire 1,000 people for less than the accounting package and they'll do a better job from his opinion . So we ended up in quite . In fact we had a good dinner and debated that about accuracy and all the rest of it versus just feeding 1,000 people . And you know you've got to take it in balance .

Speaker 1 9:28

So let's get real , though . What are the tools that infrastructure , hybrid infrastructure , architects and operations and technologists are really interested in , that are forward-looking enough , that are allowing us to start preparing our data centers and our operational plans to support this environment ?

Speaker 2 9:47

So I think networking is at the heart of all connected devices and if you layer on top of that , you're looking at integration points . How do all these fancy tools integrate to whatever your brain portion of your technology is , where all the thinking gets done ? Where does all the reporting get done ? How do you manage resources , all those aspects ? So it could be CRM all the way through to ERP type systems . The interaction point is your integration point and there again the choices are large but the availability of different systems is fairly large . But the core piece of it is security , really data management compliances , you know , and those are ever-growing . Even the people aspect of it . You know who services these things . I mean , if you've got a whole lot of connected devices out in the sticks , how do you make sure that you've got a trained engineer that can actually travel out there when things go wrong ? I know it's not exactly tools , but there is such a plethora of those .

Speaker 1 10:54

Well , no , and it's actually just trying to , you know . I mean , I think we want to be able to figure

Integration Architecture for Connected Devices

Speaker 1 11:00

out . What should I ? How do I start getting ready for the world that's to come ? Because I think that we're so overwhelmed with voices saying , oh , you're not going to need , you know , it or technical people anymore .

Speaker 2 11:16

To me it looks like we're going to need twice as many , yeah .

Speaker 2 11:18

And if you want to be a strategist in mind and you want to think of short , medium , long term and you want to think of how do I create something now that will bring some benefit now , maybe a lot of benefit , depending on your model , but you know that it keeps the door open for future pieces and again , to me , an integration model in your architecture is really important , something that's got a future to it and you may start off . I would always say start off small , elegant , succinct if you like in certain things , but think big where you might go and don't be afraid to experiment . I mean , you know . So that's why you start with small things , so that you're not spending too much on it and you're guaranteed to fail a few times while you're learning and , you know , while your teams are coming up to it . But once you've got that down pat , you then start looking at well , actually , okay , I've got 10 use cases now because we've been experimenting and people have been thinking about it , people in the business have seen some value from that . These use cases start coming through and then that will help you position a budget that will help you get to probably a better tool .

Speaker 2 12:25

So you know you'd probably start with quite an open market type thing you know , apogee or some other api type tool , and then later on you might go well . Actually you know our skill set's grown so much we can actually create our own model for it , but something that's particular to our industry , which you then might actually market out to the industry ultimately . So there's that route . Or you could say I still want to stay in the generic world and just build those integration models in a clever way that just repeatedly uses the generic piece rather than going too specific . And that's also again horses for courses , and we've seen pros and cons to that , that mindset for years . Whether someone goes bespoke or the say generic and cause even staying generic , you might find the tool gets deprecated .

Speaker 1 13:15

It's not uncommon . What's here ? Okay ? So let's just kind of back up for a second . When you go into a client , right ? A client says , uh , I want you , matt , you're an amazing architect . What's your sort of 30 day ? You know , how do I get a handle on ? How do you get ? How do you get a handle on ? What are they doing ? Why are they doing it ? What they missing ? Where do they need to go ? Next , what's your personal method for infrastructure success , as it were ? Right

Building a Pragmatic Infrastructure Roadmap

Speaker 1 13:45

the recipe .

Speaker 2 13:47

I definitely start as far away from the technology as possible .

Speaker 2 13:50

I start with people Get to understand who are the stakeholders , who are the people involved , because it'll live or die on the people that are involved in any know any sort of program of work .

Speaker 2 14:01

Then understand the business strategy that they are trying to achieve , or whether they even have a business strategy that has a technical consideration , and then help work on that to find a , you know , to develop a roadmap that will both take into account the current skill sets , current people , current structures , and then a route to the future where they may want to go , and just showing some pragmatic value drops that you get as you go along the roadmap and you just got to remember . So , whatever roadmap you put in place , you know if they're looking at five or 10 year strategy , but they're an annual budget driven company that roadmap is going to pivot multiple times . So ensure that you're building value on that , that either they can expand on the value or you could pivot from that without ruining everything . And there's that experience and it might sound counterintuitive initially but it just makes sense . I've met a lot of people who wedded to their roadmap no matter what , even though everything's changing all the time and I think we've all seen those white elephants .

Speaker 1 15:10

So I guess the next question I have for you , the last question for this podcast , is what is AI going to do to infrastructure and especially , and maybe with a bent towards sustainability ? We just came from our sustainable architectures event and I I know you were there and even they're sick or fighting sickness , but what is AI gonna do to our infrastructures ?

Speaker 2 15:37

if I to put my my childhood hat on , if you like . So a

AI's Impact on Infrastructure Management

Speaker 2 15:40

put my childhood hat on , if you like . So a bit of imagination and a dream , if you like . I would love to see AI getting to a point where it's integrated with all abstraction that you have for infrastructure and it really handles your L1 , l2 considerations from an operational perspective , including forecasting and an expansion of resources if you need to , especially , you know , obviously , cloud lends itself well to that , but you would also be able to do it on-prem if you had the right kind of measures in place .

Speaker 2 16:11

That's where I'd love to see where it goes . I'd still think that even with that and you're not dealing with personal data or anything you would still need a bit of a human in the loop while that's learning . But I think that's a bridge somewhere between RPA , ml and AI . Everyone will call it the same thing , just from a marketing perspective . But you get where I'm going with that . I honestly think it will be more involved in the innovation of how technology goes , whether it's higher density , smarter way of doing storage , intelligent networks beyond just a software-defined level , intelligent threat management .

Speaker 2 16:46

I think these things will , and then I honestly hope that we'll see AI coming into FinOps so we get a much better cost control measure and better reporting than that , than just a few opinions that drive some architecture around it . I think it needs to get a bit more and and with time , with more data , you'll get better outputs , you know over time , and I think that will really help so I really appreciate you being on the show .

Speaker 1 17:15

For those of you that are interested in chatting with matt , matt is going to do a lot more than just show up on a couple of my podcasts , even much as I enjoy these talks . He's going to be joining us in this location . This is I will put that on your podcast and in the YouTube comments , et cetera . That is our mighty network for hybrid infrastructure , and we're going to be bringing speakers like Matt , a speaker and podcast events , roundtables and a whole bunch more . It's a free community . It is as hype free as we can get it , as you can tell , and Matt's going to be there . We're going to be doing some publications there , et cetera .

Speaker 1 18:05

So I really , really urge all of my listeners to go sign up on that location . Join us in the ISO architecture community . Help us change the world right , Matt . Thank you so much for joining us today . Uh , as always , I love talking to you . This has been great . I like doing these little tidbit sections and I know you were a bit nervous ahead of time so , yeah , just totally hit it out of the park .

Speaker 2 18:33

No problem , pleasure . Thank you , paul , all right .

Speaker 1 18:35

Looking forward to the next and the next podcast I will be launching uh , we , thank you , paul , all right everybody join me , and the next podcast I will be launching we will be talking about technical debt with a special guest . So join or click on my Buzzsprout lead for the argument or follow the channel on YouTube . Thanks so much , matt .

Speaker 2 18:59

Thank you , take care .