2909: F5: Leadership and Championship Refereeing: Carl Berry's Story

[00:00:00] Is it possible to manage over 500 partners in the tech world, while also officiating championship level football? Well today we meet Carl Berry who does just that. And today we're going to dive into how Carl marries the world of tech with the discipline of sport

[00:00:20] to drive success both on the field and in the cyber security arena. And with insights on everything from multi-cloud networking to the strategic use of generative AI, Carl will offer a perspective as unique as his own personal career path.

[00:00:37] So what can the high pressure decisions of football refereeing teach us about leading in technology? Let's find out. So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all

[00:00:48] the way to the UK where you can sit down with myself and Carl Berry to talk about all this and much more. So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening

[00:01:00] a little about who you are and what you do? Well good afternoon Neil, and firstly thank you for having me on your show today. First and foremost I'm a husband to Laura and a father to four daughters so very outnumbered Poppy, Grace, Matt and Molly and I currently

[00:01:18] live in Hampshire. But from a career perspective I'm F5's Northwest EMEA channel director responsible for 11 talented channel managers across my region and I've been here for just over two years now. Fantastic, sounds like you've got your hands full there, five girls. Very outnumbered.

[00:01:37] Yeah. I made sure when we had dogs Neil that one of them was at least a boy so I've got a go-to. Well over the years we've had a few people from F5 on the podcast. Dan Woods,

[00:01:49] someone I remember in particular, had a great conversation but for anyone that's missed any of our previous conversations about F5 can you just tell everyone listening about F5, its mission because I recently saw the business expanded your distributed cloud offering

[00:02:04] too so can you tell me more about that? Yeah absolutely, a pleasure to and it's a tough act to follow Mr. Woods, he's a great presenter. So F5's mission is to securely deliver, optimise any applications and API making it ridiculously simple. That's the mission statement that

[00:02:22] said it can be hugely complex and pretty daunting at times so I suppose to add to that therefore as a channel team I requested when I first joined we hold ourselves accountable for this mission statement. We actually created our own sub-charter as a framework which at

[00:02:40] its core centers around passion, motivation, determination to deliver a service we believe unrivaled in the channel and importantly to simplify that very complex message and understanding the use case and not leading with technology or support our partnership in motion but as

[00:03:01] you said of the context of the question you correctly indicated F5 is expanding its distributed cloud offering which is hugely exciting and the driver is AI and it's continually accelerating the growth of applications and the APIs that connect them and our added solutions simplify

[00:03:22] the protection of today's distributed applications and enable customers to safely apply AI solutions through those API codes into one single platform which goes back to that initial point how can we make this ridiculously simple and it was interesting you mentioned that the cloud

[00:03:42] offering and you saw it what was great for me is that on the 5th of March at London Outworld we got to deliver this in person and how we have missed this I know everybody has

[00:03:55] but since Covid this was the first large event started in San Jose in February and is moving across the globe and I think is in Germany in a couple of weeks time but to be able to deliver

[00:04:06] that and have that conversation with our customers and our partners at Outworld in person was absolutely fantastic. And outside of that if we just go back into your personal world for a few

[00:04:18] moments before any of my guests come on here I always do a little bit of research and I kind of came across something that you're a championship level referee so I've got to ask tell me a little

[00:04:29] bit more about that and how does a championship level referee find themselves as a channel lead within a cyber security company and how do you manage balancing these two roles I feel like

[00:04:39] there's a huge story here. It's a great question there's probably a few stories on Google with Carl Berry the referee as well Neil if you were to look carefully but being a leader within cyber

[00:04:49] security and a championship referee was always going to be demanding when balancing the two but it consistently sparked great interest when people found out that I supported the referee more than the two teams playing very frequently who's your team who to support what do you think

[00:05:05] of the match well you know what the man in the middle that's the person I was supporting but to come to your question on the balance the midweek fixtures were probably the most challenging

[00:05:16] and I actually remember refereeing I think it was Bolton Wanderers versus Huddersfield so a bit of a derby yeah and I had to leave home at 1pm to ensure a 5pm arrival because unbeknownst to many

[00:05:28] had to be there two to three hours before the actual start of the fixture and I'm on my car on the journey north from Hampshire I'm on numerous calls as you should expect but upon arrival of the

[00:05:39] gate to the ground the Carl Berry the channel director shifts immediately to Carl Berry that championship referee where the people at the gate don't care what I do for a day job they

[00:05:51] they care and their passion is about this guy has to be in control of this fixture so you're you're thrusting to communicating with stewards police commanders secretaries managers the media

[00:06:02] I was that transition was instantaneous so that was that took me a while to get used to in what people's expectation was and I talk about expectation and post-match I think it was

