We uncover the transformative journey of Marty O'Neill, principal architect and Microsoft Tech Lead at Kainos. From his university days to the helm of a tech community shaping the future with Azure and Power Platform, Marty's narrative is a tapestry of technical mastery and industry evolution. In this episode, you'll traverse the path of his career—from founding an IT company to steering Kainos's SharePoint consulting—while gaining insights into the seismic shifts that have rocketed cloud technology to the forefront of innovation.
As Marty shares Kainos's groundbreaking work in the UK's public sector and health services, you'll discover the company's secret to harnessing the latest technologies.
We uncover the transformative journey of Marty O'Neill, principal architect and Microsoft Tech Lead at Kainos. From his university days to the helm of a tech community shaping the future with Azure and Power Platform, Marty's narrative is a tapestry of technical mastery and industry evolution. In this episode, you'll traverse the path of his career—from founding an IT company to steering Kainos's SharePoint consulting—while gaining insights into the seismic shifts that have rocketed cloud technology to the forefront of innovation.
As Marty shares Kainos's groundbreaking work in the UK's public sector and health services, you'll discover the company's secret to harnessing the latest technologies.
Hello, welcome to Microsoft Community Insight Podcast. We will share insights and stories from community experts to stay up to date with Azure. My name is Nicholas and I'll be your host today In this podcast. We will dive into Cloud Journey. But before we get started, I remind you to subscribe to our podcast on social media so you never miss an episode. So it will help us to reach more amazing people like yourself. So in this podcast I have a special guest called Martin O'Neill from Canis, so would you like to introduce yourself please?
Speaker 2:Hi Nick. Thanks very much for having me today. No worries, I'm Marty O'Neill. I'm a principal architect and also the Microsoft Tech Lead here in Kainos.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. Could you please share your journey into tech industry and how you've become where you are at Kainos Sure?
Speaker 2:So I wasn't sure how far back you wanted to go, but I'll go right back to uni. So back in 1998, I started a degree in De Montfort. My degree was actually in media technology. Whenever I finished my degree a lot of my friends were still on placement. I'm sorry they'd done a placement year so they were coming back for another year. So I stayed on at university and did a master's in IT.
Speaker 2:After I finished university I came back to Northern Ireland it's safe to say that Northern Ireland. At the time there wasn't a lot of jobs in the IT industry, so I started my own company. Northern Ireland at the time there wasn't a lot of jobs in the IT industry, so I started my own company. It's safe to say I was not a businessman, but it was probably the most funny Whenever you work for yourself and I guess when you're so young as I was I just took it as an opportunity to do everything I could and learn as much as I could. So one minute I was making websites for people, the next minute I was fitting CD rewriters or building computers, and I just used it as a great way to get loads of experience in loads of different areas. What that helped with then is whenever I started interviewing for roles. So say, I wasn't a successful businessman but I got a load of experience that I wouldn't have had.
Speaker 2:So after that I joined the local college in Belfast as the assistant web development officer Would make websites it was mainly a classic ASP SQL server and then, looking after our virtual learning environment Post that I became our software development officer and I guess back in 2006, this could be seen as an early DevOps role. I guess I was doing a lot of base uh batch scripting. Um, the the main role I guess I had at the start. There was we, if you think, a college with like 50 000 students enrolling and I created the system to automate the creation of their their it accounts, to let them put in their own password and register in that. After that in the college I moved to be the web development officer and that was the first time I guess I started leading the team. We had a team of four people and I was responsible for the website. I was also responsible for the VLE environment and all the sort of good fun things that came along with that Around. That time SharePoint started becoming quite a key technology.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I guess you started where there were floppy disks and Windows XP.
