Cloud Dialogues

For part 2 of our 2025 IWD series We chatted to Natalie Badawy from Circuit Recruitment about how to attract, retain, and empower more women in tech!

🎯 From Neurophysiology to Tech Recruitment: Natalie shares her inspiring career switch and how her background in human sciences shaped her approach to helping people break into tech. 
🤝 Creating Inclusive Cloud Cultures: We explore practical strategies for supporting women in tech, from running internal bias workshops to ensuring interview panels reflect diverse backgrounds. 
👩‍💻 Her Tech Circle: Learn how this fantastic DE&I organization is empowering women in tech careers. 
🌍 The Business Case for Diversity: We discuss how token efforts can backfire, while meaningful change improves retention, innovation, and business outcomes. 
💬 Male Allies in Tech: How men can better support women in the workplace — even if they don’t always know where to start. 
📈 Flexibility & Return to Office (RTO): The episode dives into how workplace flexibility is vital for creating inclusive environments, particularly for caregivers. We discuss how rigid RTO mandates can disproportionately impact diverse employees and why trust-based flexibility leads to better outcomes for everyone.

It’s an episode full of practical advice, real-world insights, and thought-provoking discussion. Don’t miss it!
📲 Join the conversation about creating meaningful change in tech.

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To kick off our 2025 International Women’s Day series, Georgia and Matt sat down with Yasmin Benjamin, Head of Cloud and Finance, for an incredible conversation about navigating leadership, staying technical, and thriving as a woman in cloud.

🚀 Cloud & AI News Highlights

We covered some of the week’s biggest cloud and tech stories, including:

🔬 Quantum Race Heats Up – Google, Microsoft & AWS all making quantum moves (but don’t expect breakthroughs just yet).

📞 Skype & Amazon Chime Say Goodbye – Both platforms heading for retirement. Georgia reminisces about Chime.

🚀 Satellite Showdown– China’s “Space Sale” takes on Starlink, while Australia's National Broadband Network picks Amazon over Musk.

📱 iPhone Encryption Shakeup – UK pressures Apple to soften its backup encryption.

💬 Signal Stands Its Ground – May leave Sweden to protect message security.

💡 In the Spotlight: Yasmin Benjamin

Yasmin’s career is a masterclass in blending deep technical expertise with bold leadership.

With a background spanning systems engineering, AI & robotics, and even a current PhD in quantum computing (!), she’s proof you don’t have to choose between tech and leadership — you can own both.

Key Themes We Covered:

👩‍💻 From Engineer to Leader – How Yasmin stayed hands-on even as she moved up the ranks.

👶 Balancing Motherhood & Career – Keeping technical skills sharp during career breaks.

👩‍🚀 The Power of Community – Building networks to avoid feeling isolated as a senior woman in tech.

✨ Authentic Leadership – Why being yourself beats fitting the mould every time.

💰 The Reality of Cloud in Financial Services - If you thought banking was all cutting-edge tech — think again.

Yasmin gave us a behind-the-scenes look at where financial services really are:

🎶 Legacy Lives On – Yep, some banks are still running on systems from the disco era.

☁️ Hybrid Cloud is the Default – Most are juggling on-prem with Azure & AWS.

🤖 AI in Banking – Right now, it’s all about smarter chatbots & faster data processing (with RAG models ensuring accuracy).

📊 Data is (Still) Hard – Especially when compliance, structured & unstructured data all collide.

💬 Yasmin’s Advice for Women in Tech

🔧 Stay Technical – Don’t lose your hands-on skills, even in leadership roles.

🤝 Find Your People – Mentors, sponsors & allies make all the difference.

👨‍💼 Bring the Guys Along – Male allyship is critical to driving real change.

🌱 Pace Yourself – Careers are marathons, not sprints — focus on learning, not rushing to the top.

Bonus gem: Yasmin wrapped up by sharing her creative side — she wrote an e-book called "How The Two Worlds Collide”, blending her love of Star Trek & Star Wars. Tech leaders who write sci-fi? We’re here for it.

