What does it take to stay in control of growing cloud complexity? How can you apply automation to make your cloud operations not just faster, but smarter, more governed and sustainable?
As organisations scale and diversify their digital platforms, complexity rises – but that doesn’t mean losing control. In fact, gaining visibility, governance and agility across the cloud estate is now essential to stay secure, optimise spend and deliver sustainable innovation.
In this episode of Talking Transformation, Adrian Chiffi is joined by CGI experts Matt Reid and Simon Pitt to explore how AIOps is reshaping modern IT operations – creating intelligent, integrated and future-ready cloud environments.
Together, they discuss:
- Why AIOps and cloud management must work together as one, forming a symbiotic engine for efficient, governed and automated operations
- The importance of observability and native tooling – creating unified visibility without lock-in
- How DevOps and platform engineering embed compliance and control from day one
- What FinOps means for cloud investment strategies, and how to align cost with business value
- The rise of GreenOps, and how clients are using data and automation to make informed sustainability decisions
- What SovereignOps involves, and why regional control, auditability and ‘secure by design’ platforms matter more than ever.
With real-world examples covering everything from carbon-conscious scheduling to smart lockers that reduce travel emissions, this episode explores how AIOps is powering a more intelligent and sustainable approach to cloud management.
Whether you’re navigating hybrid cloud complexity, modernising operations or improving ROI, we offer insight into how you can stay in control while accelerating cloud transformation.
Podcast speakers:
- Adrian Chiffi – Senior Vice President, GTO UK business unit leader, CGI
- Matt Reid - Vice President Consulting Delivery, CGI
- Simon Pitt - Vice President Business Consulting, CGI
- Transcript
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Adrian Chiffi: What happens when automation becomes intelligent and sustainable? How do we take control of growing cloud complexity without slowing teams down? And in a world where sovereignty, sustainability and spend management matter more than ever, what does cloud done right really look like?
Hello everybody. I'm Ade Chiffi, and I lead global technology operations for CGI in the UK. In today's episode of Talking Transformation, we're going to be diving into, for me, one of the most important and fast evolving areas in IT, so that intersection of AI OPS and cloud management.
As organisations scale their digital platforms, complexity rises, but that doesn't have to mean losing that all important control. You know when AI OPS and cloud management, they really do work together, they become almost a symbiotic engine, I suppose you'd say, you know, so powering automation; it's not just fast, but smart, governed and sustainable, that's the key.
You're going to be happy to know we're not just going to be listening to me for the next 15 minutes, delighted to be joined by two brilliant colleagues who really are, I would say, shaping this space for our, for our clients every day. So I've got Matt Reid on who leads our enterprise IT services across the UK and Simon Pitt who heads up our technical advisory capability.
Matt, Simon, welcome; great to have you both on.
Simon Pitt: Thanks, Ade, Really great to be here. Excited to join my first podcast.
Adrian: Good stuff, thanks, Simon.
Matthew Reid: Yeah, thanks Ade, looking forward to it.
Adrian: Good stuff. Good. So thank you, Matt. Matt, you're on for the second time as well. So you must have enjoyed the first one.
Matthew: I am I am indeed.
Adrian: Brilliant. OK. So. Let's get into it. I really want to start with the big picture. You've both been talking to clients about how AI OPS and cloud management work best when not seen as separate streams but really deeply interconnected.
Matt, if I if I come to you first, what does this look like in practise for you?
Matthew: Yeah, thanks Ade. So, take AI OPS strengthens cloud management in, you know, in many ways, I I'd like to think of it as the as the glue across our operation. In many ways it does it, but just to call out a few key items I'd say;
Keeping the CMDB up to date and accurate, you know linking those multiple data sources to deliver one source of the truth.
And then this enables further capability such as the likes of Fin OPS and Green OPS. When you add to that, you know, observability gives you that unified visibility across clouds, whether that's private public or a mix, you know, in a in a hybrid approach.
