Cloud Reset – The Podcast | Episode 10: The Discipline Behind AI Success with Angela Fox
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Episode Summary:
In this episode of Cloud Reset, hosts Naran McClung and Jonathan Staff sit down with Angela Fox, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Dell Technologies Australia & New Zealand, to talk about AI transformation at scale, change leadership, and the mindset shifts organisations need to embrace right now.
Angela shares Dell’s journey of prioritising AI projects, why Australia’s pace of AI adoption needs to speed up, and how a strong data strategy underpins it all. She offers unique insight into what future-ready organisations look like, the importance of soft skills in an AI world, and how to lead through ambiguity and transformation.
Topics covered:
- How Dell narrowed hundreds of AI ideas down to 8 strategic initiatives
- Why change management is the hidden key to AI success
- What CIOs and CDOs really think about AI readiness
- Future infrastructure needs to support AI at scale
- The skills tomorrow’s top talent will need (hint: it’s not just tech)
Whether you’re a tech leader, business strategist, or curious about how AI is reshaping industries — this is a must-listen conversation.
Episode Transcript:
We’re back again. Here we go. Another episode, cloud Reset. I’m Naran McClung, the head of Azure and our consulting business. Who are you? I am Jonathan Staff Jono. What have you been up to? What’s been going on? Look, it’s been a pretty big week. Mm-hmm. And we’ve been deep diving into trying to figure out the answer to an age old question.
How do you find. The best salespeople for your business. Now, hang on a minute. Don’t you just drive a dump truck full of cash up to someone’s house? Somebody then gives you a call and says, I’m in. Isn’t that how it works? Look, occasionally you try that. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. Mm-hmm.
But we want to be more deliberate and be consistent, right? We’ve discovered two things. Mm-hmm. Some of our best salespeople didn’t even realise they were salespeople, right. And they were IT professionals. Waiting for somebody to help them become sales professionals. Yes. So we’re looking for them. And then the other best kind that are out there are the Formula one winning waste race car drivers.
Yes. Who haven’t found the right car to drive yet. I see. I reckon we’ve got the right car, so we’re on the hunt for them too. Alright, very good. So these are people with lived experience, with passion. They come from the right background, they can do a complex sale, a solution sale, et cetera. This is what we want and they may not realise.
Life in sales is perfect for them. That’s right. We’re gonna find a way to find them. Maybe they’re listening to this podcast. Maybe they are. Okay, excellent. Well, look, I’ve been doing a lot of work with our product and architecture team of late. We’re doing some wonderful things with Microsoft Fabric.
Super excited about that. Wasn’t supposed to talk about, I’m gonna talk about it. Anyway. The team, we’re doing wonderful things with live dashboards, taking feeds from our library of function apps that. Perform all sorts of automation across our managed Azure customers and they’re getting telemetry on performance and cost, et cetera.
I didn’t think fabric would be used that way for us, but it seems to be, um, pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, we talk about it. Anyway, that’s what the podcast is for. Yeah. Learn about it on one day. It’s on the podcast that afternoon. Fantastic. Uh, we got a great guest coming today, so can’t wait to get into it.
Let’s go.
All right. My absolute pleasure to introduce our next guest. She’s a passionate advocate for career success. Believing a person’s adaptability and openness to new challenges is key to progression. She heads up a wonderful organisation at the forefront. Of the AI industry in Australia and New Zealand, and actually across the world.
She joined that organisation in 2007 and has held many roles. Is currently in the role of SVP and managing director of Dell Technologies Australia, New Zealand. Welcome to Cloud Reset. Angela Fox. Thanks. Wonderful to be here. Angela, you’ve read a bit of a brief. You know what we’re doing today. We’re time travelers.
We’re fast forwarding five years into the future. AI is everywhere. It’s ingrained in our business. We’re serving our customers better before, but we’re here today to talk about how we got there and perhaps some of the practical advice that we could give our listeners to help them get there and put them on the part to success.
But probably the first interesting question to kick things off is five years. Too far into the future, maybe it’s not gonna take as long to reach the Promised land. How long’s it actually gonna take? Well, I think the number one question is what is the promised land? But, um, frankly, I don’t see it being a distant future.
Um, I think it’s already here and now it’s redefining industries. It’s driving innovation and has the potential to, you know, redefine business and society as a whole. So, to me, it’s here and now. Uh, it’s what we are gonna do over the next five, 10 years that’s really going to, um, I think blow our minds.
Interesting times indeed. Well, look, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We’re really grateful and lucky to have you. Dell Technologies is such a wonderful partner for us as well. So, um, we really, really enjoy our engagement Now, uh, I seem to remember in June last year, you spoke about the Australian market being in assessment mode when it came to AI and that we weren’t perhaps as bullish as other markets.
