Hello , welcome to Microsoft Community Insight Podcast . We will share insights and stories from community experts to stay up to date with Azure . My name is Nicholas and I'll be your host today In this podcast . We will dive into Cloud Journey . But before we get started , I remind you to subscribe to our podcast on social media so you never miss an episode .
So it will help us to reach more amazing people like yourself . So in this podcast I have a special guest called Martin O'Neill from Canis , so would you like to introduce yourself please ?
Hi Nick . Thanks very much for having me today . No worries , I'm Marty O'Neill . I'm a principal architect and also the Microsoft Tech Lead here in Kainos .
That's brilliant . Could you please share your journey into tech industry and how you've become where you are at Kainos Sure ?
So I wasn't sure how far back you wanted to go , but I'll go right back to uni . So back in 1998 , I started a degree in De Montfort . My degree was actually in media technology . Whenever I finished my degree a lot of my friends were still on placement . I'm sorry they'd done a placement year so they were coming back for another year .
So I stayed on at university and did a master's in IT . After I finished university I came back to Northern Ireland it's safe to say that Northern Ireland . At the time there wasn't a lot of jobs in the IT industry , so I started my own company . Northern Ireland at the time there wasn't a lot of jobs in the IT industry , so I started my own company .
It's safe to say I was not a businessman , but it was probably the most funny Whenever you work for yourself and I guess when you're so young as I was I just took it as an opportunity to do everything I could and learn as much as I could .
So one minute I was making websites for people , the next minute I was fitting CD rewriters or building computers , and I just used it as a great way to get loads of experience in loads of different areas . What that helped with then is whenever I started interviewing for roles .
So say , I wasn't a successful businessman but I got a load of experience that I wouldn't have had .
So after that I joined the local college in Belfast as the assistant web development officer Would make websites it was mainly a classic ASP SQL server and then , looking after our virtual learning environment Post that I became our software development officer and I guess back in 2006 , this could be seen as an early DevOps role .
I guess I was doing a lot of base uh batch scripting . Um , the the main role I guess I had at the start . There was we , if you think , a college with like 50 000 students enrolling and I created the system to automate the creation of their their it accounts , to let them put in their own password and register in that .
After that in the college I moved to be the web development officer and that was the first time I guess I started leading the team . We had a team of four people and I was responsible for the website . I was also responsible for the VLE environment and all the sort of good fun things that came along with that Around .
That time SharePoint started becoming quite a key technology .
Oh yeah , I guess you started where there were floppy disks and Windows XP .
No , well , yeah there was definitely floppy disks and Windows XP . No well , yeah , there was definitely floppy disks and Windows XP . When I was at uni , we used to have to burn CDs and if you it was like one speed and if you touched a computer or a keyboard at all it corrupted the disk . So yeah , I guess I've had a lot of changes since I started out .
I was doing a lot of SharePoint at the time and I had this idea that I would go back out on my own . I would become a SharePoint consultant and I Googled SharePoint consultancy Belfast and a role at Kainos came up . As soon as I seen it it was like , yeah , maybe give this a go . So , 2009, . I joined Kainos as a SharePoint consultant .
I think I did SharePoint for maybe a year . Then I moved into our internal systems team . I've always done a lot of , I guess , sql Server and IIS and NET , the majority of time , I guess . Back then , as DevOps was coming into being a thing , it was more open source , so it was Linux and Puppet .
I , unfortunately , was one of the poor people trying to do WinOps , as we called it , so it was operations for Windows , so it was a lot of Okay . I , unfortunately , was one of the poor people trying to do win-ups , as we called it .
So it was operations for Windows , so it was a lot of PowerShell desired state , so the likes of Jeffrey Snover would be a hero . You know , with the PowerShell business and you know , early days , teamcity Around about 2014 , I found myself at a wee bit of a lull in terms of work and I emailed my boss and said what do you think I should be doing ?
And he said well , there's either a policy document to write or you can look at Azure . Azure had been talked about . You know , some people had Visual Studio accounts , but we never seriously looked at it . So , 2014, .
I started my Azure journey and I guess from there I became a technical architect , solution architect , then principal architect , and I've watched our Azure community in Kainos go from myself and one or two others to there's now like four or five hundred people working on Azure , working on Microsoft Power Platform , and yeah , so it's been , I guess , quite the journey .
Okay , so speeding up to the current phrase , what specific technology or platform do you specify ? Is it just microsoft and your microsoft technology overall in your role ?
yeah , so let's say early days . I guess I've always had this anger in like sql server . It was sql 2000 , mcp , so anyone who's been around long enough will know that that's . That's quite old now . Um , I wouldn't say I'm a specialist in anything anymore . So I now lead our microsoft community in kinos . So I would say I'm more of a generalist .
Um , yeah , I in my career in kinos I've been very lucky in that , you know , I've architected data platforms , I've architected iot , I've architected IoT platforms , was here for early days of PaaS and moving away from IIS servers to Azure web apps and then recently , in the last year , getting involved with a lot of the open AI and a lot of the AI solutions .