Add to that intelligent automation, machine learning and AI capability. With that proactive remediation, you can really drive, you know, the efficiency, ROI, user experience while also removing you know the complexity of managing cloud.
Adrian: And that's key, isn't it? You know, really looking to remove that complexity. So you know we've got data points that we can both understand and then make decisions off the back of. I like that, Matt. So, Simon any view?
Simon: Yeah. So I think we touched on it a little bit there. So integration is really key with this. So, obviously, as Matt mentioned, AI OPS brings the intelligence into this space, so it learns from patterns. It reacts to kind of business alerts and signals, which is great, but if you combine that with the powerhouse of native cloud management tooling that actually gives you the structure, the ownership and the compliance guardrails, you've got visibility and management coming together and so bringing those two together really gives you sort of a way to move fast, but also stay in control. So it's about creating a cloud environment that's really dynamic, but also dependable and controlled.
Adrian: Speed with control. I like that. Thank you, Simon. Simon. I'm going to stay with you for a second. You know, one of the key enablers here is, it has to be said, you know, [a] strong dev OPS model, you know, so allowing teams to move quickly but without sacrificing that control or security that you know that that that we always talk about.
What are you seeing around modern Dev OPS practises and how they link to AI OPS and cloud governance?
Simon: Yeah. So as you said, Dev OPS is the foundation that we actually kind of build a lot of our services on. But what we're seeing now is the rise of more focus on things like platform engineering. So pairing the Dev OPS framework and capability with the strength of traditional platform engineering where we actually provide curated services that are secure, automated by standard, and we're actually taking our service or platform engineers almost into the developer space.
So, shift-left practises, as an example, with the embedded compliance; those are directly embedded into CICD pipelines, as an example. So governance actually happens by design, not as an afterthought as it would traditionally.
Matt mentioned observability earlier on, obviously what that does is allow you to give visibility into the systems and platforms. It's all about automating that and integrating that from day one. So that's how we actually scale the automation through a dev OPS approach with our platform engineering team.
Matthew: I just want to add to that, Ade, if that's OK.
Adrian: Yeah. Please, please.
Matthew: The approach we're taking to Dev OPS is in powering our teams and also our clients to enable them to innovate faster. But whilst you know what Simon touched on whilst maintaining consistency through shared governance and automation.
This is this enabling us to deliver sustainable transformation at scale, but getting this balance right help companies move fast where it counts but, you know, staying steady where it matters with that standard governance.
Adrian: [It] makes a lot of sense Matt, and I take that to the next level then. So cloud spend management at Fin OPS, you know we, we can't talk about cloud without talking about that investment and that ongoing spend and increasingly it's not just a technical concern it's a boardroom conversation.
Matt, if I stay with you, how were clients using Fin OPS in your opinion to make to make those better investment decisions?
Matthew: Well, the cloud underpins everything that clients are doing. So Fin OPS is allowing them to turn cloud from a cost centre into a, you know, a strategic asset. It brings together finance IT business teams, it gives them real time visibility into where they're spending their money and what AI OPS, as that glue that I mentioned earlier is enabling, is to right-size resources, avoid waste and more importantly prioritise those investments to directly unlock those business goals and value.
Simon: So, you're absolutely right with Fin OPS but it's just not just about the kind of the financial control of our customers are looking at this as a strategic lens on their business. So, when they actually understand the relationship between cloud spend, they're able to open up new programmes and new projects with innovation potential. So they're empowered to make smarter bets or decisions because their base costs are under control.
When clients understand those relationships, we've seen Fin OPS uncover under-utilised assets, but also shine a light on where investments should and could be make, and that unlocks agility and resilience in a business. Whether it's go to market, investing in those new programmes or unlocking a new technology.
Adrian: I love that and there's a theme throughout this conversation both around, you know, those data points and really understanding the right visibility, particularly on return investment to be able to create the headroom to drive that future road map, you know, again tied into to a smarter future.
I like that. Thank you both.