I remember Steven Worrall talked about the same thing not that long ago as well. Other markets, uh, around the world taking advantage of AI. Um. Six months on, if anything, what’s changed? What are you seeing today? Well, I’d still describe us as probably measured versus aggressive. I still think when you think back on our history and how, um, innovative we’ve been, and we’ve often been at the forefront of adopting new technologies, I still think we’ve probably.
A little bit cautious. So we are sort of seeing, we’re definitely seeing, um, interest peak and we’re, we’re starting to see people, um, make more moves. But I still think that in general, um, it’s slower than the pace of what we are seeing around the globe and across the region. So I think that’s. Both an opportunity and a threat for us.
I think we really need to be aware of that. Um, because when you think about how, um, AI has the potential to redefine, um, industry as a whole, I think it’s doing that on a global scale. So we can’t afford to be left behind. Um, it’s interesting. We do quite a work, a lot of work with adapt, um, and from a research perspective.
And they actually, um, did studies throughout last year and they’ve actually updated that with some CEO studies. At the beginning of this year, and what’s really interesting is, um, some of the stats coming out of that, I mean, still, um, I think it’s. Most organisations, um, remain quite cautious. Mm-hmm. So most organisations still don’t necessarily see themselves, um, as ready.
They’re neutral or lower in believing they’re ready for AI. Mm-hmm. Um, and if you extrapolate that and you. Look through the lens of the CIO. Um, nearly 50%, 47% of CIOs do not believe they’re ready to take advantage of AI. Now, that’s kind of a worrying statistic. It’s, it’s interesting. They’ve got, um, they’ve got AI in their goals and initiatives.
So many of them have actually, 📍 actually 70% of those, um, surveyed said that they actually have it as a priority. Yeah. So they’re going to spend more. On AI in, um, in this year. Um, but interesting enough, only 8% of their budget, right, was assigned to AI. So they might be gonna be spending more, but it’s all relative, isn’t it?
Like it’s going from a very low base. It’s coming from an extremely low base. Now, interesting enough, you sort of look at that through the lens of the CDO and they’re actually, um, they are more optimistic and they’re seeing themselves as being, um, more ready than their. I, their CIO colleagues. Um, and so that’s a good thing and probably gives us a lens that it’s not necessarily the IT shop that’s necessarily driving this, it is the business and the CDOs.
It is definitely being driven from a business application perspective. So, um, I think that is both. You know, it, it is an opportunity and a threat, as I said. I, I really think we need to up the pace and, uh, accelerate a little more. I could probably, I, I’ll just take a moment to reflect on our own journey, um, in Dell.
You know, when the whole Gen I a craze, uh, broke, you know, we had, um. We had an immediate interest across our business. Perhaps it’s because we are who we are. Uh, we are who we are. Um, Michael from the top is really, um, you know, driving it and very, very interested in the role that AI’s gonna play in redefining, um.
Not only our industry, but any industry. And so, you know, we had this proliferation of, um, of AI projects and what was really important for us as a company was to take stock of that and actually determine very, very quickly, um, the focus areas of where we were gonna focus from an AI perspective in our company.
Everybody, you know, there were so many people in, everybody wanted to do their AI project and what was really critical for us was to actually step back and actually think about, and we actually distilled it down to eight key focus, um, projects that we were gonna drive across the company. And interesting enough.
We were tying that to four key areas in our business that we believed were our strategic, um, areas, our strategic differentiation. And so, you know, we reconciled as a company that there was four key areas that were really gonna make a difference to our success, our ability to serve our customers. And that was, um, supply chain.
Mm-hmm. Um, our overall go to market model, um, our engineering and, and product capability and our services. And so as a result of that, every project that came through the filter was looked at through the lens of what and, and importantly what was the ROI of any one of those projects. Yeah. So they had to return an ROI, they had to be related to those key four areas in our business in order to, you know.
Get the rubber stamp to even have a chance. Mm. And so, um, you know, sort of fast forward, you talked about, you know, well, how much people achieved within what timeframe for ourselves within a very short timeframe. Uh, we’ve chosen the low hanging fruit in those areas that have got a clear business case that delivers value.
And, um, for us that’s been in the services area. Um, so next best action is an initiative in our services, um, area. And that’s all about, uh, the engineers for us taking calls and, you know, using AI guidance to determine what’s the next best action and that’s delivered, um, a 10% reduction in time to resolve a call.
And so, yeah, I like that, you know, that’s be better customer satisfaction. Mm-hmm. Uh, better outcomes, um, better efficiency of the, of the, you know, employees that we’ve got. Um, and then the other area for us that’s, you know, showing really good ROI early is, um, just the whole coding area, so mm-hmm.