You can find it here: https://tayloryasmin.gumroad.com/l/eyqci

In this episode, we go beyond the tech and dive into what really makes cloud transformation work: people, culture, and leadership. It’s not just about moving workloads—it’s about shifting mindsets!

🔥 Here’s what we unpacked:

💧 AI & Industry Trends – From the impact of AI data centers on the UK’s water supply to shifting DEI commitments and ongoing tech layoffs, we break down what’s shaping the industry.

👥 Culture is the Real Challenge – Cloud isn’t just a tech upgrade, it’s a people-first transformation. Upskilling your current teams, fostering innovation, and finding internal champions is the real game-changer.

💰 Cloud Costs & FinOps – Spoiler: Estimating cloud costs upfront is tricky! We talk about bridging the IT-finance gap, avoiding hidden licensing costs, and why FinOps is a team sport.

🔄 Managing Change (Without the Drama!) – Pilot projects, gradual adoption, and bringing people along rather than pushing them away—we cover strategies for making change stick.

🧠 Talent Trends in 2025 – The on-prem vs. cloud skills gap is growing, and companies need flexible work policies and smart upskilling to stay ahead.

🤖 AI in the Cloud – AI is powerful, but do you really need to build your own models? We discuss data management, AI biases, and why human oversight still matters.

🚀 Bottom line: Successful cloud transformation isn’t just about technology—it’s about creating a culture that embraces learning, adaptability, and collaboration.

🎧 Listen now and tell us: What’s been your biggest challenge with cloud culture? Drop it in the comments! 👇

#CloudDialogues #CloudTransformation #CloudCulture #Leadership #CloudStrategy #FinOps #AI #CloudOps

Episode Overview

Kicking off 2025 with a 3 part series focussed on helping the executives and the C suite make impactful business decisions with technology. 

For episode 1, we sit down with Jez Back, Cloud Economist & Finops Professional at Capgemini, to tackle one of the biggest boardroom conversations—cloud economics and strategy.

With cloud costs rising, CFOs stepping into tech decisions, and efficiency becoming a top priority, we break down what really matters in 2025: cutting waste, maximizing value, and making smarter cloud investments.

What’s Inside?

💡 Cloud Headlines You Need to Know

• The Chinese AI model, DeepSeek, that’s making waves with lower training costs
• Oracle’s big multicloud play—what it means for vendor lock-in
• Meta’s renewable energy push for data centers and what it means for sustainability

💰 Cloud Economics & CFOs: What’s Changing?

• Cost vs. Value: Why slashing budgets isn’t always the smartest move
• CapEx vs. OpEx: The accounting shift that’s reshaping IT spending
• SaaS Spend Gone Wild: 49% of licenses go unused, and 70% of contracts are managed outside IT—what’s going wrong?

🌱 Cloud & Sustainability—Are We Actually Going Green?

• GreenOps vs. FinOps: Where efficiency meets ESG goals
• The hidden environmental costs of cloud—water use, energy, and ‘net zero’ debates
• Balancing sustainability with business realities

Key Takeaways

✔️ Tech decisions need transparency and predictability, not just cost-cutting
✔️ The best cloud strategies are measured by business value, not just technical KPIs
✔️ Sustainability matters, but cost efficiency still drives decisions
✔️ Cloud repatriation? Hype vs. reality—here’s what’s really happening

💭 Final Thought:
Cloud economics isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about making the right investments, proving value, and staying ahead of the curve.

🎧 Tune in to Cloud Dialogues Episode 1 of 2025 and get the insights you need to lead cloud transformation this year! 🚀

In this episode of Cloud Dialogues, Matt & Georgia dive into the big reveals and emerging trends from AWS re:Invent 2024. With over 72,000 attendees and an action-packed week in Las Vegas, this year's conference showcased a mix of cutting-edge announcements, practical innovations, and a few surprises.

If you missed the event—or just want the TL;DR—this episode has you covered! What’s New at re:Invent?

Conference Highlights

- A record-breaking 72,000 registrations, with a strong in-person turnout in Las Vegas.

