May 20, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of digital transformation and cloud-native architecture with Madoc Batters, Head of Cloud, Network and IT Security at Warner Hotels. Madoc shares his remarkable journey from washing 100 cars at age 11 to buy his first ZX81 computer to leading enterprise-scale cloud migrations. We explore the challenges of organizational culture change, the bold decision to migrate their most complex system first, and the importance of shifting left with security and FinOps practices. Madoc also shares insights on modern networking solutions like Alkira, the role of AI in transformation, and how his ultra-marathon mindset (including a 105-mile run) applies to pushing through digital transformation challenges. Whether you're starting your cloud journey or looking to accelerate your transformation efforts, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and inspiring leadership insights.
Where to Find Madoc
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madoc-batters-aws-machinelearning/
- Sessionize: https://sessionize.com/madoc-batters/
Show Links
- Warner Hotels: https://www.warnerhotels.co.uk/
- Alkira: https://www.alkira.com/
- AWS Bedrock: https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/
- HashiCorp: https://www.hashicorp.com/
- AWS Summit: https://aws.amazon.com/events/summits/
- FinOpsX: https://www.finops.org/community/finopsx/
- ZX81 Computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Madoc (00:00):
One of the hotels.
We have 16 hotels across the UKbut they're big hotels and we
offer short breaks for adults.
So it's slightly different froma normal hotel where you've
just gone and booked a room fora night, go in, have a sleep,
leave, maybe have breakfast.
This is very different.
You'll book entertainmentpackages.
It's exclusively for adults.
(00:20):
We have stately hotel all theway through the castles.
I love a castle, I'm Welsh.
William (00:38):
So that's a bit of a bias for me.
Hello world, Welcome to anotherepisode of the Cloud Gambit,
where we unravel all oftechnology's craziest and
wildest problems With me.
As always, is my co-host,Yvonne.
How are you doing today, Yvonne?
Eyvonne (00:54):
I'm good.
It is a rainy dreary day here,so hoping that before the
weekend gets here we get alittle sunshine.
William (01:01):
But at least it's warming up, so yay for spring
gets here, we get a littlesunshine, but at least it's
warming up, so yay for spring.
Yeah, we went through like allthese rainy well, we went
straight from like blizzards andice to like a rainstorm.
For like a whole week, justtorrential downpour, and then we
got like a week of a week ofsunshine.
You know, pretty a nice weeklike 78 degree weather, and now
(01:22):
it's back to the doom and gloomin kentucky lots of, uh, rain
clouds.
But that's why we're insiderecording a podcast instead of
outside recording a podcast,which I don't think I've ever
done.
But anyway, today we have aspecial guest with us and that's
matic batters um, and matic hasworked throughout the years on
(01:45):
a lot of digital transformationinitiatives, cloud adoption.
He brings just a wealth ofexpertise.
You know net sec ops, fin opsand various you know
technologies.
So, matic, how's it going today?
Madoc (01:59):
it's going great.
Yeah, and thanks for thanks forinviting me onto your podcast.
And yeah, yvonne and Will,you're brilliant.
Yeah, it's, it's bright outsidehere.
It's approaching the weekendhere in Oxford in the UK.
Eyvonne (02:15):
And you're closer to the weekend than we are.
Madoc (02:18):
Yeah, yeah, more.
So I'll tell you what it's likewhen we get there.
Eyvonne (02:21):
Okay, we'll live vicariously.
William (02:24):
So you've been.
You've been kind of on thespeaking trail lately kind of
doing some tech evangelism, butI guess not to get too far ahead
.
Do you want to just give ussort of a background?
How did you get into technology, getting into cloud and just
sort of your journey upwards, ofgetting to where you're at
(02:45):
today with morning leisure yeahsure, um, it's quite a long
journey.
Madoc (02:49):
I was 55 um this week, so I'm getting on a bit now, but
my journey started when I was 11, I think.
Um, I was um very keen on theon the home computers.
Um, I went out and asked for acomputer.
It was a ZX81, hence the 81.
For my parents, my birthdaypresent, they went what do you
(03:10):
want one of those daft thingsfor?
So I thought I need to get one.
So I went out and washed ahundred cars and earned the
money to get that computer.
And that's where my love ofcomputers and networks and all
things technology started, way,way back then.
Eyvonne (03:28):
I think that story is true for a lot of us.
I know for me, I got my firstcomputer when I was 10.
It was an Apple IIe with theColor Dot Matrix printer and we
had the print shop and we'd makethe big banners and play the
games and learn to write loopsand basics.
So I think for a lot of us of acertain generation, getting
that first computer in the 80swas really what kick-started it
(03:52):
off.
William (03:52):
Yeah, similar experience here.
Madoc (03:55):
Yeah, very exciting times back then.
William (03:57):
So you I mean I know that tech leaders the higher you
get up the org chart, I guess,the less technical that you know
leadership a lot of timesbecomes, and it doesn't seem
like you've been that way.
You seem like you know you havethe leadership side and
direction and transformation.
(04:18):
But also you've got a ton ofcertifications, like hard ones
too, over the years, like ccie,uh, quite a few aws certs and I
think there are some securityones as well.
You know what's your.
What are your thoughts on that?
Is that helpful to keep thoseup and to just to keep learning
and studying, or how do you seethat?
Madoc (04:37):
so I I think I had a little bit of a different
direction than most I.
I contracted for 20 years.
So in the in the contractinggame, certifications were really
, really important and I think Ijust got into a habit.
Like with everything, you getinto a habit of doing something,
it just becomes a little biteasier.
So, studying for certifications, learning, learning everything
(04:58):
around them and um, just goingthrough that whole process was
just something that seemed quitenormal.
And yeah, I, yeah, I lovelearning every day's, every
day's learning day and why notdo a certification at the same
time seem to make sense.
And yeah, I love a personalchallenge as well yeah, same
(05:20):
here.
William (05:20):
I still keep the home lab and I'm constantly tinkering
and experimenting, just so Ican.
It changes so fast.
Madoc (05:28):
I feel like if I don't have a good grasp on what's
actually going on, I cease to bevaluable in my day to day
everything now back in the daywhen I was studying for my ccie,
that was buying cisco routersand switches off ebay, isdn
(05:49):
simulators and doing all that,but it's that the barrier for
entries.
A lot easier now, I think, withthe virtualization and you know
to to learn how to go out andbuy, buy books, physical books.
That was the only way youcouldn't download the books.
There wasn't many blogs or anypodcasts or anything you could
learn for videos.
That was the only media youcould really do.
(06:09):
So it was a lot of learning,playing and um using physical
equipment yeah, the physicalequipment.
William (06:17):
You know, it's funny like this.
Last year actually I got I heldon to like a lot of that stuff
when I was studying for my CCIEmany years ago and I finally got
rid of it all, which was reallya big day for my wife and
freeing up a lot of space,because I had a big 42U rack in
the basement and actuallygetting that thing out of the
(06:37):
house was quite the challenge.
I totally forgot how I got itin.
I had to disassemble it intopieces.
It was like why did I do this?
But hey, that's how you learnright, yeah, yeah.
Madoc (06:49):
Learn by doing still the most effective way of learning.
William (06:52):
Yeah so, like organizations everywhere.
Now, you know, yvonne and Italk about this a ton this whole
digital transformation thing,shift left all these different
things that big companiesthey're trying to, you know, put
a name and then, you know, putthese things into action, but
they they run into hurdles.
It's not, it's not easy to takea company maybe that's been
(07:15):
around for a while and, you know, bring it into the future,
bring it into the now and thenalso think about what the future
holds and how to get there.
But, you know, based on yourexperience, these are some of
the things that you work on andthat you spearhead.
You know, with your background,do what are like some big, I
guess, like misconceptions orcommon challenges.
(07:36):
You see, maybe teams ororganizations face, you know,
when they try to, you know, godown this path, like what are
the big things that you knowthey try to?
You know, go down this path,like what are the big things
that you know make it so hard?
Madoc (07:49):
humans.
Humans just always make it sohard.
At the end of the day, it's,it's the organizational
structure, it's the culture.
You know, people are used todoing things the way they've
always done it.
We have siloed teams.
It's all about ease of flow ofcommunication between teams and
(08:09):
and how, how the companyoperates.