Let's bring in Green OPS, then. Simon, you know, we've been talking a lot about Green OPS, and I know you've been having multiple conversations with our clients, so bringing sustainability into the cloud conversation, you know, what does that involve for you?
Simon: Yeah, we've been talking about Fin OPS and Green OPS a lot with customers and with potential customers.
The real, I suppose, the benefit of this is: don't think of them independently when you're considering your Fin OPS, you can actually make sustainable choices and look at the green OPS side of things. So, we’re helping customers with workload placements and choosing lower carbon or latency kind of decisions which help with those sustainable decisions.
And integrating carbon-tracking into your monthly or weekly reporting. So you're surfacing those environmental impacts as part of your regular cadence. It's critical to do this now; we've got a lot of legislation that's coming down the line that are going to affect businesses and organisations, but by thinking ahead, it's not just about making sustainable choices, it's about making informed, sustainable choices, which use the same operational intelligence that's already in place with a lot of customers. And it's just leveraging that to the next level.
Adrian: Love that Simon. Let me bring you in here Matt.
This is a topic we've not just talked about, but we've acted on for some time. And I know your delivery centre out of Wales, we've got the largest solar panel installation on a commercial building in the Principality. So when you talk about datacentres, Matt, you know, just give us a little bit around how you tie all of that together with that all important sustainability in the centre.
So we're making the right calls and the right choices.
Matthew: Yeah, we are. And again, AI OPS [is] at the heart of it. So, we've got the system monitoring Data Centre BMS, solar, you know our fresh air cooling, which then gives us the ability to make informed decisions on energy optimisation. You know, such as, we can even schedule workloads to run when solar is at its peak. They're the kind of decisions we can make with those data points.
On top of this, you know AI OPS system is also powering Smart Locker capability so, that's where engineers would have needed to drive all around the country, delivering devices. AI OPS now can predict stock levels, can automate barcodes for clients to go and get a swap out device. So that’s significantly reducing engineer travel and in turn carbon.
Adrian: Absolutely, Matt. You know, and what you're giving me there is, you know, a real view in essence on circular economy; circular IT.
And, as you know, we work with the likes of N2S, you know, really focused-in and very specialist in this area. But again, that's the power of working across an ecosystem.
Now, staying with ecosystems then, for a second, and Matt, I am going to stay with you on this particular question. You know, we work closely with AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc. And in each of these organisations, they really do bring powerful tools.
You know, how do we help clients make the most of those native tools? Simon talked about native tools earlier, but how do we help clients make the most of these tools and capabilities, but without locking themselves in or losing sight of the bigger architecture? What's your view there?
Matthew: Yeah, it's a great question. So, we've got a number of specific client examples around this. So where we take data feeds into the platform that allows, you know, they still get the benefit of that self-remediation. They get the benefit of us having the full observability across all stack and things like auto ticketing, so that there's definitely still a place to bring in those native tools into a centralised AI OPS platform.
Adrian: I'm with you. I'm with you. Simon, your take here.
Simon: Yeah. So I think it is really about native tooling, but also kind of best of breed and bringing those things together in a single observability platform; that is key. We've got some great tooling across all of our partners and bringing that together gives a holistic view. Almost that single pane of glass, that utopian view that everybody wants, and that's what we're doing with the AI OPS and the interoperability that we've got in our systems.
Adrian: And that's pulling it all together, isn't it?
Simon: It, yeah, definitely it's integration all the way through.
Adrian: So, stepping on from that then and bringing in sovereignty, [it] wouldn't be one of our podcasts without, in some way, shape or form, talking about that whole sovereign view that we're seeing in the market now. It's a growing concern for clients, you know, especially in Public Sector and Critical National Infrastructure led organisations and those regulated spaces.
Simon, how would you look to explain how we're approaching this with Sovereign OPS?
Simon: So, I think this is a really kind of special topic.