Speaker 2:No, well, yeah there was definitely floppy disks and Windows XP. No well, yeah, there was definitely floppy disks and Windows XP. When I was at uni, we used to have to burn CDs and if you it was like one speed and if you touched a computer or a keyboard at all it corrupted the disk. So yeah, I guess I've had a lot of changes since I started out. I was doing a lot of SharePoint at the time and I had this idea that I would go back out on my own. I would become a SharePoint consultant and I Googled SharePoint consultancy Belfast and a role at Kainos came up. As soon as I seen it it was like, yeah, maybe give this a go. So, 2009,. I joined Kainos as a SharePoint consultant. I think I did SharePoint for maybe a year. Then I moved into our internal systems team. I've always done a lot of, I guess, sql Server and IIS and NET, the majority of time, I guess. Back then, as DevOps was coming into being a thing, it was more open source, so it was Linux and Puppet. I, unfortunately, was one of the poor people trying to do WinOps, as we called it, so it was operations for Windows, so it was a lot of Okay. I, unfortunately, was one of the poor people trying to do win-ups, as we called it. So it was operations for Windows, so it was a lot of PowerShell desired state, so the likes of Jeffrey Snover would be a hero. You know, with the PowerShell business and you know, early days, teamcity Around about 2014, I found myself at a wee bit of a lull in terms of work and I emailed my boss and said what do you think I should be doing?
Speaker 2:And he said well, there's either a policy document to write or you can look at Azure. Azure had been talked about. You know, some people had Visual Studio accounts, but we never seriously looked at it. So, 2014,. I started my Azure journey and I guess from there I became a technical architect, solution architect, then principal architect, and I've watched our Azure community in Kainos go from myself and one or two others to there's now like four or five hundred people working on Azure, working on Microsoft Power Platform, and yeah, so it's been, I guess, quite the journey.
Speaker 1:Okay, so speeding up to the current phrase, what specific technology or platform do you specify? Is it just microsoft and your microsoft technology overall in your role?
Speaker 2:yeah, so let's say early days. I guess I've always had this anger in like sql server. It was sql 2000, mcp, so anyone who's been around long enough will know that that's. That's quite old now. Um, I wouldn't say I'm a specialist in anything anymore. So I now lead our microsoft community in kinos. So I would say I'm more of a generalist.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I in my career in kinos I've been very lucky in that, you know, I've architected data platforms, I've architected iot, I've architected IoT platforms, was here for early days of PaaS and moving away from IIS servers to Azure web apps and then recently, in the last year, getting involved with a lot of the open AI and a lot of the AI solutions. I'm definitely a Microsoft person. I wouldn't say I specialize anymore. I guess it's one of the fun things as you move up in your career is moving away from being a specialist in anything. I'm now lucky that the likes of yourself, nick, are one of the specialists in Kainos. Kainos is quite a privileged position to have a load of specialists who work with me and that I can guide and tap into knowledge of. So it's all good fun.
Speaker 1:Okay, brilliant. So, given the fast movement of cloud, where the fast pace of cloud industry, what trend do you see that shape the platform?
Speaker 2:engineer like ourself, cool, so I guess about seven or eight years ago. Uh, as a senior group of platform people in kainost yeah, cloud was just starting to emerge right, and we had this conversation around well, do we need to reskill people Because cloud's going to replace everything? We're not going to need any, we're not going to need platform people anymore. And, as I say, we've went from 20 to 30 people to like 200 people doing platform engineering in cloud and I see that I think we're still going in that trajectory. I think platform engineering will still be very important for the next five to 10 years. The likes of Daven and a lot of the automated and AI tools are getting a lot of. Yeah, they're going to replace everybody, but I guess tools like that have been around for a long time. If I wanted to create a website template, I could have done that 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Where platform engineering and the roles we do really come into place is once it starts getting complex and you start bringing loads of different systems together, which we do. That's where you still need platform engineers and I think, if anything, it's probably a growing space. Even you know, we see a lot in our data and AI work and even our power platform work. A lot of people still need those platform skills. They still need to understand how you do Entra, how you do permissions, how you do networking, how you do security.