Assistance around coding. It’s really interesting to get your perspective because we, we’ve had a few different types of business leaders come on and sort of. Uh, talk about their approach mm-hmm. For their own business. Uh, one of the things that Naran and I spoke about actually recently with Peter James, the chairman of our business, and he’s, you know, heads up of a couple of other organisations as well.
We were talking about as a tech company, maybe perhaps having the luxury. Of having, um, smart, sort of gifted people who have no shortage of crazy ideas of how to, you know, make a difference in our business with this technology and, uh, and how we’re actively seeking out those mad scientists and nurturing them, but establishing some guardrails that they can operate in so that we can get focused on the ROI.
Um. You’ve got a different problem. You’ve probably got like so much of that you’ve had to create a filter. Like it’s not just guardrails, but Dell operating at scale. I can only imagine, you know, in our own business, 500 people, people are queuing up with the next greatest idea. Multiply that out by how many.
Thousands of people at Dell. Um, you’ve had to create a different kind of filter. Yeah. I guess. Um, what’s important though is that you don’t kill the enthusiasm. That’s right. Balance. I mean, I think how do you get balance in any size business? You know, you, you wanna be looking for those crazy ideas. ’cause some of those crazy ideas are gonna be the ideas that redefine your business model or, so, you know, we have an intake process and um, and.
What’s the most important thing, as I said, has been, it has to tie to one of those key strategic areas, the four pillars, the four areas where we know are gonna deliver material value to basically our outcome as a company, or importantly, the outcome for our clients. Yep. And um, but no idea is a bad idea.
That’s right. It’s just, it’s just then distilling through all those ideas and saying, okay, we’re gonna focus on this one. It’s got legs, it’s gonna deliver value. And, um, moving on from there. Look, I know within our own business, Jono, we talked about that, the mad scientists and having the, the good fortune to offer the free cycles for them to test and do POCs and that lived experience, um, taking an opinion that they may have read about, seen online, et cetera, and turning that into.
Um, real world experience. I know that’s gonna shape all the other future projects that we run internally. And I’m just, I’m grateful as a business, as I’m sure you are, that we afford them the time to do it and to play around and to test and to do so safely. Of course. Um, it’s really gonna drive heaps more initiative within our business going forward.
And as think, you know, outside the really large organisations out there, um, that POC concept is actually part of the journey for your employees around learning. As well. That’s right. You know, that we talk about the caution. How do you take the caution out? How do you um, you know, it’s through awareness.
It’s through hands-on experience. And so, you know, I’ve engaged with a few customers who are considering, um, using POCs and they’re not only viewing it as an opportunity to play with the technology and get their team more familiar with the technology, um, but they’re also using it as a training vehicle.
Yeah, that’s right. It’s a, it’s a really important aspect of it. Park back to the comment you made around CIOs and confidence. Um, and I just think about data platform, data governance, and every business. I think within Australia wrestling with, you know, what state is my data in my data platform and am I even in a position to embrace generative AI?
And there’s just so much to consider there. We’re all supposed to be data domain custodians now and thinking about the classification of our data, et cetera. And it’s just such a quagmire for every business to get its head around. But I think just the emergence of all the data platform projects we’re running Jono I think.
organisations realise that they need to do it. I mean, you mentioned it is a priority. It’s obviously gonna become an increasing priority. Um, so these are fluid times. Yeah, I think that’s right. The, uh, a lot of organisations I speak to are quickly realising they’ve probably been under invested in that space for a long time, and now they’re in a race to catch up, to build the foundations, to adopt this technology in a way that’s gonna deliver an ROI, but also keep their business safe.
Absolutely. At the same time. And perhaps that’s how that’s playing out, that tension that you’re describing, the adapt research between the CIO and the, and the execs mm-hmm. Of a business. They wanna move fast. Yep. Maybe the, whoa, just put the brakes on a little bit. We’re kind of, we need to get our house in order first.
There’s a bit of this playing out in the market at the moment. Absolutely. Um, do you see anything else holding us back in terms of confidence market confidence adoption in Australia, Angela? Um, there definitely was, um, insights through that study as well that, um, the people are still sort of working out what is the regulatory framework going to be, and so there’s still a little bit of cautious around that potentially being a barrier until they’ve got that clarity.
So the risk and, and, um, regulatory sort of frameworks. Um, and I think. You know, I think it goes without saying, but I think we’re all very, very mindful of this needs to be done in a safe, secure, um, ethical way. Um, and I think that’s an area where as that starts to become more obvious across our nation, I think, you know, that’s gonna be a concern that potentially is, um, acting as a barrier today that might fall away.
Yeah. Right. Okay. All right. Regulations. I think that’s on everybody’s mind, EV. Everybody’s talking about that. Look, if you’re a betting woman and you’re spotting a business, that’s gonna be way out in front in five years time. What are you looking for? What are the kinds of decisions they might be making?