And quite a lot of the timeyou've got to try and reinvent
from the inside, create a newdivision, create new teams, um,
form a new company, uhorganizational structure which
is different from the existing,and it's almost almost like
(08:30):
creating it inside and justbreaking it out into it, almost
like a new company, until thatnew company becomes bigger than
the existing company that it wasspawned from.
So, yeah, a lot of it isculture.
It's just teaching new culture.
I remember when I started firstat um, warner slash born, so
born leisure was our overarchingcompany who had a number of
(08:54):
brands, warner being one of them.
But when I first started, we,we went into a change management
meeting and there's probablyabout 40 people in that room.
We're all talking about thechanges that were being proposed
for the next few days.
We're talking about the changesthat had failed, but it it came
.
We are really apparent thateverybody was very change
reversed, you know if.
(09:15):
If there was a failed change,they basically grilled why that
change had failed and that thatmade them very resistant to
having new changes in the future.
People would save up theirchanges into a big change so
they can try and dump it in,keep their fingers crossed that
it worked, rather than havingmany, many small changes, which,
as we know now, are a muchbetter way of doing it.
(09:38):
But yeah, of that first day Ithought that is something we've
we've got to change.
We've got to change the way wedo, change that.
That was the first thing thatwe had to break down.
Eyvonne (09:47):
You talk about creating an organization inside of an
organization, basically, thatyou're having to, you know,
re-envision and recreate Reallycertainly the IT organization,
maybe even more than that, inorder for to be able to, to
transform and I know that thatword, digital transformation,
(10:10):
has been overused.
The folks that I see are themost successful about this in a
transformation effort is thatthey have a leader, who, who
really understands what, whatthey're doing and why they're
doing it, because ultimately,everybody will start the project
(10:32):
and everybody will be excitedand it'll be something new.
And then you'll get, you know,three, six, nine months into it,
you start running intotechnical hurdles.
There are things that youdidn't consider, there are new
challenges that pop up, you losesome talent or you realize you
(10:53):
need talent that you didn't have.
And the organizations that aresuccessful that I've seen are
those that, yes, do start torebuild the organization, but
then they push through thosetimes, and the only way to get
through those times is to have aclear picture of why you're
(11:14):
doing it and where you want toget to.
On the other side, and I thinksometimes folks will have a like
oh well, we want to transform,like this is the new cool thing
to do, but they don't understandwhy they're doing it.
Have you seen that?
What have you seen withcustomers in trying to figure
out, you know not only their why, but what do they need to stick
(11:37):
with it to be able to getthrough to the other side.
Madoc (11:39):
Yeah, you really do need to clearly sort of understand
what value it can bring you.
After that transformation, youknow, it's like you know, I, I'm
a runner, I, I like, I likedoing a lot of.
I do trail running, longdistance running.
You've always got to focus on,you know, the reward at the end
of that race or at the end ofthat run.
(12:00):
So you need to know what thatvalue is For.
So you need to know what thatvalue is For us.
One of the main values washaving that ability of having
high-velocity changes, reducingthe amount of human error and
failures that we had when we hadchanges, and just being in a
place where we can be reallyagile, where we can try new
(12:22):
things out, we can innovate, wecan do multiple cadences of
testing out new services withouthaving to spend, you know, a
lot of capex to be able todeploy stuff on-prem.
We can then do it in the cloud.
So the whole move was you know,we are going to be a cloud
first architecture company.
We are going to move ouron-prem into the cloud, and that
(12:44):
would that was the main driver.
It was coming away from on-premto the cloud.
A lot of companies are obviouslydoing this and I think we just
we just plowed through.
It just wasn't wasn't reallyever an option not to stop.
We were going to migrate ourmain systems into the cloud and
then move all the supportingsystems along with it, and I
(13:08):
think so one of the maindecisions we had is, instead of
picking off a small, smallsystem to move first, we decided
to move our largest, which isour booking system, our main
booking system.
So we moved that as alighthouse project.
It was the biggest, mostintegrated, dare I say, oldest
(13:31):
organically grown system that wehad.
Some of the components hadn'tbeen turned off for years.
We were quite worried aboutabout removing some of the parts
of it, but it was.
You know, it was a.
It's a big challenge and, yeah,we we did come up across a lot
of obstacles, but we just justkept going.
We just had to go until we hitthat finish line.
Eyvonne (13:54):
I'd love to hear more about what drove the decision to
choose your most complex systemas to get started.
Typically, you know, we seefolks pick a system that they're
not super dependent on, thatthey can migrate, that can
accept some downtime and somerisk, and to sort of as an
(14:17):
organization, build some musclememory and understand all of the
you know the cloud, nativeprimitives and all those things.
So what was it that drove youto make what to me seems like a
really bold move, to move thisyou know, mission critical,
complex system and to startthere?
Madoc (14:39):
I think it was the size of the values, the size of the
prize at the end of it.
You know you move a smallersystem.
You know you're going toconfirm that, that you know,
does work, that pattern doeswork.
But again, you know, know thevalue is or lower, and I think
you know to sell it, to sell itto the board, you know we have
(14:59):
to go in and say, look, we aremoving.
You know, the biggest systemthat we have, this is the value
that you're going to get.
You know this, this system was,you know it.
It had had a, had a lot ofissues, um, had a lot of
downtime.
We had to reset it every nowand again.
It we couldn't affect change onit because we were, we were
scared, scared of what we woulddo if we turned it off and, uh,
(15:23):
or reset it or we had to do anupgrade.
We were running on very oldversions, so we were, we were
going down a path that was justnot going to get better.
So so you know, the decisionwas you know we've got to do
this.
The sooner we do it, the better.
At the end of the day, and whatwas your?
Eyvonne (15:44):
how would you describe your degree of like cloud
capability at the time that youmade the decision?
Were you, as an organization,relatively new or had you been
deploying in the cloud for awhile?
Like what did you look likeorganizationally when you made
that bold move?
Relatively new, or had you beendeploying in the cloud for a
while?
Like what?
What did you look likeorganizationally when you made
that bold move?
Madoc (15:59):
yes, that's really interesting.
So we had we before.
I started five years ago, sobefore that, the company had a
cloud migration into Azure.
So a lot, a lot of systems weremigrating to Azure.
They engaged a third party todo that and that third party
subsequently moved on, left whatthey had moved.
(16:22):
They probably didn't do it inthe best pattern possible.
It was done within the console,it was done with ARM templates,
it was done with scripts, itwas done with all sorts of ways.
It wasn't one consistent way todeploy it and there wasn't a
lot of documentation.
Um, so the idea was we didn'thave any aws at that time.
(16:43):
The idea was let's startcompletely fresh, because we
we've got an on-prem, we've gota cloud at the moment, but we
don't have a lot ofdocumentation on it.
We'd like to be able to startproperly, so we know exactly
what we're building and how wecan build upon it.
So the decision was we're goingto go with AWS and we're going
(17:04):
to build it with infrastructureas code, semantic documentation.
We know exactly how it's goingto be deployed because it
matches the code.
So that's the direction we wentin.
We stood up all the neworganizational structure, all
the accounts.
That was all codified and putinto pipelines and yeah, we
(17:28):
started from there.
William (17:31):
Awesome.
Yeah, I have a few questionsabout the pipelines and the
shift left aspect of it, but Iwanted to kind of we probably
should have done this at thebeginning, but whenever I first
heard of like warner hotels Ijust thought, oh, it's like
hilton or it's like a you know,just like a hotel chain.
And then I I remember lookingat pictures and I was like, oh
no, this isn't any like anyhilton I've ever seen in my life
(17:55):
.
Um, can you give us just abackground about um warner
hotels and just kind of theexperience and the you know one
could expect if they tookholiday there?
Madoc (18:06):
yeah, yeah.
So warner hotels.
We have 16 hotels.
There's going to be a couplemore coming online um across the
uk.
We're uk only.
We don't have anything outsidethe uk, but they're big hotels
and we offer short breaks foradults.
So it's it's slightly differentfrom a normal hotel where you
just go and book a room for anight, go in, have a sleep,
(18:30):
leave, maybe have breakfast.
This is very different.
You'll you'll book umentertainment packages um could
be anything from from golf to toum shows in the evening to to
dinner and um this, yeah it's,it's exclusively for adults, so
that there's there's no kidsrunning around.
So if you've got kids, they'vegot to stay at home.