I'm definitely a Microsoft person . I wouldn't say I specialize anymore . I guess it's one of the fun things as you move up in your career is moving away from being a specialist in anything . I'm now lucky that the likes of yourself , nick , are one of the specialists in Kainos .
Kainos is quite a privileged position to have a load of specialists who work with me and that I can guide and tap into knowledge of . So it's all good fun .
Okay , brilliant . So , given the fast movement of cloud , where the fast pace of cloud industry , what trend do you see that shape the platform ?
engineer like ourself , cool , so I guess about seven or eight years ago . Uh , as a senior group of platform people in kainost yeah , cloud was just starting to emerge right , and we had this conversation around well , do we need to reskill people Because cloud's going to replace everything ?
We're not going to need any , we're not going to need platform people anymore . And , as I say , we've went from 20 to 30 people to like 200 people doing platform engineering in cloud and I see that I think we're still going in that trajectory . I think platform engineering will still be very important for the next five to 10 years .
The likes of Daven and a lot of the automated and AI tools are getting a lot of . Yeah , they're going to replace everybody , but I guess tools like that have been around for a long time . If I wanted to create a website template , I could have done that 10 , 15 , 20 years ago .
Where platform engineering and the roles we do really come into place is once it starts getting complex and you start bringing loads of different systems together , which we do . That's where you still need platform engineers and I think , if anything , it's probably a growing space .
Even you know , we see a lot in our data and AI work and even our power platform work . A lot of people still need those platform skills . They still need to understand how you do Entra , how you do permissions , how you do networking , how you do security .
And I guess , as cloud has made things easier , it almost hasn't , because 20 years ago people like myself had a choice between you can either use SQL or Oracle . Now you have a choice between Cosmos , sql , postgres . Do you use Aurora ? You know there's so much choice .
And platform engineering , I think , will move , I guess , more from spending all day doing Terraform or PowerShell . I think we're approaching the stage where that part of platform engineering will be accelerated with AI , with Alexa getting a co-pilot in it , but it will certainly not be replaced .
And if I was going into platform engineering now , I would learn my core skills . I would learn as many things as possible . You know , look in the data app space , look in machine learning , look at AI , and I'd also build some soft consultancy type skills , because the core platform skills I think are still going to be core for a long time yet .
Okay , brilliant .
Speaking of your current role at KNEOS , can you tell us more about your amazing project that you've worked on during your time at Kainos ? One or two , one or two .
I guess , to put it in context , I've probably been on about 100 delivery projects and maybe 200 to 300 pre-sales projects since I've been in Kainos the work Kainos does I guess we're largely known for a UK public sector and that can be government services or health services in the UK .
Some of the big projects I guess we've done are NHS App , a lot of the Brexit programs for Defra I'm lucky .
I guess they've been on , as I say , iot projects and cloud migrations and I'm funny , I've never done any of the big headline projects that Kain also might be famous for , but I would have done a lot of the , I guess , early days of Azure , you know , building initial platforms , a lot of the cloud migrations stuff like Welsh Revenue Authority .
Whenever they came into existence they said we don't want any on-premise infrastructure at all . So there's been , I guess , a lot of good projects knapping around Nowadays . I guess my role I oversee projects , so there's maybe four or five projects at the moment that I would dip into and help rather than be full-time delivery .
Okay , that makes sense . So , as where you're at in your position at Kenyus , in your opinion , how does the company itself adapt to the evolving technology and stay up to date with the cutting-edge technology in the cloud ?
Sure , it's a really interesting one , this . So I guess what we do in the Microsoft space is that we have what's called tech exploration , and it's a bit of a process of working out the services that we provide at the minute .
Working out the services that we provide at the minute , working out the services that we could provide and feeding in the new areas that Microsoft release all the time . And one of the , I guess , key things is around keeping fresh with fresh skills . So in the last year we've seen a lot of open AI , a lot of open AI training .
So we've done hackathons , we've done internal presentations and we've , I guess , put a lot of people through training and certification . It's a funny one , the exploration space , because you often have to hedge your bets on what we look at compared to what the market's buying or what helps deliver customer outcomes .
In Kemos we ground everything in customer outcomes and what's the best way to get there . So there's often quite a lot of debates about do we use web apps or do we use AKS , and I guess a lot of the exploration is around you know which area do we focus on ?
And once we've decided on areas to focus on , it's then giving people the space , know the space to , to develop their skills and their support and the framework . Um , what's then ? People like me come up with offerings and try to help our sales people . Uh , you know , bring it to customers , um , because , if you're looking at .
The problem is if you're looking at technology just to look at technology without thinking about the customer . In the end you just have a whole load of technology and that's not good for the people that have looked at the technology or for the company .
Yeah , that's true and , plus , that's one of the ways you can encourage continuous learning and development within the whole team or colleagues as well .