[00:06:16] Dougie Freeman at that point in time if I'm not mistaken he actually went to the media and he stated he felt I had a poor game which is absolutely in his armory to suggest that to

[00:06:27] the media but what he also said is that he had complete empathy for the conversion of all referees that are doing their day job whatever that may well be suddenly thrust into a game that

[00:06:38] you know huge magnitude of that particular one was in the championship but whether you're doing league one or league two now all referees now on the championship are full-time but yeah having those

[00:06:48] two roles and I owe a lot to people around me for supporting me on that journey and almost going on that journey with me to to create what I wanted to be which was a if I'm honest a premiership

[00:06:59] referee but didn't quite get there but ultimately ended up at the championship level now. Oh well I'm a long-suffering Derby County fan so I've got to ask any particular memories of a Derby

[00:07:09] County game anything stand out to you? You know I do I do remember doing Derby County versus Renford away um I don't think I ever did you at the county ground is it a county ground is it still

[00:07:22] Bride Park now? Bride Park, but yes I did referee you against Renford in the championship but unfortunately from my recollection I think you lost 2-0 so I hold my hands up and apologize in advance.

[00:07:35] Well moving swiftly on I've got to ask were there any particular skills that you were able to gain from refereeing that actually apply to your role now because I would imagine there are a few unexpected synergies there? That's probably one of the most frequent questions I get asked

[00:07:50] it's a really personal one and the top level answer is there are many many skills that can be transferable from football refereeing not just at a championship level but you know league one

[00:08:02] league two moving up through the ranks two to today and I try and condense it to three and I call it a three seats probably because of my age it's a bit easier to remember but the first

[00:08:12] one is probably not of any surprise but communication and he's talking really to the players to the managers but what people sometimes forget at that level is that your assistant referees and your fourth official you may have only have met those individuals two and a half

[00:08:27] hours before that fixture so you're about to go into a game 20-30,000 people maybe at the stadium and you've never met the man or the lady that is on that sideline with you and talking to you

[00:08:40] consistently through the microphone in different not so much different languages but they will have their own nuances of what they should say at what particular time and you've got to tell them before

[00:08:52] that game of what your expectations are and bring them on that journey with you but empower them and make sure those instructions are clear and answering any whys because I'm a firm believer in

[00:09:04] that if you want somebody to do something if you can preempt the question back and answer why even if they like it or they don't they don't agree with it they will come on that journey with you

[00:09:13] but empowerment is really important and a communication style if we've got time at the end I'll talk you through a great situation where I could have done a better job of that and maybe

[00:09:23] got a different decision in a very quite high profile game but the second one I move on to is consistency again we hear a lot about this in the footballing world but we can certainly bring that

[00:09:34] into to the world that I am in today in the refereeing world it was difficult because consistency is about opinion a lot of time within refereeing is what do I think of that situation it's not always black and white and different perception will give a different level of

[00:09:49] consistency but I think bringing that into the world that I'm in today is having a consistent approach across the northwest and becoming very uniformed is very very very important and the last one I touch on which I think is transparency from my perspective is confidence

[00:10:07] and not arrogance the way you conduct yourself at the earliest point of that engagement and I'm not afraid to share my vulnerabilities more often than not I'm certainly not the smartest person in the

[00:10:20] room so bringing the experts around you how can you enrich your performance both within referee and within my world today you sure you do your research how many people go into meetings without

[00:10:33] doing research what they do their research it's at the last minute the last hour you did your research on me you found out I was a referee creates conversation it's the same in the

[00:10:42] refereeing world do your research on the teams the way they play some of the players don't pre-judge but to be free armed is really important there's one incident when I went to south end very early

[00:10:56] in my career and I knew the manager I heard because I do my research that he'd invite you into his office prior to the away team arriving he would know when they're about to write so he would invite

[00:11:08] you in 10 minutes before have a 15-minute conversation and ask you to leave politely just when the away team were coming in and the away team were thinking what's the referee doing in the home team's manager very psychological but unless I did my homework I wouldn't have

[00:11:23] known that was to happen so I made sure I avoided that particular situation but they're probably three of the highlights I'd come to wow so many golden insights in your answer there and another

[00:11:33] big topic throughout the industry right now is AI AI being used to defense defend against attackers it's also being used by the bad guys too but I'm curious what trends are you seeing in the uh

[00:11:45] in the industry right now whether that be AI would it be something completely different I'm curious what you're noticing and what what the key trends are that you're seeing yeah sure AI is certainly

[00:11:55] one of those I suppose what I'm going to bring to front and center of mind we've just completed h1 here at f5 and been through various uh qbrs over the last couple of weeks reviewing what

[00:12:07] we're seeing and what we're looking forward to and one of the overwhelming uh senses of communication that came from various teams across the northwest was the sweating of assets this is a real trend we're seeing at the moment I mean our channel partners are continually leading council