(18:52):
Um, that may be a good or a badthing, but yeah, a lot of our
customers really, really enjoythat and we have super high
occupancy rates, far higher thanmost hotels do in the industry.
We have customers that come andstay with us.
They love it so much They'llbook again for next year as
(19:15):
they're leaving they just wantto come back.
Sometimes they'll book the samerooms and all all our
properties are really pretty big, so we have stately hotels um
all the way through the castles.
I love a castle on welsh soit's a bit of a bias for me, but
, um, yeah, yeah, some somelovely places had said they have
(19:36):
their own golf courses.
William (19:37):
They got several hundred acres, some of them
they're um, there's some greatlocations yeah, if you're
listening and you have theopportunity to maybe visit or
just take a look at the pictures, it's.
These are really sprawling,just beautiful, beautiful
properties, really reallyincredible.
So one thing I just one of thetopics I really wanted to touch
(20:01):
on was you know, devsecops is,like so important Because I
think one of the problems thatyou started to see happening
which probably led to a lot ofstartups, which did lead to a
lot of startups, led to a lot ofstartups, which did lead to a
lot of startups is, um,companies out there said, hey,
(20:21):
we, we just want to rush to thecloud as fast as we can.
You know, we're maybe not goingto think it through as good as
we should.
We just want to show that wedid a thing.
And you had, like this lift andshift movement.
You weren't optimizing for theyou knownative design patterns
and that technical debt justkind of spirals, because not
only is it an expensive endeavorto make that happen and you're
(20:43):
running it much more expensivethan you would on-prem, and then
cost spirals out of control.
And then you have to go back andstart doing refactors and
projects to really modernizewhat you were trying to
modernize, to use infrastructureas code to get more, uh,
ephemeral, to try to shiftsecurity left.
(21:04):
But you know one one thing thatstands out to me just from from
what I know about you, yourstyle of leadership and you know
some things that you've talkedabout is the whole shift left
paradigm with security and opsand even cost, because even cost
, like you know, devs don't workin spreadsheets.
They they could care less andwhen you, there's a lot of tools
(21:26):
out there that can actuallyincorporate and show you the
cost and the build pipeline whenyou're deploying stuff, so it
becomes a little more real likeyou're speaking in the same
language that like devs might.
But can you, can you just kindof explain what shift left means
to you and your team and justhow you view the, the
implementation and practices?
Madoc (21:47):
yeah, I, I think you well , I think you've hit the nail on
the head with.
Devs don't care less aboutsecurity and cost.
I'm I'm sure they're consciousabout it and uh, but the the
main thing is is, is that their,their um, their goals and what
they're rewarded on isn't isn'tto keep the cost down, isn't to
(22:08):
keep the security up.
Um, it is to is to deliver umfeatures, is to deliver more,
more robustness to theirservices and applications.
So what we do with the shiftingleft is we try and build in
that security and the FinOps.
So it's right in front of themwhen they're doing their PRs.
(22:32):
So we'll build this into theirGitHub Actions workflow.
When they're raising a PR Withthe Terraform plan, it'll show
exactly, obviously, what you'regoing to deploy as a resource
before it's deployed.
But at the same time, it'llalso go through and it'll show
if there's any insecurities, ifyou need to do some changes in
(22:53):
your PR, and also it'll gothrough and tell you exactly
what the cost is going to bebefore it's deployed.
We've also gone another stepfurther in that is where you're
deploying a resource, we'll gopull that into a Lambda That'll
(23:15):
integrate into trusted advisorwithin AWS or have a little bit
of Gen AI melding up togetherand it'll come up with
suggestions of what they can dowith those resources to make it
more cost efficient when they'redeploying it.
One of the key things is justto make sure that these cost of
security changes are front andcenter when they're already
(23:38):
doing a change, because if youask them to do an additional
change which is just costfocused or just security focused
, it'd be pushing the bottom ofthe pile.
It will never get done unlessyou come back around and try and
put some pressure on that beingdone.
Then you know that.
Then you have conversations.
Everybody falls out with eachother about priorities.
(23:59):
So it's, it's getting it.
I always say it's almost likethe developers have got a, a
plate, a meal that they'rethey're delivering.
You know we put a little bit ofbroccoli on the side of that,
which is either security or finups, so they can do it at the
same time they're doing thechange awesome and yeah, like
(24:22):
all this stuff is so criticaland like one thing that some,
some folks may, you know, failto understand is, like you know,
monitor.
William (24:32):
You know cloud is one side of the it's just it's one
piece of a large puzzle.
And I know one thing thatyou've been busy with
modernizing is Warner's networkinfrastructure and it's kind of
like certain tools and platformsout there, like some, maybe you
know, some of the older legacytechnologies are not friendly to
(24:53):
automation, they're notfriendly to cloud, they're
really not future friendly.
They were just invented andthey were built at a different
time, much long ago.
So you've teamed up with somepretty innovative solutions out
there and partnered with somecompanies, with some companies
but I'm pretty familiar withyour bringing on solutions like
(25:16):
Alkira, for instance, fornetwork infrastructure as a
service to kind of connecteverything up.
Can you just speak to the?
You know what led you down thatpath?
Because networking is one ofthe things that usually is like
the last thing that anybodywants to touch.
It's like, hey, it's working,just don't touch it.
Just, everybody, hold yourbreath, you know.
(25:38):
So why was revamping thenetwork just a priority, in
tandem with the cloud stuff?
Madoc (25:46):
um I.
I think one of the directionsI've always wanted to take is
now we codify the infrastructurewithin the cloud.
We started then codifying andrun Terraform to deploy some
services, some of the securityservices we deployed.
We used HashiCorp to do ourprivileged access management as
(26:10):
well.
We run a few other servicesthat use Terraform, but the
thought is, why can't we useTerraform to deploy the network
as well?
Luckily, I bumped into Alkira atthe AWS Summit and, yeah, it
was exactly what I was lookingfor.
I'd worked in networking formany years and I left networking
(26:33):
for cloud because all theinnovation was in cloud.
But now it seems like thenetworking is now linked up with
the advances that we have incloud.
We can deploy it the same way,so networks and cloud resource
deployment can be done within asimilar pipeline.
So that reduces cognitive loadon your teams.
(26:54):
You know we, we can now haveour teams deploy cloud resources
, network resources and dosecurity functions all within
similar pipelines at the sametime, which just just makes it a
lot, lot easier, um, forgetting getting talent in to be
able to work with us, and youdon't have to have a thousand
(27:14):
different skills.
Let's focus on these core, moremodern cloud-native skill sets
that we can apply this to alldifferent areas.
William (27:29):
Looking ahead.
So you've again you've reallydealt in this transformational
type.
You know, taking somethingthat's there, maybe been there
for a while, and really pullingit in the future.
You know we've got Gen AI, mcp,a2a, all this AI stuff now, and
who knows honestly what allthis is going to look like in
(27:49):
three to five years?
So I guess my next question islike do you see any any big
emerging trends that reallyexcite you that you're, you know
, just super excited about?
And sort of how do you thinkabout, okay, like I know what
I'm doing now it'stransformational, but how do you
get in that mindset of beingready for the next round of
(28:10):
transformation and approaching,like, instead of waiting and
waiting and waiting and waiting,until you build up technical
debt and it's really hard tomove Like how do you keep that
transformation traincontinuously going?
Madoc (28:25):
Yeah, it's hard to define the strategy.
I think we're in the fastestmoving time ever.
It's hard to define thestrategy.
I think we're in the fastestmoving time ever.
You know, what you may put inyour strategy for six months can
be something completelydifferent three months down the
line.
I don't think it's slowing downeither.
I think that cadence is goingto get even shorter and shorter.
So it's really key you keepyour eye on what's going on.
(28:45):
Keep in touch with a lot ofthese newer companies coming out
.
Um, yeah, I'm looking forwardto aws summit at the end of this
month, where I'll be.
I don't usually go to a lot oftalks.
I usually go around all thebooze asking all the companies
that I don't recognize, theirlogos, what they're doing, why
they're doing it, what value youbring.
So it's understanding thedirection of all these companies
(29:07):
and and finding out you know,what we should be looking at as
well.
Um, but yeah, what's getting meexcited at the moment?
A lot of gen ai.
So there's been lots of talkingabout gen ai.
A lot of people aren't actuallydoing it.
So I think for me you can boilit down to be really, really
simple.
