PROFILE
A
s a world leader in weather and
climate services, the Met Office is
widely recognised for supporting
an array of sectors including transport, with
a major focus on aviation, insurance, retail,
banking and environmental sectors such as
agriculture and the extractive industries.
The organisation works closely with the UK
government and the general public, and
has over 60 locations worldwide, meaning
that global coverage of weather and climate
elements can be maintained 24/7. The
Met Office is known as one of the world’s
most accurate forecasters, using advanced
technology to create 3,000 tailored forecasts
and briefings a day.
We spoke with the organisation’s Director
of Technology and CIO, Charles Ewen, to
hear his views on the state of technology
in Europe and how it’s set to evolve, as well
as other technology development trends
shaping the continent.
An overview of the role
I am Technology Director at the Met Office
which is located in Exeter, South West
England. I have the only technology-based
role on the Executive Board and as such,
have three primary aspects to my role. One
being that as CIO, I am responsible for
ensuring the Met Office has an ongoing IT
strategy and set of delivery programmes
that are aligned with the Corporate Strategy
(we call it a Corporate Plan) and delivers
technology capability, projects and services
to the wider organisation. Another is as
SIRO (Senior Information Risk Owner), to
ensure that the information we consume,
generate, analyse and produce is handled
safely, efficiently and effectively. Finally,
‘technology’ can be defined as anything
that is new and in that regard, I am the
senior change agent for the organisation.
The importance of versatility as a CIO
As indicated above, my focus changes
according to the needs of the organisation
and there are periods where I spend a lot of
time looking externally, times when things
are much more introspective and might be
focused in any of the three broad areas I
have indicated. For the last year or so, my
focus has been on developing and delivering
a cost efficiency programme for the wider
organisation that, while it had some impact
in technology, was more focused on other
I AM NOW HEAVILY
INVOLVED IN
THE PLANNING
FOR OUR NEXT
SUPERCOMPUTING
CAPABILITY
WHICH WE HOPE
TO DELIVER
AROUND 2021.
parts of the Met Office such as account
management and corporate overheads.
Having completed that, I am now heavily
involved in the planning for our next
supercomputing capability which we hope to
deliver around 2021.
The current state of the technology
landscape in Europe
The big omission I would point to is the
lack of a European hyperscale public cloud
company. Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google,
along with Alibaba in China, now offer a
capacity and capability of compute and
storage that, in my view, is ahead of the
pack. While all these organisations run a
regionally-distributed model and do have
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENTCIO
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