- Expanded session formats, including breakout sessions, chalk talks, hands-on workshops, and a fresh addition: PeerTalk meetups for networking and knowledge sharing.

Big AWS Announcements

1. Apple + AWS: A Powerful Partnership

- Apple revealed it relies on AWS Compute for machine learning and AI applications (dubbed Apple Intelligence).

- By leveraging AWS Graviton processors, Apple achieved a 40% efficiency boost.

- Apple now operates across 10 AWS regions using Graviton-powered instances.

2. Smarter AI

- Practical AI was the name of the game this year:

- Bedrock Guardrails: Automated reasoning checks to reduce AI hallucinations.

- Intelligent Prompt Routing: Dynamically directs prompts to the best AI model in the same family for the task.

3. Enterprise Enhancements

- Declarative Policies: Simplified policy management across AWS environments.

- Elastic VMware Service: Streamlines migrations from traditional VMware setups.

- Amazon Q Developer: Packed with enterprise-friendly features like:

- Automatic COBOL-to-modern-language code conversion.

- Automated testing for smoother development.

- Tools for investigating operational issues.

4. Data and Database Innovations

- SageMaker Lakehouse: A unified hub for centralizing and managing data.

- Aurora DSQL: A groundbreaking serverless, multi-region, Postgres-compatible database.

Key Observations

The hosts highlighted a noticeable shift from last year’s “AI everything” approach to more practical, value-driven AI solutions. The focus now is on delivering tools that make a tangible difference, and the hosts predict 2025 will bring realistic AI deployments as companies fine-tune their data and AI strategies.

Looking Ahead

The episode wraps with a teaser for the next recording in London, January 2025, and a call for listener input: who should be the next guest on Cloud Dialogues? Tell us in the comments!

In this exciting episode of Cloud Dialogues, Matt & Georgia sit down with Boris Tane—formerly of Baselime and now with Cloudflare — to dive deep into the latest in observability for cloud computing.

Boris shares insights from his unique journey and discusses the challenges, requirements, and innovations shaping observability today. Boris combines technical expertise with a fresh perspective on observability. With a Master’s in Aerospace Dynamics and a background in predicting drone behavior, he’s tackled the complexities of data processing for unpredictable scenarios. His passion for analytics led him to a career in observability, where he now helps organizations unlock the potential of real-time data.

What we Covered

From Monitoring to Modern Observability

- Traditional Monitoring: Built around dashboards that forecast issues or document past events.

- Modern Observability: Emphasizes understanding application behavior live, without code changes, and goes beyond the classic "three pillars" (logs, metrics, traces) to focus on high-quality data and efficient query engines.

Core Requirements for Effective Observability

1. High Cardinality: The ability to handle limitless unique values per field.

2. High Dimensionality: The capacity to track hundreds of attributes per event—like user ID, location, headers, and more.

Tackling Common Obstacles

- Over-reliance on Dashboards: Many teams are caught up in dashboards instead of implementing true observability.

- Transition Hurdles: Moving from traditional logging to advanced observability can be tough.

- Developer Experience: A seamless experience is crucial for adoption and successful implementation.

Memorable Quotes

“Observability without action is just storage. If you’re not actively using logs, metrics, and traces, you’re simply paying for storage.”

“The quality of your observability is only as good as the quality of data your application produces.”

Key Takeaways

1. Observability goes beyond debugging—it's about empowering teams to create better products.

2. Cloud providers are starting to integrate observability as a core platform feature.

3. Effective observability requires strong team ownership and a culture that values data-driven decisions.

4. A gradual, user-friendly transition to modern observability is essential—no need for complete application overhauls.

Industry Trends

- Cloud Maturity Levels: Different cloud providers vary widely in their observability capabilities.

- Built-In Observability: Newer platforms like Cloudflare are incorporating high cardinality and high dimensionality into their infrastructure.

- OpenTelemetry Standards: OpenTelemetry is emerging as a standard, but it still needs to be complemented with application-specific insights.