To me it's two.
One is to make sure that yourteams can work more efficiently
(29:31):
your internal teams, and theother one is to make it easy for
your customers to buy yourservices and products.
That's that.
That's that's it, bold.
They're really simply for me.
So you know, we we've starteddeploying that for our internal
teams within the pipelines tohelp them.
You know, save for our internalteams within the pipelines to
help them save on costs whenwe're deploying network
(29:51):
resources.
We're surfacing in the nextcouple of weeks we're surfacing
an internal Gen AI.
We're going to link that intosome of our knowledge bases
internally so it allows ourteams to be able to access
information a lot quicker.
Quite, compostable.
We can switch foundationalmodels, so we're using AWS
(30:11):
Bedrock so we could move there.
So whenever you have a newtechnology come out or a new LLM
, we can just move it over.
It's very easy for us to do andpivot.
Eyvonne (30:25):
But there's a whole load of other initiatives that
we're doing for get to know yourcustomer, find out
hyper-personalization make surethat we can offer things that
they're interested about whenyou start on a transformation
(30:52):
effort are what are the nexttechnologies that are coming
around the corner that you'll beable to leverage more
effectively because you'vealready started right?
So the fact that you have cloudinfrastructure that's driven by
infrastructure is code.
You already have a modularmindset where you can deploy
code.
You're in the cloud, you canuse LLMs and you can swap those
(31:18):
LLMs out on the back end as thetechnology grows and improves.
That puts you at a credibleadvantage over a competing
organization that's stillrunning everything on-premises,
that doesn't have the velocityof being able to deploy.
You know these new technologiesin a way that allows you to
(31:41):
rapidly determine what's rightfor your business.
Because right now, with AI, likewe all know, it's amazing, we
(32:01):
all see it doing really coolstuff.
We don't yet exactly know theforms it's going to take in our
day-to-day lives, like that'sstill what we're figuring out,
and so it's super important tobe able to rapidly deploy and
test, and the work that you'vedone over the last few years has
(32:22):
really put you in a greatposition to be able to do that,
and I think that's the challengesometimes is like not only are
we innovating for what we know,we're innovating for what's
coming that we don't yet knowabout, to be in a good place to
be able to take advantage ofthat, whatever it is.
Madoc (32:41):
Yeah, you're exactly right, Yvonne.
I think you've got to get thesefoundational ways of working in
cloud native have the pipelines, your infrastructure as code.
It's being able to enable yourcompany to have that velocity,
to be able to pivot fast andchange.
But to have that velocity youneed to empower your teams,
(33:02):
which comes back to the humanelement again.
You really do need the cultureto be able to drive this forward
, because without giving yourteams that empowerment and trust
, you can't distribute yourchange.
You can't make all those otherparts like fin-ups and security
(33:23):
a team game.
You need a team game becausetraditional small silo teams
just don't have the numbers tobe able to move fast.
So you need to allow everybodyto have a part of that skill set
so everybody can implement andwork towards that sort of branch
on its own.
William (33:45):
So kind of, we're getting towards the end of the
hour, but I had a few rapid firequestions, I guess, just kind
of what, just things that Ithought were interesting.
But your personal tagline Ithink it was on the thing.
It was on session knives maybe,but it was a silver lining.
The cloud, yes, I like it, butwhat?
(34:08):
What is that phrase?
Does it mean something veryspecific to you, or is there
like a lot of it Catchy?
I like it, but what is thatphrase?
Does it mean something veryspecific to you, or is there
like a story behind it?
Madoc (34:17):
I think when I moved out of the cloud about nine years
ago, it was quite mature, butthere's so many new things
coming out in the cloud.
I just wanted to make sure thatwe were using and utilizing the
best of the cloud.
So I'm always looking for, youknow, what can make it better,
and that's the silver lining isto bring out the shine on what
(34:38):
you're doing.
Make sure it's optimized, makesure you're using the newest and
greatest, not just because it'syou know, I'm an engineer.
I love to play and tinker, butit's something that brings the
value to a business.
Make sure that you understandwhat technology comes out, what
value it can bring to yourbusiness.
William (35:00):
Awesome and I think next is your.
So you mentioned earlier yourdid you say ultra marathon, or
have you done ultra marathons?
Madoc (35:09):
Yeah, I've done about 30 ultra marathons over the years.
Yeah.
William (35:15):
That's wild, that's a lot.
What's the longest you've everran?
Just?
Madoc (35:20):
about.
I've still got my own knees.
Longest I've ever run is 105miles.
That took me 35 hours.
I ran through two nights.
That was in the Lake Districtin the UK.
We started on the Fridayevening and finished on Sunday
morning.
William (35:42):
Wow, my brother-in-law does this as well.
He did a 100-miler a few yearsago.
At the end, I guess your mindis just a powerful thing, but he
got to the end and his bodystarted breaking down.
He got that room of um,whatever, where you're the
potassium and the kidneys andeverything just starts, you know
(36:02):
, shutting right, though, isthat yeah, exactly, and he was
in the hospital for like over aweek.
It was terrible, they almostlost him, but he, he said he
felt, you know, it was justtowards the end.
He's like at the very end, whenmy mind started, you know, I
realized I was coming to the end.
I felt like something isseriously wrong and then he just
stopped, you know, right at thefinish line and just started,
(36:26):
you know, throwing up and youhad to be carried out.
It was pretty, pretty bad.
But yeah, the importance ofthat is, I guess, training
yourself up and because I thinkhe went from the, the most he
had done before that was like 50miles, but he'd done so much of
that, like over the years, thathe's like I can do this 100
miles.
Madoc (36:44):
It's not, it's that big of a deal.
Yeah, it's a big step up tothat.
I've done a few like 60, 70milers as well, but yeah, the
step, but it's, it's not big ofa deal.
Yeah, it's a big step up tothat.
And I've done a few like 60, 70miles as well, but yeah, the
step, but it's, it's not twiceas hard, it's multiple times.
Yeah, difficult and um, butyeah, I've got, I've got a great
photo at the end when I finishthat hundred it.
It's a great advert to showpeople why not to do a hundred
(37:06):
mile run.
I I look absolutely terrible init.
My whole face is is drained,drained of life at the at the
end of it.
But yeah, what?
Yeah, what an amazingachievement.
And if you imagine, imagine amarathon, it's like going, going
for a run, hitting hell andthen finishing the race in an
ultra marathon.
(37:27):
You'll hit hell, come out of it, hit it again.
Come out of it, hit it again.
Um, but it's again, it's.
It's repetition the more you doit, the more you used to it.
In 80 of it, I'd say about 80of it is is in the mind.
So I've, you know, I've gotlots of great friends who are
fantastic runners, but butsometimes you've got to go
(37:48):
through that hell to make sureyou know you're coming out the
other side.
William (37:54):
Well, I mean, doing anything for 36 hours, doing
anything for 20 hours or 15hours straight is like a really
long time to sit.
I can't even sit through amovie, you know it's crazy.
That's just a long time to bedoing something.
It's a huge, yeah, it's a hugemental.
It's kind of almost like I mean, doing that long of a run over
(38:15):
100 miles is almost like youknow what climbers you know want
to summit Everest.
You know it's a huge.
It's a big deal.
You have to condition, you haveto acclimate and there's so
much training and so much mentalthat goes into the whole thing.
Congratulations, that's prettyawesome.
Madoc (38:35):
Thank you.
I was hallucinating the secondnight I was seeing aliens, lion
faces on rocks, tree houses thatwere there.
It's crazy how your mind reactswhen it's had no sleep.
Eyvonne (38:49):
I feel like there's a how to prepare for digital
transformation story there.
It's like you know run 100miles and then you're ready.
Madoc (38:59):
Well, yeah, I suppose it builds up resistance to pain,
doesn't it?
That's right.
Yeah, you've got to pushthrough and get to the end.
William (39:07):
So which one is harder?
Harder digital transformationor that 100 miler?
Madoc (39:12):
definitely, definitely the 100 miler.
William (39:14):
Yeah, definitely, that's good, that's good to know
, yeah you don't need to run anultramarathon to do a
transformation yeah, well, matic, this has been a really
insightful conversation, a lotof good learned experiences and
just great advice and just agreat attitude and a great
approach to technology in in2025.
(39:35):
Um, we really appreciate, uh,your time.
