“Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are increasingly expected to leverage AI to drive growth, innovation, and automation, while Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) face new threats and must prioritize integrating security into AI development and deployment.”
Hi Jeff, welcome to our Interview Series. Please tell us a little bit about your role and responsibilities at Rackspace. How did you arrive at the company?
I am Chief Technology Evangelist at Rackspace Technology and am fanatical about helping people and organizations be more successful with cloud-based services and technologies. I first arrived at Rackspace in 2008, as a SharePoint Architect, and over the last decade, my role in the company has evolved tremendously.
I spent time as Chief Technology Officer and I’m now Chief Technology Evangelist, where I deliver cloud-based solutions and strategic counsel to clients on how to get the most out of their transformation projects.
With the massive proliferation of AI ML in the IT landscape, could you tell us more about the changing expectations from CIOs and CISOs?
CIOs are increasingly expected to leverage AI to drive growth, innovation, and automation, while CISOs face new threats and must prioritize integrating security into AI development and deployment.
Both roles require balance: CIOs must embrace AI without neglecting security and CISOs must prioritize security while simultaneously leveraging AI to fight threats.
It also means that these two roles must work closer together than ever before to deliver innovative and secure solutions.
Your latest IT Outlook Report 2024 identifies the ascent of Edge Computing as a major trend. Could you highlight how IT teams should plan their transition to Edge in 2024?
Our 2024 IT Oulook survey results found that edge computing, private cloud, and public cloud adoption will increase over the next 12 months. To me, the growing focus on the edge and private cloud indicates that we are seeing organizations migrate more of their critical workloads out of their own data centers and are adopting a more sophisticated, truly multi-cloud approach that spans edge, private cloud, and public cloud.
Top Insights:
Maturing Cyber Defenses on the 2024 Horizon
How are you preparing for the gen AI evolution and Edge evolution at Rackspace yourself? Any key milestones from 2023 that you would like to share with the IT leaders?
In 2023, we launched Foundry for AI by Rackspace (FAIR), a groundbreaking global practice dedicated to accelerating the secure, responsible, and sustainable adoption of generative AI solutions across industries. The initiative is focused on accelerating the pragmatic and secure use-case-based adoption of generative AI in businesses across all industries.
Under the FAIR platform, over 500 use cases have been identified across multiple industries, and several first-of-a-kind implementations across the globe are under development. Rackspace is also leading the industry in helping public cloud customers adopt a more distributed cloud via edge technology available from those same public cloud providers as well as Dell.
The success of any modern-day cloud migration and modernization strategy depends on the ability to tackle security, compliance, and governance risks. Can generative AI capabilities help CIOs and other IT stakeholders overcome these challenges?
Yes, generative AI absolutely has a critical role to play in mitigating security, compliance, and governance risks. This includes automating threat detection, mapping compliance, and optimizing resource usage.
Please tell us more about the regulatory framework required to manage AI and ML models in InfoSec. For instance, how can AI regulation influence the adoption of end-to-end multi-cloud technology services capabilities for more preventative security measures?
AI is at its best when it is helping people accomplish their business goals. This includes keeping data safe in ways that meet regulatory compliance. So, look at this challenge from two angles: first, AI helps deliver the security that business requires and are mandated to follow, and second, AI helps measure if those controls are in keeping with the required regulatory mandates.
Information security is influencing the adoption of end-to-end mult-icloud technology for preventative security. Organizations can harness diverse tools for explainable models, distribute data security, and achieve real-time threat monitoring.
What kind of infrastructure does a financial services organization need to match the demands of digital transformation? Could you share some use cases from the financial services industry specifically mentioning your differentiated products and services?
To thrive in today’s digital landscape, financial services organizations need their data housed in an infrastructure that’s scalable and secure. This means embracing multi-cloud.
The benefits of multicloud infrastructure include:
- Taking advantage of public cloud scalability for applications with heavy or unpredictable traffic
- Using edge computing technologies for applications requiring low latency
- Deploying business-critical applications on a private cloud to ensure security and control — all within a connected, multi-cloud environment
- Establishing multi-cloud security for data and applications
These types of solutions enable Rackspace customers like Moody’s Analytics to modernize its data streaming and aggregation infrastructure to support the ever-increasing number of inputs, Brooks Macdonald delivers a coherent technology strategy to accommodate greater needs that stemmed from tremendous growth while bolstering security and helping Plus500 evolve their trading platform to be truly multi-cloud to support their own growth.
Your take on the future of AI-driven cloud journeys in 2024:
A lot of what occurred in 2023 was experimentation by companies to “test the business value” of AI. Excellent case studies have emerged and so much was learned this past year that I believe 2024 will be the year where AI becomes a first-class resource to companies. With the emergence of “co-pilots” (digital employees), I think we can also view 2024 as the year where AI becomes a full-fledged employee of many companies.
Lighter notes:
Burn the midnight candle or soak in the sun?
Soak in the sun. High performance at work only comes when the batteries are recharged (and apparently, mine are solar)!
Coffee, or Tea?
BOTH!
Home-roasted, hand-grown, and brewed cup-by-cup coffee in the morning and Tea in the evening to help wind down.
Your favorite Rackspace product marketing initiative that you want everyone to know about?
I host a weekly LiveStream on LinkedIn called Cloud Talk Live and have the opportunity to interview some of the brightest and nicest people in tech.
First memorable experience in your career as an IT and security ops leader?
It’s hard to remember the good things – the bad ones tend to stick out. My memories go back to when I was managing a data center for a national ISP and there were “issues” with a mail server.
One thing you remember about your employee (s):
While it’s easy to remember what brought about a bad system event – it’s even easier to remember the heroics your amazing employees go to in order to return that system to service. One SharePoint admin once made a big mistake on a customer server. We worked together to return it to service and use it as a chance to learn, build up, and not tear down. This incident happened over a decade ago and he still remembers that as a positive experience.
Most useful app that you currently use:
AI… of course!
It is the greatest catalyst for creativity that I’ve seen. It helps me get over the initial inertia I feel when starting a new project and gets the team moving forward.
Read More: ITechnology Interview with Charles Fan, Co-Founder at MemVerge
Thank you, Jeff! That was fun and we hope to see you back on CIO Influence soon.
Recommended:
CIO Influence Interview with Karl Mattson, Field CISO at Noname Security
[To participate in our interview series, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]
Jeff DeVerter is the Chief Technology Evangelist at Rackspace Technology, an end-to-end, multi-cloud technology services provider.
He has 25 years of experience in IT and technology and has worked at Rackspace Technology for almost 15 years. DeVerter is a proven strategic leader who has helped insurers create and execute against multi-year digital transformation strategies.
During his time at Rackspace Technology, DeVerter has launched and managed many of the products and services that Rackspace Technology offers, as well as supporting merger and acquisition activities to enhance those offerings.
Rackspace Technology is a leading end-to-end hybrid, multicloud technology services company. We design, build and operate our customers’ cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model.
We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.
