Ep 43 – Telco's Pinball Wizard: Neil McRae

This week’s guest

Neil McRae

Managing Director & Chief Architect BT

British Telecom (BT) is the oldest telco in the world. I’ve been eager to feature the company on my podcast, and I got my wish when I ran into BT Chief Architect, Neil McRae, at TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders World Forum in England. We sat down to talk about BT’s cloud transformation and vision for 2030. Listen now to hear our conversation about:

• Which workloads the company is moving [6:15];
• Its strategy for working with hyperscalers [7:36]; and
• How it’s preparing its workforce for cloud transformation [11:59].

Anyone who knows Neil knows that he’s a pinball fanatic, so we started our conversation talking about his passion and the pinball tournaments he holds to raise funds for the National Autistic Society [01:46]. Check out related links in the resources section below.

Here’s a video clip from my conversation with Neil:

Links and Resources

• Check out BT’s announcements about what it’s doing with clouds:
  • BT signs five-year agreement with AWS as preferred cloud provider for internal applications to accelerate its digital transformation
  • BT selects Google Cloud as strategic partner for group-wide data and AI transformation
  • BT and Ericsson sign multi-million-pound partnership to provide commercial 5G networks
  • Read Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s 2011 book about high achievers and what makes them different
  • Listen to Telco in 20 episode 7 to hear leadership guru Jim Abolt talk about the keys to workforce transformation
  • Check out Neil’s YouTube channel for all the pinball-related videos you’ve dreamed of 
  • I accidentally got the high score on Neil’s favorite game, Godzilla—and it was my first time playing! HA!
  • Did you know that at one point pinball was almost made illegal? Yeah, people thought it was a game of chance, not a game of skill. Just like moving to the public cloud, it’s going to take SKILLZ to get those workloads across the line. Read about How One Perfect Shot Saved Pinball From Being Illegal, and check out this fun picture from that day in 1976 – Roger Sharpe playing pinball to save the game. (Neil actually knows him!)

Author’s bio

Neil McRae is always looking for ways to drive radical thinking. He is recognized for building the best networks all over the world, has significant experience in submarine, fixed, wireless, broadcast, satellite, cloud, systems & applications, and platform technology, enabling our world to connect, educate, entertain, and transact. He believes in creating an environment for technologists to perform at their best.

Podcast Credits

• Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios Royston, TelcoDR
• Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
• Editor/Producer: Alisa Jenkins Wilson, Springboard Marketing
• Audio Editing: Andrew Condell
• Music: Dyami Wilson

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