Did you have anything else?
Avon, by the way?
Eyvonne (39:40):
good.
William (39:41):
No, I think this has been great awesome, yeah, so if
anybody wanted to find you, I'mgoing to link your
sessionessionize and yourLinkedIn in the show notes.
But if anybody wanted to findyou or connect, how can they
find you?
Madoc (39:54):
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn Again, sessionize as well.
And if anyone's at the AWSSummit at the end of this month,
I'll be there.
Come and say hi.
I'm also in San Diego in Junethe FinOpsX, so if you're over
in San Diegogo, um, yeah, loveto meet up and chat.
One of the hotels.
We have 16 hotels across the UKbut they're big hotels and we
offer short breaks for adults.
So it's slightly different froma normal hotel where you've
just gone and booked a room fora night, go in, have a sleep,
leave, maybe have breakfast.
This is very different.
You'll book entertainmentpackages.
It's exclusively for adults.
(00:20):
We have stately hotel all theway through the castles.
I love a castle, I'm Welsh.
William (00:38):
So that's a bit of a bias for me.
Hello world, Welcome to anotherepisode of the Cloud Gambit,
where we unravel all oftechnology's craziest and
wildest problems With me.
As always, is my co-host,Yvonne.
How are you doing today, Yvonne?
Eyvonne (00:54):
I'm good.
It is a rainy dreary day here,so hoping that before the
weekend gets here we get alittle sunshine.
William (01:01):
But at least it's warming up, so yay for spring
gets here, we get a littlesunshine, but at least it's
warming up, so yay for spring.
Yeah, we went through like allthese rainy well, we went
straight from like blizzards andice to like a rainstorm.
For like a whole week, justtorrential downpour, and then we
got like a week of a week ofsunshine.
You know, pretty a nice weeklike 78 degree weather, and now
(01:22):
it's back to the doom and gloomin kentucky lots of, uh, rain
clouds.
But that's why we're insiderecording a podcast instead of
outside recording a podcast,which I don't think I've ever
done.
But anyway, today we have aspecial guest with us and that's
matic batters um, and matic hasworked throughout the years on
(01:45):
a lot of digital transformationinitiatives, cloud adoption.
He brings just a wealth ofexpertise.
You know net sec ops, fin opsand various you know
technologies.
So, matic, how's it going today?
Madoc (01:59):
it's going great.
Yeah, and thanks for thanks forinviting me onto your podcast.
And yeah, yvonne and Will,you're brilliant.
Yeah, it's, it's bright outsidehere.
It's approaching the weekendhere in Oxford in the UK.
Eyvonne (02:15):
And you're closer to the weekend than we are.
Madoc (02:18):
Yeah, yeah, more.
So I'll tell you what it's likewhen we get there.
Eyvonne (02:21):
Okay, we'll live vicariously.
William (02:24):
So you've been.
You've been kind of on thespeaking trail lately kind of
doing some tech evangelism, butI guess not to get too far ahead
.
Do you want to just give ussort of a background?
How did you get into technology, getting into cloud and just
sort of your journey upwards, ofgetting to where you're at
(02:45):
today with morning leisure yeahsure, um, it's quite a long
journey.
Madoc (02:49):
I was 55 um this week, so I'm getting on a bit now, but
my journey started when I was 11, I think.
Um, I was um very keen on theon the home computers.
Um, I went out and asked for acomputer.
It was a ZX81, hence the 81.
For my parents, my birthdaypresent, they went what do you
(03:10):
want one of those daft thingsfor?
So I thought I need to get one.
So I went out and washed ahundred cars and earned the
money to get that computer.
And that's where my love ofcomputers and networks and all
things technology started, way,way back then.
Eyvonne (03:28):
I think that story is true for a lot of us.
I know for me, I got my firstcomputer when I was 10.
It was an Apple IIe with theColor Dot Matrix printer and we
had the print shop and we'd makethe big banners and play the
games and learn to write loopsand basics.
So I think for a lot of us of acertain generation, getting
that first computer in the 80swas really what kick-started it
(03:52):
off.
William (03:52):
Yeah, similar experience here.
Madoc (03:55):
Yeah, very exciting times back then.
William (03:57):
So you I mean I know that tech leaders the higher you
get up the org chart, I guess,the less technical that you know
leadership a lot of timesbecomes, and it doesn't seem
like you've been that way.
You seem like you know you havethe leadership side and
direction and transformation.
(04:18):
But also you've got a ton ofcertifications, like hard ones
too, over the years, like ccie,uh, quite a few aws certs and I
think there are some securityones as well.
You know what's your.
What are your thoughts on that?
Is that helpful to keep thoseup and to just to keep learning
and studying, or how do you seethat?
Madoc (04:37):
so I I think I had a little bit of a different
direction than most I.
I contracted for 20 years.
So in the in the contractinggame, certifications were really
, really important and I think Ijust got into a habit.
Like with everything, you getinto a habit of doing something,
it just becomes a little biteasier.
So, studying for certifications, learning, learning everything
(04:58):
around them and um, just goingthrough that whole process was
just something that seemed quitenormal.
And yeah, I, yeah, I lovelearning every day's, every
day's learning day and why notdo a certification at the same
time seem to make sense.
And yeah, I love a personalchallenge as well yeah, same
(05:20):
here.
William (05:20):
I still keep the home lab and I'm constantly tinkering
and experimenting, just so Ican.
It changes so fast.
Madoc (05:28):
I feel like if I don't have a good grasp on what's
actually going on, I cease to bevaluable in my day to day
everything now back in the daywhen I was studying for my ccie,
that was buying cisco routersand switches off ebay, isdn
(05:49):
simulators and doing all that,but it's that the barrier for
entries.
A lot easier now, I think, withthe virtualization and you know
to to learn how to go out andbuy, buy books, physical books.
That was the only way youcouldn't download the books.
There wasn't many blogs or anypodcasts or anything you could
learn for videos.
That was the only media youcould really do.
(06:09):
So it was a lot of learning,playing and um using physical
equipment yeah, the physicalequipment.
William (06:17):
You know, it's funny like this.
Last year actually I got I heldon to like a lot of that stuff
when I was studying for my CCIEmany years ago and I finally got
rid of it all, which was reallya big day for my wife and
freeing up a lot of space,because I had a big 42U rack in
the basement and actuallygetting that thing out of the
(06:37):
house was quite the challenge.
I totally forgot how I got itin.
I had to disassemble it intopieces.
It was like why did I do this?
But hey, that's how you learnright, yeah, yeah.
Madoc (06:49):
Learn by doing still the most effective way of learning.
William (06:52):
Yeah so, like organizations everywhere.
Now, you know, yvonne and Italk about this a ton this whole
digital transformation thing,shift left all these different
things that big companiesthey're trying to, you know, put
a name and then, you know, putthese things into action, but
they they run into hurdles.
It's not, it's not easy to takea company maybe that's been
(07:15):
around for a while and, you know, bring it into the future,
bring it into the now and thenalso think about what the future
holds and how to get there.
But, you know, based on yourexperience, these are some of
the things that you work on andthat you spearhead.
You know, with your background,do what are like some big, I
guess, like misconceptions orcommon challenges.
(07:36):
You see, maybe teams ororganizations face, you know,
when they try to, you know, godown this path, like what are
the big things that you knowthey try to?
You know, go down this path,like what are the big things
that you know make it so hard?
Madoc (07:49):
humans.
Humans just always make it sohard.
At the end of the day, it's,it's the organizational
structure, it's the culture.
You know, people are used todoing things the way they've
always done it.
We have siloed teams.
It's all about ease of flow ofcommunication between teams and
(08:09):
and how, how the companyoperates.
And quite a lot of the timeyou've got to try and reinvent
from the inside, create a newdivision, create new teams, um,
form a new company, uhorganizational structure which
is different from the existing,and it's almost almost like
(08:30):
creating it inside and justbreaking it out into it, almost
like a new company, until thatnew company becomes bigger than
the existing company that it wasspawned from.
So, yeah, a lot of it isculture.
It's just teaching new culture.
I remember when I started firstat um, warner slash born, so
born leisure was our overarchingcompany who had a number of
(08:54):
brands, warner being one of them.
But when I first started, we,we went into a change management
meeting and there's probablyabout 40 people in that room.
We're all talking about thechanges that were being proposed
for the next few days.