Business Impact

- Faster Problem Resolution: Enhanced observability enables teams to solve issues more efficiently.

- Product Insights for Managers: Observability data can help track feature usage and user experience.

- Informed Decision-Making: Teams with comprehensive data access make smarter choices.

Final Thoughts

This episode highlights that while the right tools are critical, the heart of effective observability lies in producing high-quality data and empowering teams to act on it. Organizations that foster a culture of observability and improve data quality over time will see a true business impact from their observability practices.

In this exciting episode of Cloud Dialogues, we are joined by Liz Fong-Jones, Field CTO at Honeycomb and former Google SRE, to explore the fascinating world of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)—a game-changer for scaling and automating large systems.

What We Covered:

1. Meet Liz Fong-Jones: Liz brings over a decade of SRE experience from her time at Google and Honeycomb, helping companies revolutionize how they manage reliability and automation.

2. The Origin Story: SRE actually predates the cloud! Born at Google in the early 2000s, SRE started as a way to automate manual system administration tasks and has since evolved into its own discipline, running parallel to DevOps.

3. SRE at Its Core:
   - Minimize repetitive work (aka "toil") by automating everything you can.
   - Use Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs) to measure and maintain reliability.

4. Different SRE Models: There are different ways to implement SRE:
   - Tools-based within platform teams
   - Consultative SREs parachuting in to help teams
   - Embedded SREs integrated within every team

5. The SRE Mindset: Curiosity and empathy are essential for SREs. Teams need a culture of psychological safety where concerns can be raised without fear.

6. The Magic of SLOs and SLIs: SLOs set reliability targets (like aiming for 99.5% uptime), while SLIs measure performance against those targets. Together, they ensure your systems are running smoothly.

7. FinOps Meets SRE: Liz explains how SREs can help balance reliability, performance, and costs using SLOs to allocate resources more efficiently.

8. Disaster Testing: Want proof SREs are ready for anything? Honeycomb regularly tests its disaster recovery by taking down an entire availability zone—on purpose!

9. Pro Tips for Executives: Thinking about implementing SRE at your company? Liz suggests starting with your biggest challenges, offering executive support, and setting clear, achievable SLOs.

10. Why Observability Matters: Observability is the backbone of SRE. Having real-time, actionable data is key for setting and managing effective SLOs.

Plus, Liz gives covers off on her favorite ARM processors (for cost and environmental savings) and shares insights from her book Observability Engineering.

This episode is a deep dive into SRE, filled with actionable insights and strategies for leaders looking to supercharge their reliability game. You won’t want to miss it!

In this episode of Cloud Dialogues, Matt & Georgia dive deep into the world of data strategy with Allison Howells, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience across industries like financial services, insurance, and consulting.

Exploring the evolution of data platforms and the strategic decisions that help organizations harness the power of their data. 

Here are some of the key topics the team breaks down:

1. Data Platforms: Then & Now – How data platforms have transformed over the past 10-15 years.
2. Aligning Data with Business – Why syncing your data strategy with your business goals is a game-changer.
3. Centralized vs. Decentralized Platforms – The pros and cons of each approach.
4. Data Governance & Quality – Why these are the cornerstones for driving successful AI and machine learning projects.
5. Data Context & Origin – The critical role of understanding where your data comes from and how it’s used.
6. Cultural Impact of Decentralized Platforms – How decentralization can foster innovation and shift organizational mindsets.

Top Takeaways:
- Data Strategy = Business Strategy: A successful data strategy is always grounded in solving real business problems.
- Decentralized Data Platforms: These can enhance accountability, fuel innovation, and empower teams through data democratization.
- Data Context is Key: Knowing the "where" and "why" behind your data ensures it’s used effectively.
- Governance & Quality Matter: No matter your data platform, strong governance and data quality are essential.
- Data Literacy is a Must: Every department needs to level up their data skills to thrive in today’s data-driven world.

Curious about how to get your data initiatives off the ground and deliver business value from day one? 

Allison shares actionable steps for executives to build a winning data strategy that drives results. To get the full executive playbook, tune in to the episode!