Speaker 2:And I guess, as cloud has made things easier, it almost hasn't, because 20 years ago people like myself had a choice between you can either use SQL or Oracle. Now you have a choice between Cosmos, sql, postgres. Do you use Aurora? You know there's so much choice. And platform engineering, I think, will move, I guess, more from spending all day doing Terraform or PowerShell. I think we're approaching the stage where that part of platform engineering will be accelerated with AI, with Alexa getting a co-pilot in it, but it will certainly not be replaced. And if I was going into platform engineering now, I would learn my core skills. I would learn as many things as possible. You know, look in the data app space, look in machine learning, look at AI, and I'd also build some soft consultancy type skills, because the core platform skills I think are still going to be core for a long time yet. Okay, brilliant.
Speaker 1:Speaking of your current role at KNEOS, can you tell us more about your amazing project that you've worked on during your time at Kainos? One or two, one or two.
Speaker 2:I guess, to put it in context, I've probably been on about 100 delivery projects and maybe 200 to 300 pre-sales projects since I've been in Kainos the work Kainos does I guess we're largely known for a UK public sector and that can be government services or health services in the UK. Some of the big projects I guess we've done are NHS App, a lot of the Brexit programs for Defra I'm lucky. I guess they've been on, as I say, iot projects and cloud migrations and I'm funny, I've never done any of the big headline projects that Kain also might be famous for, but I would have done a lot of the, I guess, early days of Azure, you know, building initial platforms, a lot of the cloud migrations stuff like Welsh Revenue Authority. Whenever they came into existence they said we don't want any on-premise infrastructure at all. So there's been, I guess, a lot of good projects knapping around Nowadays. I guess my role I oversee projects, so there's maybe four or five projects at the moment that I would dip into and help rather than be full-time delivery.
Speaker 1:Okay, that makes sense. So, as where you're at in your position at Kenyus, in your opinion, how does the company itself adapt to the evolving technology and stay up to date with the cutting-edge technology in the cloud?
Speaker 2:Sure, it's a really interesting one, this. So I guess what we do in the Microsoft space is that we have what's called tech exploration, and it's a bit of a process of working out the services that we provide at the minute. Working out the services that we provide at the minute, working out the services that we could provide and feeding in the new areas that Microsoft release all the time. And one of the, I guess, key things is around keeping fresh with fresh skills. So in the last year we've seen a lot of open AI, a lot of open AI training. So we've done hackathons, we've done internal presentations and we've, I guess, put a lot of people through training and certification.
Speaker 2:It's a funny one, the exploration space, because you often have to hedge your bets on what we look at compared to what the market's buying or what helps deliver customer outcomes. In Kemos we ground everything in customer outcomes and what's the best way to get there. So there's often quite a lot of debates about do we use web apps or do we use AKS, and I guess a lot of the exploration is around you know which area do we focus on? And once we've decided on areas to focus on, it's then giving people the space, know the space to, to develop their skills and their support and the framework. Um, what's then? People like me come up with offerings and try to help our sales people. Uh, you know, bring it to customers, um, because, if you're looking at.
Speaker 2:The problem is if you're looking at technology just to look at technology without thinking about the customer. In the end you just have a whole load of technology and that's not good for the people that have looked at the technology or for the company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true and, plus, that's one of the ways you can encourage continuous learning and development within the whole team or colleagues as well.
Speaker 2:The big thing about cloud, whether it's azure and microsoft, or whether it's azure aws, tcp, it never stops. You know there's never a. Yeah, you know the idea of and I think this is one of the most interesting things about platforms we've. I've been on like a continuous journey of learning for the last 24 years, um, and I think that's platforms have a big responsibility to make sure that they are um keeping up with skills. So the idea of I have a certain skill set. This is what I know, though it's very hard for someone I guess I would think in their career to take that mindset. You have to be continuously growing, have to be continuously challenging yourself and trying new things. Yeah, it's vitally important new things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's vitally important. So to stay continuous learning. What resources would you recommend for beginners to stay ahead in the field? So this could be anything like doing stuff with Apprentice. It could be like Microsoft Learn.