We're talking about the changesthat had failed, but it it came
.
We are really apparent thateverybody was very change
reversed, you know if.
(09:15):
If there was a failed change,they basically grilled why that
change had failed and that thatmade them very resistant to
having new changes in the future.
People would save up theirchanges into a big change so
they can try and dump it in,keep their fingers crossed that
it worked, rather than havingmany, many small changes, which,
as we know now, are a muchbetter way of doing it.
(09:38):
But yeah, of that first day Ithought that is something we've
we've got to change.
We've got to change the way wedo, change that.
That was the first thing thatwe had to break down.
Eyvonne (09:47):
You talk about creating an organization inside of an
organization, basically, thatyou're having to, you know,
re-envision and recreate Reallycertainly the IT organization,
maybe even more than that, inorder for to be able to, to
transform and I know that thatword, digital transformation,
(10:10):
has been overused.
The folks that I see are themost successful about this in a
transformation effort is thatthey have a leader, who, who
really understands what, whatthey're doing and why they're
doing it, because ultimately,everybody will start the project
(10:32):
and everybody will be excitedand it'll be something new.
And then you'll get, you know,three, six, nine months into it,
you start running intotechnical hurdles.
There are things that youdidn't consider, there are new
challenges that pop up, you losesome talent or you realize you
(10:53):
need talent that you didn't have.
And the organizations that aresuccessful that I've seen are
those that, yes, do start torebuild the organization, but
then they push through thosetimes, and the only way to get
through those times is to have aclear picture of why you're
(11:14):
doing it and where you want toget to.
On the other side, and I thinksometimes folks will have a like
oh well, we want to transform,like this is the new cool thing
to do, but they don't understandwhy they're doing it.
Have you seen that?
What have you seen withcustomers in trying to figure
out, you know not only their why, but what do they need to stick
(11:37):
with it to be able to getthrough to the other side.
Madoc (11:39):
Yeah, you really do need to clearly sort of understand
what value it can bring you.
After that transformation, youknow, it's like you know, I, I'm
a runner, I, I like, I likedoing a lot of.
I do trail running, longdistance running.
You've always got to focus on,you know, the reward at the end
of that race or at the end ofthat run.
(12:00):
So you need to know what thatvalue is For.
So you need to know what thatvalue is For us.
One of the main values washaving that ability of having
high-velocity changes, reducingthe amount of human error and
failures that we had when we hadchanges, and just being in a
place where we can be reallyagile, where we can try new
(12:22):
things out, we can innovate, wecan do multiple cadences of
testing out new services withouthaving to spend, you know, a
lot of capex to be able todeploy stuff on-prem.
We can then do it in the cloud.
So the whole move was you know,we are going to be a cloud
first architecture company.
We are going to move ouron-prem into the cloud, and that
(12:44):
would that was the main driver.
It was coming away from on-premto the cloud.
A lot of companies are obviouslydoing this and I think we just
we just plowed through.
It just wasn't wasn't reallyever an option not to stop.
We were going to migrate ourmain systems into the cloud and
then move all the supportingsystems along with it, and I
(13:08):
think so one of the maindecisions we had is, instead of
picking off a small, smallsystem to move first, we decided
to move our largest, which isour booking system, our main
booking system.
So we moved that as alighthouse project.
It was the biggest, mostintegrated, dare I say, oldest
(13:31):
organically grown system that wehad.
Some of the components hadn'tbeen turned off for years.
We were quite worried aboutabout removing some of the parts
of it, but it was.
You know, it was a.
It's a big challenge and, yeah,we we did come up across a lot
of obstacles, but we just justkept going.
We just had to go until we hitthat finish line.
Eyvonne (13:54):
I'd love to hear more about what drove the decision to
choose your most complex systemas to get started.
Typically, you know, we seefolks pick a system that they're
not super dependent on, thatthey can migrate, that can
accept some downtime and somerisk, and to sort of as an
(14:17):
organization, build some musclememory and understand all of the
you know the cloud, nativeprimitives and all those things.
So what was it that drove youto make what to me seems like a
really bold move, to move thisyou know, mission critical,
complex system and to startthere?
Madoc (14:39):
I think it was the size of the values, the size of the
prize at the end of it.
You know you move a smallersystem.
You know you're going toconfirm that, that you know,
does work, that pattern doeswork.
But again, you know, know thevalue is or lower, and I think
you know to sell it, to sell itto the board, you know we have
(14:59):
to go in and say, look, we aremoving.
You know, the biggest systemthat we have, this is the value
that you're going to get.
You know this, this system was,you know it.
It had had a, had a lot ofissues, um, had a lot of
downtime.
We had to reset it every nowand again.
It we couldn't affect change onit because we were, we were
scared, scared of what we woulddo if we turned it off and, uh,
(15:23):
or reset it or we had to do anupgrade.
We were running on very oldversions, so we were, we were
going down a path that was justnot going to get better.
So so you know, the decisionwas you know we've got to do
this.
The sooner we do it, the better.
At the end of the day, and whatwas your?
Eyvonne (15:44):
how would you describe your degree of like cloud
capability at the time that youmade the decision?
Were you, as an organization,relatively new or had you been
deploying in the cloud for awhile?
Like what did you look likeorganizationally when you made
that bold move?
Relatively new, or had you beendeploying in the cloud for a
while?
Like what?
What did you look likeorganizationally when you made
that bold move?
Madoc (15:59):
yes, that's really interesting.
So we had we before.
I started five years ago, sobefore that, the company had a
cloud migration into Azure.
So a lot, a lot of systems weremigrating to Azure.
They engaged a third party todo that and that third party
subsequently moved on, left whatthey had moved.
(16:22):
They probably didn't do it inthe best pattern possible.
It was done within the console,it was done with ARM templates,
it was done with scripts, itwas done with all sorts of ways.
It wasn't one consistent way todeploy it and there wasn't a
lot of documentation.
Um, so the idea was we didn'thave any aws at that time.
(16:43):
The idea was let's startcompletely fresh, because we
we've got an on-prem, we've gota cloud at the moment, but we
don't have a lot ofdocumentation on it.
We'd like to be able to startproperly, so we know exactly
what we're building and how wecan build upon it.
So the decision was we're goingto go with AWS and we're going
(17:04):
to build it with infrastructureas code, semantic documentation.
We know exactly how it's goingto be deployed because it
matches the code.
So that's the direction we wentin.
We stood up all the neworganizational structure, all
the accounts.
That was all codified and putinto pipelines and yeah, we
(17:28):
started from there.
William (17:31):
Awesome.
Yeah, I have a few questionsabout the pipelines and the
shift left aspect of it, but Iwanted to kind of we probably
should have done this at thebeginning, but whenever I first
heard of like warner hotels Ijust thought, oh, it's like
hilton or it's like a you know,just like a hotel chain.
And then I I remember lookingat pictures and I was like, oh
no, this isn't any like anyhilton I've ever seen in my life
(17:55):
.
Um, can you give us just abackground about um warner
hotels and just kind of theexperience and the you know one
could expect if they tookholiday there?
Madoc (18:06):
yeah, yeah.
So warner hotels.
We have 16 hotels.
There's going to be a couplemore coming online um across the
uk.
We're uk only.
We don't have anything outsidethe uk, but they're big hotels
and we offer short breaks foradults.
So it's it's slightly differentfrom a normal hotel where you
just go and book a room for anight, go in, have a sleep,
(18:30):
leave, maybe have breakfast.
This is very different.
You'll you'll book umentertainment packages um could
be anything from from golf to toum shows in the evening to to
dinner and um this, yeah it's,it's exclusively for adults, so
that there's there's no kidsrunning around.
So if you've got kids, they'vegot to stay at home.
(18:52):
Um, that may be a good or a badthing, but yeah, a lot of our
customers really, really enjoythat and we have super high
occupancy rates, far higher thanmost hotels do in the industry.
We have customers that come andstay with us.
They love it so much They'llbook again for next year as
(19:15):
they're leaving they just wantto come back.
Sometimes they'll book the samerooms and all all our
properties are really pretty big, so we have stately hotels um
all the way through the castles.
I love a castle on welsh soit's a bit of a bias for me, but
, um, yeah, yeah, some somelovely places had said they have
(19:36):
their own golf courses.
