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Ep 42 – Talking Telco with Google Cloud
Amol Phadke, Google Cloud's MD & GM for the Global Telecom Industry, talks about what the hyperscaler is doing in the telco space.
Podcast
Ep 43 – Telco's Pinball Wizard: Neil McRae
This week’s guest
Neil McRae
Managing Director & Chief Architect BTBritish 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.
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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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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why did BT sign deals with multiple cloud providers instead of just one?
BT’s multi-cloud strategy is intentional, not redundant. Each provider serves a distinct purpose: Google Cloud handles data analytics and AI; AWS hosts non-SaaS IT applications being rebuilt for the cloud; Microsoft Azure powers voice and Operator Connect services; and Oracle Cloud supports legacy applications. As BT Chief Architect Neil McRae explains, BT selected Google Cloud as a strategic partner for group-wide data and AI transformation and signed a five-year agreement with AWS for internal applications.
2. Why is BT keeping core network workloads off of the public cloud?
Neil McRae is cautious about moving network workloads to the public cloud due to strict requirements around availability, data sovereignty, and knowing exactly where data resides. Instead, BT built its own private cloud—BT Network Cloud—partnering with Ericsson on a truly cloud-native 5G core. The BT and Ericsson multi-million-pound 5G partnership gives BT the flexibility to place workloads anywhere across its network while maintaining control.
3. What’s the biggest challenge BT faces in its cloud transformation?
Beyond technology, the hardest part is people. BT needs engineers who understand the full stack—from hardware to application—a rare skill set. To address this, BT partnered with Intel and Dell to create “Cloud Builders” training, a boot camp that manufactures cloud-ready talent. It also partner with universities on sandwich courses, bringing graduates in early so they can learn by doing in a safe lab environment.
4. What does Danielle Rios think is the best way to train teams for cloud?
DR’s take: full immersion. Just like learning a language by moving to its home country, the best way to build cloud skills is to move your team to “Cloud City.” This means changing the actual work people do day-to-day, and reinforcing that the public cloud is the future—there’s no going back. She reinforces advice from leadership guru Jim Abolt in Telco in 20 Episode 7: drive change by making it feel inevitable.
5. Is moving legacy IT to the cloud as simple as “lifting and shifting” workloads?
No—and Neil McRae is blunt about this. When consultancies pitch “we’ll move all your stuff to the cloud,” he pushes back. Cloud migration for a telco like BT, which runs mainframes and thousands of applications, requires a complete re-architecture and re-platforming—not just picking a new technology. The question BT asked: if we were building BT today with 2030 in mind, what would we build? That framing drove its entire strategy.
6. How does the 10,000-hour rule apply to building a cloud-ready telco workforce?
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers argues it takes 10,000 hours—roughly five years—to master a skill. Both DR and Neil McRae cite this as a real constraint for cloud transformation: genuine cloud expertise simply takes time. That’s why BT is investing early in graduates, apprenticeships, and lab environments where people can experiment and fail safely, building the real-world hours needed to become true cloud practitioners.