How might they be behaving? Where are they putting their big bets? Well, as I said earlier, I think it’s really important that you know the problem you’re solving. So, and I think that is a question on the, on the people’s mind that is still sitting on the fence. They’re sort of, well, what problem is AI solving?
Um, but I think you hit on it in saying that at the core of this. You need to focus on your data strategy. Yeah. You know, you don’t have AI without data. That’s right. We’ve all been talking about data. I mean, in our business we talk about data all the time. The storage of it, um, you know, the, the protection of it, the retrieval of it.
Um, and that is really critical. So, um, I think that is foundational. Uh, I think then you need to think about, um, how, what are you going to. How are you going to adopt an open ecosystem? ’cause I think the one thing we know about AI is. The, the pace of change is incredible. Yeah. Um, you know, there is, there are new, um, language models.
There are new, um, entrance into this whole AI world occurring every day, every week. And they have the potential to have a profound impact. They really do. They do. And, and therefore you wanna think about how you’re setting yourself up to be future proofed. Yeah. Um, and so I think that open ecosystem is really important.
And I think the other element is, um. Invest in long term infrastructure. So think about how, once again, um, the need may not be as obvious right now, but those investments you’re making now, because I believe the pace of change is going to be so significant. You wanna be thinking about how you’re future proofing, um, yourself from an overall infrastructure perspective as well.
Yeah, look, it’s an incredibly, um, iterative process and we’ve reflected on this before, a number of our own internal projects. The team would be working away that they’ve got a, an agentic architecture. Two words. I never thought I’d string together, but there we go. Indeed. Um, and each agent was essentially bound to a unique data source.
One week they’re working with one model, the next week’s, another model. Mm-hmm. And it just so happens to be a model that lends itself better to that data source and the type of questions. And the team had to be open to that. They had to be prepared to flex and change on a dime. Um, and I can’t imagine that that solution’s gonna remain static either.
I think it’s gonna iterate probably every week, every month it’s gonna change, and we’re gonna get better and better results as new models are released to market. And the fact that they’re open source as well means that we get our hands on them. Absolutely. And we can, we can play around with this stuff, right?
So yeah, like. I don’t remember. I don’t recall a project internally that was so fluid. Normally when we start projects, we’ve got a plan, we execute. There’s a bit of change here and there, and we, we largely execute to plan this stuff. It’s being thought of in real time, always. I think it’s like redefining agile.
It really is. Yeah. Is there another word for like super agile? Yeah. So, I dunno. Yeah, perhaps that’s that a newly coined phrase. There you go. But in terms of where it’s all going, uh, it is, and I’m gonna ask you this question I ask every guest that comes on the podcast, this question is one of general intelligence.
Um, allegedly we’re all heading there. Is it five years from now? Is it three years from now? Um, are we’re already there? Are, well, are we already there and domain specific, general intelligence, is that such a thing? Probably not. But AGI. It’s on everybody’s mind. When are we gonna get there? Are we gonna get there?
And, uh, if only had a crystal ball, um, I’d be probably a wealthy woman. Mm-hmm. So, um, I, I’m not quite sure. Mm-hmm. Um, and some of the, the most learned, uh, people in the field aren’t quite sure either, just how long it’s gonna take. Um, some think probably still five to 10 years. Um, I think that what we have to ground ourselves in is that AI is a transformational.
You know, force and it’s going to redefine everything we do and how we do it. And so, um, what’s really important is irrespective of when that time is, it’s that we are really engaging with AI, you know, being highly inquisitive, taking that journey, determining not only as businesses, but even, you know, individuals in our.
In our personal lives, um, just determining how we are going to interact, engage, and, and really see the true value of AI. Um, and you know, I think what’s the, the reality is that, um, we used to coin this phrase a few years ago and I remember, um, you talking to the, um, human machine partnership. I think the reality is you are gonna see this amazing collaboration Mm.
Um, between technology and people. Um, just where and how and when exactly that’s gonna come to its full potential. I mean, is there ever, is there gonna be a full potential? I mean, well, that’s the big question. I mean, it’s, it’s evolving. So quickly. Um, the full potential apparently is to jump from general intelligence to super intelligence and God help us, God help us, God help us.
Um, look, it, it harks me back Jono to that, that really insightful comment from Peter James, um, last week where he talked about, um, hiring staff who are looking after AI agents, right? So the agent farmer or whatever. Mm-hmm. Whatever terminology we wanted to lend that. But imagine that where you’ve got someone in your business whose job it is to manage.
Essentially general intelligence or thereabouts. Yeah, I think it’s gonna redefine, um, redefine what people’s jobs look like. Uh, there’s gonna be new fields. Absolutely. You know, some jobs are gonna disappear, but I think it’s gonna create a, a lot of new jobs. And, uh, you know, we we’re, we’re having conversations like this with lots of different guests from all walks of life, but I think overwhelmingly.