Speaker 2:I guess it's safe to say it's a long time since I've been in a practice, but it's funny. I actually have been on a project recently, in the last 6-12 months, where I had to learn about a GCP and yeah, I think the challenge now is there's so much learning available. Whenever I was starting with Azure, it was all pretty much experimentation. You may have got a book released, but there wasn't Microsoft Learn, there wasn't the wealth of blogs, wasn't the wealth of blogs. I think, starting now, you know John Saville is probably who I point people to whenever they're asking about fundamentals, but I'm probably not the right person to ask Nick about how to start Cloud Journey. Maybe if it was a medium, the longer level, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of. You know, I guess develop in your career. There's a lot of stuff like on-chair architects, a lot of great youtube channels that would very, very highly recommend yeah, that's pretty close.
Speaker 1:Uh, let me. I wanted to point out that we do offer K-Notes, we do offer, like, license for Echo Glitter if you want to stay up to date with some, like some, videos as well. So just want to point that out. So how do you?
Speaker 2:just just on. Just on the the best way to get up to speed with anything is to get up to speed with anything is to get an Azure account or a GCP account or an AWS account and have a play. The big thing is, if you get your own account, you can't break anything.
Speaker 1:The barrier.
Speaker 2:I always say this the barrier to entry is so low. Now, whenever I started in IT, if you wanted to be an Oracle specialist, you had to have somebody buy a big Oracle rack. And you wanted to be an Oracle specialist, you had to have somebody buy a big Oracle rack and you had to be lucky enough to get on a project. Literally, now, anyone can pick up an Azure account and learn anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's people that are doing personal projects and then get a job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quite much so. It's probably one of the best times for being able to just self-learn and grow a career. Yeah, but certainly whenever I started, it really wasn't the case. You know, you had laptops. I didn't even have a laptop. You had a PC that you couldn't run VMs on. There wasn't even VMs, you know. So you had to have dedicated resources, whereas now you know it's all, pay as you go, it's all at your fingertips. You know the opportunities are endless. The challenge I think now is picking what to start with or what to specialize in, because there is such a wide choice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is such a wide choice? Yeah, so in your experience, how do you stay up to date with these changes, evolving changes?
Speaker 2:Sure, so I still fire up Azure and deploy resources For me. That's the best way for me to learn Microsoft Learn is great, but I'm not one I can't read a lot. If I read a lot, I lose interest or my mind gets distracted, or I just open another browser and start playing with the actual thing. On Azure, staying curious and having a play with stuff is probably the most important thing. I would say. If you have loads of paper knowledge, it's great, it'll get you exams and that, but building stuff, seeing it break and seeing real problems for me trumps everything. That's, I guess, how I would recommend staying up to date with things yeah, brilliant, keep practising until you get perfect and stuff if you don't have the skills and experience, get yourself.
Speaker 2:You know fairly quickly that's great.
Speaker 1:So, just for, we're wrapping up this episode, so we just want to know we're always interested to know the guests themselves. So are you looking forward to any Microsoft events in the cloud, whether it's partners or Ignite?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like watching your adventures. Like you have to say Thank you, I can't travel around as much. I like watching your adventures, nick. You have to say thank you.
Speaker 2:I can't travel around as much through family commitments. Watching you at the MVP summit I was very, very envious of I like the big events, I like Build, I like Ignite, as I say, for me there's so much now on YouTube as well, the microsoft channel's john salwell, and that that there's so much great stuff out there. Um, there's another great, uh, I guess, podcast for people in the it industry run by ben pierce uh, tech, tech world, human skills. I highly recommend that as well. He had he had sc, had Scott Hanselman on a couple of weeks ago and he always has industry experts and they're really good podcasts to help you think about different areas of career as you're working.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. So just one last thing before we wrap up. So how can people get in touch with yourself? If you want any quick questions, sure.
Speaker 2:Email is probably the easiest. Martino, at Kainoscom, I would say. You can find me on Twitter at Martino80, and I'm on LinkedIn as well. I've never consistently blogged or been in the socials, so a lot of it is just pictures of me playing with the kids or growing peas. But yeah, if people want to reach out, I'm sure you can point them in my direction as well. Nick.
Speaker 1:Okay, brilliant. Thanks for joining me.