Hi I'm Oliver. I talk about Innovation, Technology, Sustainable Technology and Enterprise Architecture
Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by colleagues David Rees, Hélène Sauvé, Ivan Mladjenovic and Emma Pearce. Together, we delve into the practical applications and limitations of agentic AI and its implications for enterprise AI deployments.
Sustainability
Oliver's reflections on the Sustainable AI and Data Centres type content at Data Centre World London March 2025.
Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by colleagues Jess McEvoy and James Heward, and Atom Bank's Head of AI and Data Science, Russell Collingham, to explore the transformative impact of generative AI and the critical role of architecture in ensuring sustainable and scalable implementations.
Artificial Intelligence
AI doesn't have to be brute forced requiring massive data centres. Europe isn't necessarily behind in AI arms race. In fact, the UK and Europe's constraints and focus on more than just economic return and speculation might well lead to more sustainable approaches.
This article is a follow on to Will Generative AI Implode and Become More Sustainable? from July 2024. It's purpose is to challenge some of the narratives that the big tech players are pushing out
Podcast
In this episode of Beyond the Hype, I'm joined by Bradon Rogers from Island, along with Scott Logic colleagues Dean Kerr and Robat Williams, to explore the potential of enterprise browsers to simplify security and enhance user productivity.
Podcast
In this episode, I’m joined by Technology Lead Andrew Carr and CTO Colin Eberhardt to delve into the evolving nature of technology strategies within organisations.
Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined for a discussion on observability by Scott Rowan, Senior Developer at Scott Logic, and Daniel Gomez Blanco, Principal Engineer at Skyscanner. Our conversation explores what observability means in modern distributed software architectures, how it differs from traditional monitoring, and the challenges of implementing observability at scale.
Artificial Intelligence
Generative AI has a Sustainability problem – across environment, cost and continuing to meet expectations. Many companies are racing to implement GenAI in their projects, lured by its hyped potential to revolutionise industries. However, in applying GenAI to enterprise implementations, I am seeing first-hand the sustainability challenges threatening to implode the first generation of this technology. This blog talks about what I hope will rise from the ashes of such an implosion.
Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by Doro Hinrichs and Kira Clark from Scott Logic and Peter Gostev, Head of AI at Moonpig. Together, we explore whether we can ever really trust and secure Generative AI – and what impact this will have on product and service design – before offering pragmatic advice on what organisations can do to navigate this terrain.
Podcast
In this episode, Oliver Cronk and David Rees from Scott Logic are joined by Hannah Smith, Director of Operations at Green Web Foundation, to explore the potential benefits and limitations of ‘carbon aware’ computing. With global emissions from cloud computing exceeding those from commercial flights, is 'carbon aware' a distraction from getting to grips with the scale of the challenge we face?
Podcast
In this episode, Oliver Cronk, Andrew Carr and David Hope talk about the ever-changing world of data, with conversations moving from data warehouse to data lake, and data mesh to data fabric. They discuss the importance of data ownership and common tooling, and their view that data mesh is an approach rather than an architecture.
Sustainability
In the era of increasing environmental awareness, many organisations are eager to showcase their commitment to sustainability. However, not all claims of "green" or "eco-friendly" technology are accurate or substantiated. As an executive, it is becoming increasingly important to distinguish between genuine sustainability efforts and greenwashing -- the practice of making misleading or unsubstantiated claims about the environmental benefits of a product or service. This blog introduces approaches that can help you cut through the noise and make informed decisions about your organisation's technology sustainability.
Sustainability
Notes on the recent Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) summit at the Science Museum in London. This event brought together 200 people from government departments, 30 delivery partners and academia. This blog is a summary of some of what Oliver considered to be the key points covered on the day.
Podcast
In this episode, Oliver Cronk is joined by experts including Jeremy Axe, Group CTO at DS Smith, and consultants Darren Smith and Katie Davis from Scott Logic. Together, they unpack topics like the energy usage and carbon emissions of IT infrastructure, the challenges in accurately measuring sustainability, and whether claims of ‘green tech’ are substantiated or just hype.
Sustainability
We're excited to announce a proposed standard for assessing technology-related carbon emissions – an approach to classifying an organisation's technology footprint in a way that enables consistent analysis and benchmarking of the carbon impact, aligned with the GHG protocol.
Sustainability
If you do one thing to optimise cloud carbon footprint start with your choice of region. Consider the balance between cost, environmental, security and performance considerations when it comes to choosing a cloud region consciously.
Sustainability
Part of the Conscientious Computing series this blog talks about the emerging ecosystem of organisations that are promoting sustainability within software development, cloud computing, infrastructure, and digital services.
Sustainability
The tech industry has driven incredibly rapid innovation by taking advantage of increasingly cheap and more powerful computing – but at what unintended cost? What collateral damage has been created in our era of "move fast and break things"? Sadly, it's now becoming apparent we have overlooked the broader impacts of our technological solutions. This blog is the start of a new series that explores what we can do as technologists to consider and reduce the impact of the tech we create.
Sustainability
A write up of some of the bold thinking that came out of the INTERSECTION x23 conference in September. Do we need to go beyond sustainability and consider a regenerative future when it comes to technology architecture?
Podcast
In this episode, Oliver and Peter from Scott Logic are joined by Laura Bell Main, CEO and co-founder of SafeStack, for a lively discussion on DevSecOps. They touch on techniques such as “assume breach” and “shift left”, and the relationship to DevOps, which is trying to solve a similar problem.
Artificial Intelligence
This post offers a proposed architecture for mitigating the risks of deploying Generative AI technologies in complex enterprises, particularly when used in highly regulated environments such as Financial Services. As well as the proposed architecture, I provide a primer on the business risks of Enterprise GenAI along with the technology risks and challenges.
Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Chris Price and James Heward for a lively debate on whether the latest advances in generative AI are going to threaten our jobs – are we going to be made redundant by our own creation?
Podcast
In this episode – the second of a two-parter – we talk to Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt, about the growing threat that Quantum Computers will ultimately render our current cryptographic techniques useless – an event dubbed ‘Y2Q’, in a nod to the Y2K issue we faced over twenty years ago.
Podcast
In this episode, we talk about Quantum Computing with Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt. As well as discussing quantum physics, we cover the practical aspects of cloud-based Quantum Computers and what can be achieved today through circuit design. Finally, we look to the future to discuss the impact this breakthrough technology is likely to have.
Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by my colleague, Oliver Cronk, and Chris Booth from NatWest for a lively discussion about the much-hyped ChatGPT – covering its origins and recent advances, the new discipline of prompt engineering, and some practical applications and limitations of this technology.
Podcast
In this episode, I’m joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Peter Chamberlin and Chris Price for a lively discussion about blockchain, including the mechanics of bitcoin, the proof of work consensus, and technologies which are blockchain-like, but prefer not to use that term. Finally, we ask ourselves the question, is blockchain just hype?
Tech
EDGY is a new graphical design language for visualising enterprises. This new open source design language shows great promise as a tool to bridge across siloed teams. This post explores the preview edition at a high level.
Podcast
In this episode Colin, Ollie, Johanna and Lily hold a lively conversation that dives into Web3 and the Metaverse. We ask the question “what is Web3.0”, and explore what it means to be a decentralised technology. We discuss the Metaverse, Roblox and other virtual environments, and very briefly touch on NFTs. But for the most part, we talk about exploration and innovation.