You know, the view from the tech industry is that these developments are a net positive for humanity, and you talk to that really nice term, that human machine partnership. I think we’re gonna see that make huge, uh, a huge difference in all sorts of fields like education. Uh, Peter on the last guest was talking about the democratisation of knowledge.
Mm. And the breaking down of hierarchies in society. Mm. I think that’s very interesting. The implications in healthcare mm-hmm. Are very interesting. And to your point, we may not even know when we’ve arrived at General intelligence. Mm. What does that actually look like? Will we ever get there? Mm. I think it’s just going to get better and better.
Yeah. I think, I do think it does. Highlight, um, we talk a lot about it, um, in the industry about, you know, the digital divide becomes even more important for us to address when you think about democratisation and ensuring that as many people in society can benefit from. Um, you know, the developments and the advances that this is gonna drive.
So I think, you know, that’s something for us to all have in our conscience in the back of our mind. I think that’s right. Absolutely.
And look, getting back to the tech that’s powering all this, because, um, obviously that’s the business that Dell’s in. Absolutely. So I’m sure you’ve got some insights for us. Uh, everybody’s talking about how hungry AI is mm-hmm. For compute and storage and power and water and cooling. What kind of infrastructure investments are essential to make this a reality at scale?
I. Well, of course you’ve gotta have that compute power that underlies us. So, you know, the, the GPU powered servers are, are really what is driving these AI models. And really when you look across the world, the initial adoption, um, at scale that we’ve seen is this sort of GPU as a service providers and, and just the, the impact that they’re having in, in, um, in driving those large language models.
Um, clearly you. You need to, you talk about data. Mm. You know, you have to behind that compute power. Um, you also need to have scalable storage. Mm. Um, so you need to be thinking about, you know, how all this data you’re generating, how are you storing it? Where are you storing it? Um, how are you keeping it?
You know, you touched on it before, how are you keeping it secure and safe? The privacy elements, all those things that are part of an ethical, um, sort of, um, application of ai. Um. I think the other thing, and this is, this is fast happening but we haven’t yet seen it at scale, is, um, you know, edge and hybrid cloud.
Um, you know, the reality is you need flexibility. Um, we use the term you need to bring, um, the, you need to bring the compute. To the data, not take the data to the compute Sure. Or the storage or, or whatever element it might be. Um, and you know, what we believe is that very, very quickly you’re gonna see these models, um, at the edge, um, and you’re gonna see them not only, um, in sort of edge solutions, but you’re gonna see them on devices.
So, you know, people think, you know, there’s a lot of discussion at the moment about, um, the win 11. Um, upgrade and, and the path to win 11 upgrades. And so what we say to people is, you know, when I go back to that statement I said about investing for the future, you know, you might not think you need an AI PC today, but it could be a very short time before you do need one.
When some of these models, some of these agents are actually at the edge, they’re actually running on the pc, makes perfect sense in front of you. So, yeah. Um, you know, and look, there’s. There’s examples, you know, I guess. What’s important also is that this is not something that’s futuristic. We talked about that at the beginning.
Um, this is happening here and now, and, you know, there’s nothing more exciting than the F1 story for us with McLaren. You know, these, you know, there, there are real examples of incredible compute power, um, massive, um, amounts of data being generated and split. Second decisions being made, you know, in real time.
And that’s all done with. You know, this underlying infrastructure and, and the share, share, um, capability of it. I haven’t even thought too much about that. How much, um, how much compute power does it take to, for a Formula One car to go faster? Lots. Lots of GPUs. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, the applications are everywhere, isn’t it?
They are. Yeah, they are. And you, you talked about the health applications. They’re super exciting about how they’re gonna redefine healthcare. I saw a really good demonstration by Microsoft. Um, it was only a few weeks ago now. It was an Azure demonstration. It was, um. Uh, put in the frame of, uh, a punter like myself who’s sitting in front of a website and you get asked, Hey, would you like some assistance with one of those bot services?
Now, most of the time when that happens, I definitely don’t want help. Mm-hmm. Because I’m probably not gonna get the answer that I want from that little thing that clippy like bot services, that’s badgering me away in the bottom right hand corner. The example given by Microsoft was, uh, the adoption of what they call performance throughput units.
Mm-hmm. And I said, now just bear with me here. Right? Here’s the example of with and without performance throughput units. And the difference was the speed of response in getting the information out of the model. Mm-hmm. And it was possibly the difference of me getting frustrated or not. Right. It was measured in milliseconds.
