By Business & Finance 
Pictured: Peter Lantry, Managing Director, Equinix
Peter Lantry, Managing Director, Equinix, speaks with Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery Group, about how his organisation is using digital infrastructure and the latest technologies to support the company’s growth.
As a business that is constantly expanding into new cities, countries and even continents, we at Equinix understand the challenges of expansion but also the opportunities that it brings. As we expand, we are enabling more enterprises to do the same, with technology playing a vital role. Recent research we carried out showed that 42% of enterprises with expansion plans will do so virtually via the cloud.
It’s not just cloud that businesses are utilising to realise their ambitions. The use of cutting-edge technologies, accompanied by robust digital infrastructure, are also defining success and ensuring that the IT department is now a key facilitator of any business’s expansion strategy.
I spoke to Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery Group, to gain some insights into how his organisation is using digital infrastructure and the latest technologies to support the company’s growth.
Pictured: Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery Group
Anthony, readers might be more familiar with Carbery Group as the makers of the much-loved Dubliner Cheese. But there is a lot more to your organisation than that. Can you give me an overview of the business?
Carbery Group is an international dairy, flavours and nutritional ingredients company headquartered in Ballineen, Co. Cork, Ireland. It is owned by four Irish co-operatives, Bandon, Barryroe, Drinagh and Lisavaird, and employs almost 1000 people, with 1208 local farmer suppliers. Carbery operates from 12 locations including Ireland, the UK, the USA, Brazil, Italy, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand and supplies more than 50 countries worldwide.
Carbery was established in 1965 and remains one of Ireland’s leading producers of award-winning cheeses for the industrial, foodservice and retail sectors. The company produces a wide range of cheese, including the Dubliner brand, Carbery Cracker, cheddar, reduced fat cheeses and Red Leicester.
From these roots, Carbery has extended both its product portfolio and global reach, becoming a leading innovator in whey protein ingredients. Through a series of acquisitions in the UK, the USA, Europe, South America and Asia, Carbery has successfully built Synergy, its international flavours business.
Our sustainability strategy is an integral part of our core business strategy and is embedded across our entire group globally. We operate a circular economy in our Irish plant as well as significant water use and waste reduction strategies globally. We have a goal to be carbon neutral across all manufacturing sites by 2035.
While you have a physical presence in 12 locations, you are active in 50+ markets, which I expect requires a very robust digital foundation. From an IT perspective, how is your business evolving to support your current footprint along with your expansion requirements?
Over the last number of years, we have been on a relatively aggressive digital transformation, which has involved modernising our digital landscape across all areas of the business. The core focus of this initial phase was to ensure that we have a solid digital foundation in place, which we could build upon in the years to come. This has involved extensive infrastructure programmes, a cyber revamp, the moving of a large portion of our digital application estate to the cloud, and the development of our digital team to ensure we are focussed on leveraging this new foundation to give us the flexibility we need.
What are the key building blocks of that digital foundation and how do they support this flexibility?
Digital infrastructure and hybrid multi-cloud environments are pivotal for achieving agility in scalability and expansion. At Carbery, our new digital infrastructure lays the foundation for seamless integration and operation of our diverse IT resources, enabling rapid deployment and scaling of applications. Meanwhile, we have opted for hybrid multi-cloud strategies which enhance this by providing the flexibility to leverage multiple cloud service providers, mitigating risks associated with vendor lock-in and allowing optimal workload placement. This approach ensures uninterrupted service availability and optimal performance, even during peak demands.
How is this approach helping you to support your organisation’s overall business strategy?
Simply put a key part of our business strategy is to leverage technology and digital to work smarter and to enable our people to do their best work. A lot of our growth is through acquisition, and given how rapidly the food landscape changes, we also need to be able to respond quickly to market opportunities and customer demand. A flexible IT infrastructure and the inherent scalability of cloud services enable us to scale operations when needed and expand into new markets. We can adapt swiftly to market changes, customer preferences, and emerging technologies, ensuring we sustain our competitiveness. It also allows us to meet diverse market needs and regulatory requirements.
At Equinix, we are seeing an increasing number of businesses adopting new and emerging technologies. Are you exploring ways in which you can use advancements in technology to benefit the business?
We are looking at a number of emerging technologies at the moment, but we are also very careful in our approach that it isn’t causing a magpie effect. Emerging technology will play a part, butsome of the best digital transformations start with understanding the gaps and plugging those gaps with tech. But the tech doesn’t need to be high or emerging; it just needs to be good tech. Emerging technology will no doubt accelerate growth across all businesses, but it is important that it is implemented on top of a solid foundation and this is where elements such as cloud, organisational structure and agility come into play.
What about AI? Do you see a role for AI in your technology strategy?
The adoption of AI is crucial in supporting growth and we are seeing huge growth in the emergence of new use cases across the organisation. We view AI as an assistant sitting alongside our employees. It facilitates enhanced decision-making, automates routine tasks, optimises operational efficiency and uncovers new insights. Our approach to AI isn’t ‘AI for the sake of AI’; it has to be about using it to solve a genuine business problem.
It’s interesting to hear that AI is already having a transformational impact on your business, as so many organisations are just at the experimental stages with this technology. And, our research has found that 54% of IT leaders don’t feel comfortable that their existing infrastructure can accommodate the growing use of AI. Do you believe that your focus on digital infrastructure puts you in an advantageous position in this regard?
Absolutely, digital infrastructure plays a critical role in accelerating the rollout of any new or emerging technologies. The days of infrastructure being the initial bottleneck are thankfully behind us and organisations need to view this as a really important aspect of introducing new solutions.
Leveraging robust digital infrastructure allows businesses to stay ahead of the curve, adapt to market changes, and harness the potential of technologies like AI. The importance of a solid digital infrastructure should not be underestimated, as it is the foundation for your digital ecosystem and spending time selecting and architecting the right type of solution for your organisation is critical.
Thank you, Anthony, for sharing those insights into how you are using the smart application of technology – using digital infrastructure as its backbone – to steer your organisation to further success.
To find out more about the latest IT trends and how technology decision-makers across 29 countries are embracing the opportunities while overcoming the challenges, download the findings from the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey: The benefits and challenges of new digital technologies, and future-proofing strategies.