The big thing about cloud , whether it's azure and microsoft , or whether it's azure aws , tcp , it never stops . You know there's never a . Yeah , you know the idea of and I think this is one of the most interesting things about platforms we've .
I've been on like a continuous journey of learning for the last 24 years , um , and I think that's platforms have a big responsibility to make sure that they are um keeping up with skills . So the idea of I have a certain skill set . This is what I know , though it's very hard for someone I guess I would think in their career to take that mindset .
You have to be continuously growing , have to be continuously challenging yourself and trying new things . Yeah , it's vitally important new things .
Yeah , it's vitally important . So to stay continuous learning . What resources would you recommend for beginners to stay ahead in the field ? So this could be anything like doing stuff with Apprentice . It could be like Microsoft Learn .
I guess it's safe to say it's a long time since I've been in a practice , but it's funny . I actually have been on a project recently , in the last 6-12 months , where I had to learn about a GCP and yeah , I think the challenge now is there's so much learning available . Whenever I was starting with Azure , it was all pretty much experimentation .
You may have got a book released , but there wasn't Microsoft Learn , there wasn't the wealth of blogs , wasn't the wealth of blogs . I think , starting now , you know John Saville is probably who I point people to whenever they're asking about fundamentals , but I'm probably not the right person to ask Nick about how to start Cloud Journey .
Maybe if it was a medium , the longer level , yeah , yeah , there's a lot of . You know , I guess develop in your career . There's a lot of stuff like on-chair architects , a lot of great youtube channels that would very , very highly recommend yeah , that's pretty close .
Uh , let me . I wanted to point out that we do offer K-Notes , we do offer , like , license for Echo Glitter if you want to stay up to date with some , like some , videos as well . So just want to point that out . So how do you ?
just just on . Just on the the best way to get up to speed with anything is to get up to speed with anything is to get an Azure account or a GCP account or an AWS account and have a play . The big thing is , if you get your own account , you can't break anything .
The barrier .
I always say this the barrier to entry is so low . Now , whenever I started in IT , if you wanted to be an Oracle specialist , you had to have somebody buy a big Oracle rack . And you wanted to be an Oracle specialist , you had to have somebody buy a big Oracle rack and you had to be lucky enough to get on a project .
Literally , now , anyone can pick up an Azure account and learn anything .
Yeah . There's people that are doing personal projects and then get a job .
Yeah , quite much so . It's probably one of the best times for being able to just self-learn and grow a career . Yeah , but certainly whenever I started , it really wasn't the case . You know , you had laptops . I didn't even have a laptop . You had a PC that you couldn't run VMs on . There wasn't even VMs , you know .
So you had to have dedicated resources , whereas now you know it's all , pay as you go , it's all at your fingertips . You know the opportunities are endless . The challenge I think now is picking what to start with or what to specialize in , because there is such a wide choice .
Yeah , is such a wide choice ? Yeah , so in your experience , how do you stay up to date with these changes , evolving changes ?
Sure , so I still fire up Azure and deploy resources For me . That's the best way for me to learn Microsoft Learn is great , but I'm not one I can't read a lot . If I read a lot , I lose interest or my mind gets distracted , or I just open another browser and start playing with the actual thing .
On Azure , staying curious and having a play with stuff is probably the most important thing . I would say . If you have loads of paper knowledge , it's great , it'll get you exams and that , but building stuff , seeing it break and seeing real problems for me trumps everything .
That's , I guess , how I would recommend staying up to date with things yeah , brilliant , keep practising until you get perfect and stuff if you don't have the skills and experience , get yourself . You know fairly quickly that's great .
So , just for , we're wrapping up this episode , so we just want to know we're always interested to know the guests themselves . So are you looking forward to any Microsoft events in the cloud , whether it's partners or Ignite ?
Yeah , I like watching your adventures . Like you have to say Thank you , I can't travel around as much . I like watching your adventures , nick . You have to say thank you . I can't travel around as much through family commitments .
Watching you at the MVP summit I was very , very envious of I like the big events , I like Build , I like Ignite , as I say , for me there's so much now on YouTube as well , the microsoft channel's john salwell , and that that there's so much great stuff out there .
Um , there's another great , uh , I guess , podcast for people in the it industry run by ben pierce uh , tech , tech world , human skills . I highly recommend that as well .
He had he had sc , had Scott Hanselman on a couple of weeks ago and he always has industry experts and they're really good podcasts to help you think about different areas of career as you're working .
That's brilliant . So just one last thing before we wrap up . So how can people get in touch with yourself ? If you want any quick questions , sure .
Email is probably the easiest . Martino , at Kainoscom , I would say . You can find me on Twitter at Martino80 , and I'm on LinkedIn as well . I've never consistently blogged or been in the socials , so a lot of it is just pictures of me playing with the kids or growing peas .
But yeah , if people want to reach out , I'm sure you can point them in my direction as well . Nick .
Okay , brilliant . Thanks for joining me .