One conversation flowed and was snappy. The other one was sort of question pause. Question pause. Mm-hmm. And maybe just that one difference there is enough to stave off someone as impatient as myself who’s working on a website. I don’t know. Um, but it was an interesting example nonetheless. Um, yeah, let’s, so you talk about that using AI and.
You know, GPU and high performance compute to fine tune. Yep. Those outcomes like a Formula One car, like how many sales you might make on your website this month. Like the, everything I think is gonna just get faster, faster, and faster than we’ve ever seen before. Well, faster you go. It’s, and you know, you, you’re talking about, um.
You know, at the end of the day, that’s all about customer experience. Right. It’s all about, you know, so those that get it right will differentiate themselves in the sense of who you are attracted to. Exactly. Um, you know, we talk about it also in the context of the application for our sales force. Mm-hmm.
How, you know. Enormous amounts of information. How do we actually enable our team to get access to that information in a fast way that brings it together in a logical way that then allows them to engage with their customers in a, you know, in a new and improved way. It’s that urgency and intimacy that drives everything.
Exactly. So taking, you know, a lot of the things that we sort of, we. We do today, but you sort of superpower it. Yeah.
So it’s funny you should mention sales ’cause Jono and I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how we attract talent to our business. Absolutely. And we think about the, the type of attributes we’re looking for with the usual influencing skills in a strategic mindset, et cetera. And um, you know, that classic, would I buy from you?
Are you engaging, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And it does make us wonder with. What great technologies are gonna look like in the age of ai? Uh, what kind of skills or mindset shifts? Mindset shifts, sorry, will be critical for them to succeed. So. You know, I think, um, I shared the opportunity last week. Um, I was at a, um, leadership meeting and we had the opportunity to hear from Ethan 📍 Mollick.
And Ethan is a professor of, um, management at Wharton, and he’s actually one of the top 100, um, influences in AI globally. And he coined this phrase, which I thought was, was pretty cool, which was HR is your R&D. And so people are essential. Mm-hmm. So I think there’s a lot of, you know, um, probably concern in some quarters around, well, what does this mean?
Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, I, when I think about. Um, what’s required and when I think about, um, what are the skills that are going to be needed, I think about sometime a, a lot of the soft skills. Mm. And I don’t think, I think that it’s gonna be the balance with that we, you know, some skills which we may have needed in the past aren’t going to need to be, um, utilized as much with the advance and assistance of ai.
But, you know. It, we’ve always talked about the need to be adaptable and agile. Um, dealing with ambiguity. I mean, I, I think all of those things couldn’t be more true in this environment. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, you think about continuous learning, I think possibly. We’ve talked a lot over time about, um, you know, how people differentiate themselves ’cause they’re curious and they’re continuously learning.
But I think probably the current time we’re in probably puts us all challenges, us all, frankly. And those that are curious and continuously putting themselves out there, making themselves uncomfortable, um, learning are gonna start to differentiate themselves. Yeah. Um, and you know, I think, um. You think about the core attributes, you know, ethical, you, you want ethical people in your business.
Yes. Um, I think that. Needs to be at the forefront Yes. Of this whole discussion around ai. So, you know, people, um, staying true to those values. Mm. Um, along the way. Um, and, you know, having a vision, you know, what is your vision? How is, how are you going to draw on, you know, wonderful minds around you to determine what, how your vision might need to evolve.
Um, so you know, many of those character, they’re not. Unique because AI’s in the mix, but I think they’re gonna continue to be really important. That’s right.
Hi Angela. My name is Jarvis. I’m a solutions engineer at Macquarie Cloud Services and a graduate of the HMC. What advice would you give me as someone wanting to develop and accelerate my career in ai? Well, Jarvis, that is a really good question in the current environment, isn’t it? Um, well, what they say is the, um, the highest paid, the most, um, creative and the most educated are going to probably be the most at risk.
So think about that. And, um, that probably sends, you know, shivers through a lot of people’s spines. But, um, I think the reality is that, um. It’s never been more exciting time, uh, change is gonna be the ever present. So while I think draw on the skills and the experience that you bring to any job, um, what I’d say is I actually think soft skills are gonna be critically important.
So I would focus on the EQ as well as the IQ. Um, because to me that is what’s going to potentially start to, you know, you talk about, and we talked earlier in this discussion about the, the human machine. Interaction and partnership. Um, you know, you’ve gotta really think about, well, what is it about me that’s actually gonna be unique going forward?
How can I have a positive, um, impact on that partnership? So I wouldn’t underestimate all those, uh, fantastic soft skills that I think will start to differentiate people. Thanks Angela. I know Jarvis will be really grateful for your advice and I know we’ve got a lot of other grad and I’m sure there’s a lot of other people at the start of their careers, uh, listening to that.