[00:12:24] on for us big ip modernization and to ensure the future vulnerabilities are highlighted and to initiate time-bound schedules and budget cycles as early as possible but we are seeing the customers taking more and more risks and and defaulting to that I'm not going to

[00:12:42] do anything I'm just going to see what happens I'm just going to leave it three months six months so that's sweating with assets we we've definitely seen and the other the other thing that we saw

[00:12:52] was actually finance and the financing of opportunities and cap ex versus op ex and what we did see was we normally see financing of the multi-million dollar deals but we saw a large increase in financing of opportunity there were about a hundred thousand to 150 000 I've really

[00:13:11] seen that trend previously but I think that's where the channel and distribution can really support when engaged you show that value in supporting companies when they have these financial challenges to make sure that they have the most up-to-date it topology in their

[00:13:28] infrastructure and the very last thing we saw was just the final day rush we saw many many targets many amounts of millions of dollars of business that were transacting just the last two to three

[00:13:39] days so it's almost again that sweating of assets leaving things to last minute there are some of the trends I've seen away from technology in the last three to six months now and I'm curious from

[00:13:52] everything else you're seeing there what would you say are the the best performing technologies and indeed markets this year are any services and technologies that channel partners are seeing more in demand of at the moment what you're seeing there yeah it's a great question

[00:14:07] it's a it's a varied wide question I think app and api market remains in hyper acceleration in my mind but at the same time brings a range of complexities and risks with that acceleration so as a result

[00:14:22] I've experienced growing demand for a shift from probably your traditional web application firewall your WAF and people migrating to the web application and api protection which is the WAP and these solutions can secure the modern applications so that's definitely one of the

[00:14:40] performances we've seen in 2024 but I have to say the northwest channel has been instrumental in this respect and driven a significant number of WAP opportunities for us so I thank you to my channel and customers are realizing that an api driven approach to application protection

[00:14:56] enables improved collaboration between the network security operations and developers and these teams I mentioned generally work in silos so having this approach supports that simplified path without compromising I suppose innovation and the overall customer expectation

[00:15:16] and it also supports I suppose to my earlier points in terms of budget allocation and those silos bringing it together bringing the team together it just simplifies the outcome and I think the last point if I may is it really is multi-cloud networking that we've been talking

[00:15:34] about for many years and I expect significant opportunities over the next 12 months and beyond I think it's always maybe been a I'd like to have that that sounds the utopia but people are

[00:15:45] now bringing that into this is what we need and this will be driven by the need to merge excuse me and secure applications and apis across multiple cloud networks people think they're you know they have one cloud they have multiple clouds and therefore that just lends itself to

[00:16:02] being extremely complex and I truly believe F5 stands out in the market to simplify and to hopefully innovate in this space but they're some of the top performing trends I think I've seen

[00:16:15] in 2024 and I don't think any of those are going away and I think as we all scroll down our news feeds every day we all see those stories of AI tightening of budgets multi-cloud sustainability

[00:16:27] ESG scores it's all very familiar now over the last 6 to 12 months but I'm curious were there any technologies or markets that you found provided unexpected growth last year that people

[00:16:38] may not be aware of or think about? Oh that is a good question Neil, I don't think there are any huge surprises but I'm sure if that's down to good planning on my behalf or the tough market

[00:16:52] conditions I'll take I think I'll take the former. That said that one vertical which stood out in terms of growth which I must admit I was not expecting was with retail and I think with the

[00:17:06] pressure on household spending due to inflation this is this is not an area I expected for that growth to be seen but I think with more customers looking at shopping online as opposed to in person that customer experience and digitalization the requirement for security and applications as

[00:17:24] enhanced somewhat to create that customer experience which has fueled that growth so I think if I was to pick one growth area that I was not expecting I would be sure to pick retail. And we've mentioned

[00:17:38] AI a couple of times I was reading about a huge Amazon investment today behind the makers of Claude AI but how is the explosive emergence of all things generative AI if we use that umbrella

[00:17:51] term how's it impacted both your and your partner's work? I was going to a lot of tech conferences last year and there was a lot of businesses sat on the periphery thinking what we're going to do

[00:18:00] here there's a lot of nervousness around it but what are you seeing here now? Yeah so it's a great question I think gen AI was last year's hottest topic and however it's quickly becoming

[00:18:12] higher on the agenda when considering deployments as companies are keen I think to turn discussion of gen AI's potential into action and capturing its benefits so again I suppose it's like the multi-cloud networking rather than talking about it let's see actually what this can do

[00:18:30] to generate more top line revenue for my business and one thing I saw at App World actually which was presented was the pace of adoption which you mentioned for gen AI has been astounding when you