William (19:37):
They got several hundred acres, some of them
they're um, there's some greatlocations yeah, if you're
listening and you have theopportunity to maybe visit or
just take a look at the pictures, it's.
These are really sprawling,just beautiful, beautiful
properties, really reallyincredible.
So one thing I just one of thetopics I really wanted to touch
(20:01):
on was you know, devsecops is,like so important Because I
think one of the problems thatyou started to see happening
which probably led to a lot ofstartups, which did lead to a
lot of startups, led to a lot ofstartups, which did lead to a
lot of startups is, um,companies out there said, hey,
(20:21):
we, we just want to rush to thecloud as fast as we can.
You know, we're maybe not goingto think it through as good as
we should.
We just want to show that wedid a thing.
And you had, like this lift andshift movement.
You weren't optimizing for theyou knownative design patterns
and that technical debt justkind of spirals, because not
only is it an expensive endeavorto make that happen and you're
(20:43):
running it much more expensivethan you would on-prem, and then
cost spirals out of control.
And then you have to go back andstart doing refactors and
projects to really modernizewhat you were trying to
modernize, to use infrastructureas code to get more, uh,
ephemeral, to try to shiftsecurity left.
(21:04):
But you know one one thing thatstands out to me just from from
what I know about you, yourstyle of leadership and you know
some things that you've talkedabout is the whole shift left
paradigm with security and opsand even cost, because even cost
, like you know, devs don't workin spreadsheets.
They they could care less andwhen you, there's a lot of tools
(21:26):
out there that can actuallyincorporate and show you the
cost and the build pipeline whenyou're deploying stuff, so it
becomes a little more real likeyou're speaking in the same
language that like devs might.
But can you, can you just kindof explain what shift left means
to you and your team and justhow you view the, the
implementation and practices?
Madoc (21:47):
yeah, I, I think you well , I think you've hit the nail on
the head with.
Devs don't care less aboutsecurity and cost.
I'm I'm sure they're consciousabout it and uh, but the the
main thing is is, is that their,their um, their goals and what
they're rewarded on isn't isn'tto keep the cost down, isn't to
(22:08):
keep the security up.
Um, it is to is to deliver umfeatures, is to deliver more,
more robustness to theirservices and applications.
So what we do with the shiftingleft is we try and build in
that security and the FinOps.
So it's right in front of themwhen they're doing their PRs.
(22:32):
So we'll build this into theirGitHub Actions workflow.
When they're raising a PR Withthe Terraform plan, it'll show
exactly, obviously, what you'regoing to deploy as a resource
before it's deployed.
But at the same time, it'llalso go through and it'll show
if there's any insecurities, ifyou need to do some changes in
(22:53):
your PR, and also it'll gothrough and tell you exactly
what the cost is going to bebefore it's deployed.
We've also gone another stepfurther in that is where you're
deploying a resource, we'll gopull that into a Lambda That'll
(23:15):
integrate into trusted advisorwithin AWS or have a little bit
of Gen AI melding up togetherand it'll come up with
suggestions of what they can dowith those resources to make it
more cost efficient when they'redeploying it.
One of the key things is justto make sure that these cost of
security changes are front andcenter when they're already
(23:38):
doing a change, because if youask them to do an additional
change which is just costfocused or just security focused
, it'd be pushing the bottom ofthe pile.
It will never get done unlessyou come back around and try and
put some pressure on that beingdone.
Then you know that.
Then you have conversations.
Everybody falls out with eachother about priorities.
(23:59):
So it's, it's getting it.
I always say it's almost likethe developers have got a, a
plate, a meal that they'rethey're delivering.
You know we put a little bit ofbroccoli on the side of that,
which is either security or finups, so they can do it at the
same time they're doing thechange awesome and yeah, like
(24:22):
all this stuff is so criticaland like one thing that some,
some folks may, you know, failto understand is, like you know,
monitor.
William (24:32):
You know cloud is one side of the it's just it's one
piece of a large puzzle.
And I know one thing thatyou've been busy with
modernizing is Warner's networkinfrastructure and it's kind of
like certain tools and platformsout there, like some, maybe you
know, some of the older legacytechnologies are not friendly to
(24:53):
automation, they're notfriendly to cloud, they're
really not future friendly.
They were just invented andthey were built at a different
time, much long ago.
So you've teamed up with somepretty innovative solutions out
there and partnered with somecompanies, with some companies
but I'm pretty familiar withyour bringing on solutions like
(25:16):
Alkira, for instance, fornetwork infrastructure as a
service to kind of connecteverything up.
Can you just speak to the?
You know what led you down thatpath?
Because networking is one ofthe things that usually is like
the last thing that anybodywants to touch.
It's like, hey, it's working,just don't touch it.
Just, everybody, hold yourbreath, you know.
(25:38):
So why was revamping thenetwork just a priority, in
tandem with the cloud stuff?
Madoc (25:46):
um I.
I think one of the directionsI've always wanted to take is
now we codify the infrastructurewithin the cloud.
We started then codifying andrun Terraform to deploy some
services, some of the securityservices we deployed.
We used HashiCorp to do ourprivileged access management as
(26:10):
well.
We run a few other servicesthat use Terraform, but the
thought is, why can't we useTerraform to deploy the network
as well?
Luckily, I bumped into Alkira atthe AWS Summit and, yeah, it
was exactly what I was lookingfor.
I'd worked in networking formany years and I left networking
(26:33):
for cloud because all theinnovation was in cloud.
But now it seems like thenetworking is now linked up with
the advances that we have incloud.
We can deploy it the same way,so networks and cloud resource
deployment can be done within asimilar pipeline.
So that reduces cognitive loadon your teams.
(26:54):
You know we, we can now haveour teams deploy cloud resources
, network resources and dosecurity functions all within
similar pipelines at the sametime, which just just makes it a
lot, lot easier, um, forgetting getting talent in to be
able to work with us, and youdon't have to have a thousand
(27:14):
different skills.
Let's focus on these core, moremodern cloud-native skill sets
that we can apply this to alldifferent areas.
William (27:29):
Looking ahead.
So you've again you've reallydealt in this transformational
type.
You know, taking somethingthat's there, maybe been there
for a while, and really pullingit in the future.
You know we've got Gen AI, mcp,a2a, all this AI stuff now, and
who knows honestly what allthis is going to look like in
(27:49):
three to five years?
So I guess my next question islike do you see any any big
emerging trends that reallyexcite you that you're, you know
, just super excited about?
And sort of how do you thinkabout, okay, like I know what
I'm doing now it'stransformational, but how do you
get in that mindset of beingready for the next round of
(28:10):
transformation and approaching,like, instead of waiting and
waiting and waiting and waiting,until you build up technical
debt and it's really hard tomove Like how do you keep that
transformation traincontinuously going?
Madoc (28:25):
Yeah, it's hard to define the strategy.
I think we're in the fastestmoving time ever.
It's hard to define thestrategy.
I think we're in the fastestmoving time ever.
You know, what you may put inyour strategy for six months can
be something completelydifferent three months down the
line.
I don't think it's slowing downeither.
I think that cadence is goingto get even shorter and shorter.
So it's really key you keepyour eye on what's going on.
(28:45):
Keep in touch with a lot ofthese newer companies coming out
.
Um, yeah, I'm looking forwardto aws summit at the end of this
month, where I'll be.
I don't usually go to a lot oftalks.
I usually go around all thebooze asking all the companies
that I don't recognize, theirlogos, what they're doing, why
they're doing it, what value youbring.
So it's understanding thedirection of all these companies
(29:07):
and and finding out you know,what we should be looking at as
well.
Um, but yeah, what's getting meexcited at the moment?
A lot of gen ai.
So there's been lots of talkingabout gen ai.
A lot of people aren't actuallydoing it.
So I think for me you can boilit down to be really, really
simple.
To me it's two.
One is to make sure that yourteams can work more efficiently
(29:31):
your internal teams, and theother one is to make it easy for
your customers to buy yourservices and products.
That's that.
That's that's it, bold.
They're really simply for me.
So you know, we we've starteddeploying that for our internal
teams within the pipelines tohelp them.
You know, save for our internalteams within the pipelines to
help them save on costs whenwe're deploying network
(29:51):
resources.
We're surfacing in the nextcouple of weeks we're surfacing
an internal Gen AI.
We're going to link that intosome of our knowledge bases
internally so it allows ourteams to be able to access
information a lot quicker.