So, I absolutely loved Matt's recent podcast on this. And for me, it's where we're bringing compliance capability together; designing ‘secured by design’ platforms that actually support national data policies, localised operations. We've talked about it, about embedded observability from day one, but we're really bringing together automation, regional control and auditability on a single platform.
All whilst maintaining that Dev OPS and platform engineering agility. So it's about proving that sovereignty doesn't have to slow you down; so it can actually, really sharpen your operational confidence. And this is a massive hot-topic again to talk about our partners and how we're working with them.
You'll know that both Microsoft and AWS have got sovereign cloud offerings and our Sovereign OPS literally aligns really well with those, and it's about aligning our operational behaviours and observability tools with those technology requirements and platforms direct there.
Adrian: Thank you, Simon.
Matt, I know we did a recent podcast on this, but you know [what is] your thirty second take?
Matthew: Yeah, just to build on that, it's about having that end to end client flexibility, but secure-by-design. So, underpinned by really secure innovative tooling. You've got the digital command centre, you know, 24 by 7, UK cleared under UK regulations.
And then bringing it all together, given that client, the flexibility, whether that be on-prem, through our hyperscale partners or a mix of both, which we're seeing a lot of client take up on presently.
Adrian: Love it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Simon.
Right both. I'm going to look to summarise now and wrap up with five or six key themes that I have been scribbling down as we’ve been going. As always, jump in If either of you have a different view, or if there's something else you want to bring through.
So, what I've heard, both, is AI OPS and cloud management isn't just synergy, it's a new engine for modern IT is what I've heard from you both.
We've talked about Dev OPS really underpinning with agility, but also ensuring that control built in, and that's critical. We've talked about Fin OPS turning cloud spending to strategic investments, so creating that headroom that we've talked about for future road maps and all of that tying together.
Green OPS, bringing carbon into optimisation decisions, again starting to complete that that picture and then native tools can really supercharge delivery, you know, but, you know, what I heard from you in particular, Simon, when used with intent.
And of course, underpinning all of this sovereignty being central, giving rise to new models like Sovereign OPS, as an example. Simon, Matt, any, any final thoughts on that?
Simon: Yeah, I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head a little bit there.
And I think to come back to kind of a previous point; don't take these things in isolation; when you talk about Dev OPS, you talk about Fin OPS.
You talk about Green OPS and you talk about AI OPS, they all strengthen each other as a capability and it's about pulling them together. The real gains come within an organisation when we actually remove those silos and actually build a joined-up capability that's intelligent, transparent and trusted and governed.
So what we're doing at CGI is we're actually taking this away from the theory and actually applying a tried and tested framework that we've worked with Gartner on. So they said, with the work that we've been doing with them, that it's actually something that they've not seen before in the industry; pulling these things together in an integrated fashion gives something unique for each of our customers and it actually helps them deliver transformation that's scalable and sustainable. And I think that's key to us going forwards.
Adrian: Thank you, Simon. Matt, closing thoughts.
Matthew: Yeah, just quickly, and I'm going to reference our colleague and friend, Steve Evans in this; you know, he always talks about tying in your infrastructure and your operations to client business value.
So, decisions, whether it's architecture spend or operations have to directly support those key business objectives. So tying in the two, you know when you've got a good cloud strategy tie in business value to that strategy shifts IT from being you know a cost centre to a real strategic enabler.
Adrian: Very, very fair Matt, some nice closing thoughts there and always a safe bet to quote Steve Evans. Brilliant.
Simon, Matt, that that has been fabulous. I really enjoyed that. Thank you both for your time and for your insights there and, hopefully you enjoyed that as well.
Matthew: Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Yeah, thanks Ade.
Simon: Yeah, it's fantastic, really.
Adrian: Good. You may come on again then. That's fabulous.
If you're listening and want to find out more, you can connect with us on LinkedIn or visit CGI's website to explore how we're really helping clients to build what's next. And as always, you can find us, and other Talking Transformation episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again for tuning in. Have a great rest of the day.
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