I think you’re right, that human machine partnership EQ is gonna be the thing that differentiates the high performing employee of the future. It’s already so important in business. I think it’s just gonna be amplified. More than ever. Um, so great advice, and look, we’re heading into the segment now. It’s our quickfire questions, right?
Okay. So,
uh, I’m gonna hit you with the first one. Pretty straightforward. What does a managed service provider, maybe like Macquarie Cloud Services, but there’s lots of us out there, what does a managed service provider look like five years from today? Well, I think, um, it’s probably building on what you already do, but you’re gonna be continuously changing.
You’re gonna need to be adapting. Um, you’re going to be, need to be pro, you know, proactive and um, predictive. Um, I think those sorts of offerings and how you integrate AI into your business is, has the opportunity to differentiate you. So if to date is any example, I think, you know. It’s the culture of embracing change, um, and, you know, continuously developing, evolving your model.
Um, I think at the core of that is still going to be, um, the concerns around cybersecurity. And so your capability to address concerns around, uh, privacy, security are gonna continue to be critical. So I really think it’s, um. Building on the things you have and just, and then using AI to change the experience of how you deliver the outcome to your customers.
I think that’s spot on. I mean, if I look at the projects we’ve delivered so far, we’re all about cost and risk. Mm-hmm. I remember speaking to my illustrious leader, James about this, and I said, listen, whatever we build internally, can we please just industrialise this so that we can, um. Give the IP away to our customers.
Mm-hmm. Right? We should be able to take them on a journey and, and help to deliver a lived experience for our customers. If that can be off the back of our efforts with the luxury of Free Cycles and the mad scientists to drive out those initiatives, I can’t think of a better way to deliver value to our customers.
So I can see us doing a lot of that. Yeah. I mean, it’s almost anticipating your customer’s needs before they even know them. Mm. Indeed. And, you know, there’s, there’s a huge opportunity to do that. We talk about waiting, waiting for the wave to hit. Maybe the, our customers are, but I think it would do well for a modern MSP to be adopting more of a build it and they will come strategy.
Yep. As opposed to the other way around. Indeed. But I, I’ll pick up on that word build. Um, the question though is. And this is something once again, we’ve really reflected on as a business is, um, what do you need to build versus what can you take off the shelf? Sure. Yeah. You know, in the sense of you’ve gotta integrate whatever that is into your business model and different, make it differentiated.
Um, but I think that’s another aspect when you think about the pace of change that I think is going, AI’s going to drive. Yeah. I think, um, you know, the concept of. People building their own technology and large language models and, and coming up with what they think is the perfect solution. By the time they’ve come up with it, somebody else has come along with a, a better solution.
We, we spoke about that with Peter. Mm-hmm. Um, Peter James, our chairman on I think what, uh, the last episode. Mm-hmm. And that was that not invented here syndrome. Mm-hmm. Right. And boards being on the lookout for that. Like, what are the commercial off the shelf things that we can integrate? How do we lean into partnerships?
Absolutely. You know, to accelerate and go fast. You don’t have to invent everything yourself. No, absolutely. And it’s almost impossible to be an expert. Mm. Uh, at scale in, in this, in this space when you’re trying to serve your customers. Look, I’m partnerships, I’m hoping similar to our, our security analysts, our SOC analysts.
I’m always encouraged when they talk about the communities that they’re part of. We didn’t ask them to do that either. Absolutely, they took it on themselves. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if we can share ideas around gendered AI the same way? Yeah, abso and that’s a point I’d make, I think, um, in the business community and in the industry, um, you know, it’s, let’s share our learnings along the way.
Yeah. There is nothing to be, you know, yes there is, you know, you’re gonna competitively differentiate yourself potentially from your competitors, but I think we are all learning, and the more that we can do to share those learnings together, I think, um, is, you know, we are in a point of time where that can be highly powerful as well.
Speaking of powerful, Angela, so. Do you foresee potentially having some new roles in your leadership team, let’s say five years from today? Or perhaps existing roles doing different things? Mm-hmm. What might change? I think it depends the leadership team that you are leading. Mm. Um, I think if I were, look at that through the lens of the corporation as a whole.
Absolutely. I think, um, there is going to be. A lot of change. Um, I do think that there is going to be automation that, uh, changes existing roles within an organisation. Um, and I think there is going to be the need for, um, a lot more data scientists and, and skilled resources in certain areas. Um, and I think, you know, I think you touched on this, Jono, but I think there’s roles that we don’t even.
Haven’t even imagined yet that are going to emerge, um, leading, if I think of it through the lens of leading a sales organisation, um, I think, you know, what’s the role of a salesperson gonna be in the future? Sure. Um, and I think that. You’ll always need somebody selling your product. But I think that salespeople need to really think about how they’re going to evolve and change with the tools that they’re gonna have available to them.