Quite, compostable.
We can switch foundationalmodels, so we're using AWS
(30:11):
Bedrock so we could move there.
So whenever you have a newtechnology come out or a new LLM
, we can just move it over.
It's very easy for us to do andpivot.
Eyvonne (30:25):
But there's a whole load of other initiatives that
we're doing for get to know yourcustomer, find out
hyper-personalization make surethat we can offer things that
they're interested about whenyou start on a transformation
(30:52):
effort are what are the nexttechnologies that are coming
around the corner that you'll beable to leverage more
effectively because you'vealready started right?
So the fact that you have cloudinfrastructure that's driven by
infrastructure is code.
You already have a modularmindset where you can deploy
code.
You're in the cloud, you canuse LLMs and you can swap those
(31:18):
LLMs out on the back end as thetechnology grows and improves.
That puts you at a credibleadvantage over a competing
organization that's stillrunning everything on-premises,
that doesn't have the velocityof being able to deploy.
You know these new technologiesin a way that allows you to
(31:41):
rapidly determine what's rightfor your business.
Because right now, with AI, likewe all know, it's amazing, we
(32:01):
all see it doing really coolstuff.
We don't yet exactly know theforms it's going to take in our
day-to-day lives, like that'sstill what we're figuring out,
and so it's super important tobe able to rapidly deploy and
test, and the work that you'vedone over the last few years has
(32:22):
really put you in a greatposition to be able to do that,
and I think that's the challengesometimes is like not only are
we innovating for what we know,we're innovating for what's
coming that we don't yet knowabout, to be in a good place to
be able to take advantage ofthat, whatever it is.
Madoc (32:41):
Yeah, you're exactly right, Yvonne.
I think you've got to get thesefoundational ways of working in
cloud native have the pipelines, your infrastructure as code.
It's being able to enable yourcompany to have that velocity,
to be able to pivot fast andchange.
But to have that velocity youneed to empower your teams,
(33:02):
which comes back to the humanelement again.
You really do need the cultureto be able to drive this forward
, because without giving yourteams that empowerment and trust
, you can't distribute yourchange.
You can't make all those otherparts like fin-ups and security
(33:23):
a team game.
You need a team game becausetraditional small silo teams
just don't have the numbers tobe able to move fast.
So you need to allow everybodyto have a part of that skill set
so everybody can implement andwork towards that sort of branch
on its own.
William (33:45):
So kind of, we're getting towards the end of the
hour, but I had a few rapid firequestions, I guess, just kind
of what, just things that Ithought were interesting.
But your personal tagline Ithink it was on the thing.
It was on session knives maybe,but it was a silver lining.
The cloud, yes, I like it, butwhat?
(34:08):
What is that phrase?
Does it mean something veryspecific to you, or is there
like a lot of it Catchy?
I like it, but what is thatphrase?
Does it mean something veryspecific to you, or is there
like a story behind it?
Madoc (34:17):
I think when I moved out of the cloud about nine years
ago, it was quite mature, butthere's so many new things
coming out in the cloud.
I just wanted to make sure thatwe were using and utilizing the
best of the cloud.
So I'm always looking for, youknow, what can make it better,
and that's the silver lining isto bring out the shine on what
(34:38):
you're doing.
Make sure it's optimized, makesure you're using the newest and
greatest, not just because it'syou know, I'm an engineer.
I love to play and tinker, butit's something that brings the
value to a business.
Make sure that you understandwhat technology comes out, what
value it can bring to yourbusiness.
William (35:00):
Awesome and I think next is your.
So you mentioned earlier yourdid you say ultra marathon, or
have you done ultra marathons?
Madoc (35:09):
Yeah, I've done about 30 ultra marathons over the years.
Yeah.
William (35:15):
That's wild, that's a lot.
What's the longest you've everran?
Just?
Madoc (35:20):
about.
I've still got my own knees.
Longest I've ever run is 105miles.
That took me 35 hours.
I ran through two nights.
That was in the Lake Districtin the UK.
We started on the Fridayevening and finished on Sunday
morning.
William (35:42):
Wow, my brother-in-law does this as well.
He did a 100-miler a few yearsago.
At the end, I guess your mindis just a powerful thing, but he
got to the end and his bodystarted breaking down.
He got that room of um,whatever, where you're the
potassium and the kidneys andeverything just starts, you know
(36:02):
, shutting right, though, isthat yeah, exactly, and he was
in the hospital for like over aweek.
It was terrible, they almostlost him, but he, he said he
felt, you know, it was justtowards the end.
He's like at the very end, whenmy mind started, you know, I
realized I was coming to the end.
I felt like something isseriously wrong and then he just
stopped, you know, right at thefinish line and just started,
(36:26):
you know, throwing up and youhad to be carried out.
It was pretty, pretty bad.
But yeah, the importance ofthat is, I guess, training
yourself up and because I thinkhe went from the, the most he
had done before that was like 50miles, but he'd done so much of
that, like over the years, thathe's like I can do this 100
miles.
Madoc (36:44):
It's not, it's that big of a deal.
Yeah, it's a big step up tothat.
I've done a few like 60, 70milers as well, but yeah, the
step, but it's, it's not big ofa deal.
Yeah, it's a big step up tothat.
And I've done a few like 60, 70miles as well, but yeah, the
step, but it's, it's not twiceas hard, it's multiple times.
Yeah, difficult and um, butyeah, I've got, I've got a great
photo at the end when I finishthat hundred it.
It's a great advert to showpeople why not to do a hundred
(37:06):
mile run.
I I look absolutely terrible init.
My whole face is is drained,drained of life at the at the
end of it.
But yeah, what?
Yeah, what an amazingachievement.
And if you imagine, imagine amarathon, it's like going, going
for a run, hitting hell andthen finishing the race in an
ultra marathon.
(37:27):
You'll hit hell, come out of it, hit it again.
Come out of it, hit it again.
Um, but it's again, it's.
It's repetition the more you doit, the more you used to it.
In 80 of it, I'd say about 80of it is is in the mind.
So I've, you know, I've gotlots of great friends who are
fantastic runners, but butsometimes you've got to go
(37:48):
through that hell to make sureyou know you're coming out the
other side.
William (37:54):
Well, I mean, doing anything for 36 hours, doing
anything for 20 hours or 15hours straight is like a really
long time to sit.
I can't even sit through amovie, you know it's crazy.
That's just a long time to bedoing something.
It's a huge, yeah, it's a hugemental.
It's kind of almost like I mean, doing that long of a run over
(38:15):
100 miles is almost like youknow what climbers you know want
to summit Everest.
You know it's a huge.
It's a big deal.
You have to condition, you haveto acclimate and there's so
much training and so much mentalthat goes into the whole thing.
Congratulations, that's prettyawesome.
Madoc (38:35):
Thank you.
I was hallucinating the secondnight I was seeing aliens, lion
faces on rocks, tree houses thatwere there.
It's crazy how your mind reactswhen it's had no sleep.
Eyvonne (38:49):
I feel like there's a how to prepare for digital
transformation story there.
It's like you know run 100miles and then you're ready.
Madoc (38:59):
Well, yeah, I suppose it builds up resistance to pain,
doesn't it?
That's right.
Yeah, you've got to pushthrough and get to the end.
William (39:07):
So which one is harder?
Harder digital transformationor that 100 miler?
Madoc (39:12):
definitely, definitely the 100 miler.
William (39:14):
Yeah, definitely, that's good, that's good to know
, yeah you don't need to run anultramarathon to do a
transformation yeah, well, matic, this has been a really
insightful conversation, a lotof good learned experiences and
just great advice and just agreat attitude and a great
approach to technology in in2025.
(39:35):
Um, we really appreciate, uh,your time.
Did you have anything else?
Avon, by the way?
Eyvonne (39:40):
good.
William (39:41):
No, I think this has been great awesome, yeah, so if
anybody wanted to find you, I'mgoing to link your
sessionessionize and yourLinkedIn in the show notes.
But if anybody wanted to findyou or connect, how can they
find you?
Madoc (39:54):
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn Again, sessionize as well.
And if anyone's at the AWSSummit at the end of this month,
I'll be there.
Come and say hi.
I'm also in San Diego in Junethe FinOpsX, so if you're over
in San Diegogo, um, yeah, loveto meet up and chat.
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