Um, so that concept of, you know, continuous learning, adapting, um, I think the more open that all of us can be to, to not having a preconceived view of what a role we do today might look like in the future. Yeah. ’cause I think every role across an organisation is gonna be changed. Look, I think that’s really interesting.
I know that, uh, we’re rolling out a, a raft of new gen AI driven capability for our sales teams, for our account executives. Absolutely. It’s gonna be interesting to see how it changes their day to day and will it inform the type of people we hire going forward, empowered with so much rich information, all delivered in real time.
Being able to plan your day, not just on the drive in. You come in, you look at a dashboard, you know exactly what to hone in on. Does that mean that we’ll end up hiring different people? Jono, are they different people that can be data driven that way? Yeah. It’s uh, it’s a perfect segue into the next question, right?
And that is how would one go about spotting, attracting and retaining the smartest talent looking ahead into the future? Their business is about to change. Is the way we attract talent going to change? I think so, and I think, um, when you think back to the comments that you just made, um, you know, people are gonna need to be open to change.
They’re gonna be, need to be open to doing things differently. Um, I think they’re gonna want to join, which is probably no different today. They’re gonna want to join vibrant organisations, um, that, uh. Potentially at the forefront of driving change, um, particularly in our industry. I think they, they’ll wanna be part of, of, I think, something that’s transformational in our, in our, um, lifetime.
Um, but once again, I’ve come back to some of the core things as well. I think they are gonna want to work for ethical organisations. They’re gonna want to work for organisations who, while the roles may change, care about their people. And, um, are interested in taking them on the journey because if you think about the comments you made about, um, you know, how the life of a salesperson might change.
Mm. Um, one of the comments that I’d make is, you know, I’ve got some amazing salespeople, they’ll need to change how they do their job. Yes. And the question is, are they prepared to change? Yes. And the question is, um. How prepared are they to live with ambiguity when there might be ambiguity? Um, you know, I don’t think we can underestimate the change management required on this journey.
Um, because people, you know, people are creatures of habit. Yep. They’ve done things a certain way. And so to relearn that is really important. So I actually think, um, what will define an organisation and in attracting the best talent is a lot around people. A lot around your people strategy, um, how you retain that talent, how you continue to develop that talent, um, and really what you stand for.
I think what you stand for is so important. Be a business that people wanna work for. Absolutely. Right. Which you could say that’s the case today, but perhaps it becomes even more important when you think of that ethical element and how you, how. organisations will create that amazing mix of, of, you know, machine technology partnership.
Look, John, I know you are the same as me ’cause we spend too much time throughout the day talking about this stuff, but the technology just fuels our imagination. Absolutely. Yeah. And I’m sure it’s the same imagine Absolutely. In your organisation. It, it just, it, we just find ourselves constantly thinking up new use cases and things that the technology can lend itself to.
And with everything that we deploy within our own business. Um. I think most people are embracing and are excited about how it’s gonna change their day to day. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Angela, fantastic chat. Thank you so much for coming on Cloud Reset. That’s a wrap and uh, I know our listeners will have gotten a lot out of that.
Looking forward to the next one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks very much for the opportunity. What a great chat with Angela Fox, Managing Director of Dell. How cool was that? Yeah, I think it’s great. You know, we’re getting so many different perspectives in this series. Obviously Angela’s running a pretty large tech product company at the forefront of building some of these platforms Yep.
That are enabling, uh, this technology. It was great to hear her perspective on, uh, a bunch of topics, but I did get a few surprise, some surprises there that I wasn’t expecting. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, um, one of them, I didn’t, I didn’t expect Angela to be bringing up the, the change management piece of all of this interesting point, particularly how it relates to people, you know, and we’ve all been talking as business leaders about turning on this technology and being faster and better and all the rest.
But what about the people in our organisation who have to interact? With that technology, how do we enable them to do their jobs differently? Yep. How do we help them embrace new ways of working and, and I haven’t really heard many people double click on that. So that was an interesting perspective from Angela.
Look, the working hypothesis Jono, is that we’re gonna roll this stuff out. Everybody’s gonna enjoy being data driven. We’re gonna put unbelievable telemetry in real time in front of, I know our account execs, for example, they’re gonna have all the things necessary. They’re gonna be measured from top to bottom.
My working assumption is that they’re gonna love that and change adoption for us is gonna be widespread acceptance. Maybe that’s not the case, potentially not. But you know, really interesting perspective, especially with um, Angela and her leadership team truly doing this at scale. Very large organisation.
Yeah. Awesome. Awesome to have. Adele, such an important strategic partner for us. That’s a wrap on the episode. As always, we will encourage everybody to please subscribe. You’re gonna find our podcast anywhere you find podcasts at Spotify. YouTube will be plastered all over LinkedIn. Obviously there’s a transcript as well, so get it where you can.
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