[00:18:43] think it took I think the stat was it took Google Translate nearly 2,500 days to reach 100 million users and Instagram just short of 1,000 days but it took chat GPT less than 100. Well and that just

[00:19:02] shows the astounding scale and speed of what we are all just trying to keep up and as AI accelerates the growth of applications and the APIs which I know I've spoken about a lot but that's what

[00:19:14] connects them and F5 is bringing that API code and testing and telemetry and analysis to distributed cloud services to empower the customer to make better informed decisions and I mean as an example customer may want to understand I know how many SQL injection

[00:19:32] attacks did they receive last week well to find that out is very very challenging but using gen AI as a powerful time and sorry powerful tool it makes it very time sensitive and therefore

[00:19:46] the customer again is making better informed decisions so I think for our partners to be working with this they've got to demystify they've got to understand it but I also see that they will be able to generate more professional service revenue because it's still the unknown

[00:20:03] and piecing that together I think the customers the partners that are ahead of that adoption curve will come up as very successful. And I think last year there were so many concerns such as things

[00:20:14] like company data being used for machine learning algorithms and many from the outset just banned employees from using it but it kind of amused me a little because we've kind of been here before

[00:20:23] with the whole bring your own device to work kind of thing you can try and stop it all you want but you like that little boy putting his hole in the dam trying to stop the water is going to happen

[00:20:32] sooner or later so what more can the channel do to embrace AI do you think? Yeah I agree with everything you've just said Neil and I think your key word there is embrace it or be left behind

[00:20:45] which I know is very simple but also pretty black and white but I think you've got to look to I said this to my team last week demystify and decipher the technology but first you've got to

[00:20:56] demystify you've got to understand it as to how it can support the business I think once you can do that from a partner perspective you can then speak to customers again about the use case whether it

[00:21:07] can create top nine growth or it can save them money don't talk about the technology per se that's what customers are interested in and I think today we have a lot of dedicated point product security solutions and they each solve a very specific security need but now most

[00:21:25] of them are starting to leverage as I see this gen AI to enhance their effectiveness however most of these products work on their own silos with their own visibility their own tool sets etc etc so again

[00:21:38] that complexity is ever increasing and with the complexity and a short supply of technical expertise we have that leads itself to again even more challenges so my underlying message is you put it very anachronistic it's not going away let's endorse it demystify understand it

[00:22:00] and then let's select where we can best use it. Well so many golden insights from you today I absolutely love chatting with you learned so much about not only your work but your

[00:22:11] your backstory as well so many I think that's almost an episode on its own that we could return to but before I let you go I always like to have a bit of fun with my guests and I'm going to ask

[00:22:20] you now if we've got a Spotify playlist I always ask my guests would you like to leave a song to add to that list but all I'm going to ask you is what would you like to add to it and why?

[00:22:29] Always the trickiest question is the last one Neil I would to be honest unashamedly it's on the football school of thought here in the referee that um unbeknownst to some people you had the

[00:22:45] the team generate the teams generating loud music in their dressing rooms well us referees we had our own little radio as well and we could use Spotify and whatnot and I always had a song that

[00:22:57] I would put out five minutes before walking the teams out and it was actually elbow one day like this and I just felt that it gave me a uplifting sense of well-being wanting to be there wanting

[00:23:12] to go and execute without some drum and bass making me feel a little bit too hyper so my direct answer to your question would be elbow one day like this oh wow I've got to add that straight

[00:23:25] to the Spotify playlist I've got a little history of that myself because that's that song we saw Guy Garvey sing that my wife and I at the other stage and the pyramid stage at the Glastonbury

[00:23:36] festival and it was a huge part of us it was like those long hot summer nights loved it so much it was played as a at our wedding and everything as well so yeah absolutely great choice I'll get that

[00:23:46] added uh to the playlist for sure and for anyone listening just want to find out more information about all the work you're doing at F5 where would you like to point everyone listening

[00:23:55] especially if they want to contact you or your team as well yeah absolutely it's an open door policy here at F5 so please just call the central number in the UK ask for me personally and I'll be

[00:24:09] happy to pick up the phone to anybody that wants to get in contact and if I cannot support because as I said before I might not be the right person I'll certainly put you in touch with the correct

[00:24:18] personnel within F5. We covered so much there from the best performing technologies and markets and the technology or markets that may have received unexpected growth last year but I think we'll brought it all to life with your origin story and I think in nearly 3 000 episodes this

[00:24:34] is the first time we've talked about the parallels between refereeing professional football and managing over 500 partners you brought it to life beautifully but thank you for sharing your story great thank you no pleasure to be here I think today's conversation with Carl Berry has illuminated

[00:24:51] a fascinating synergy between the worlds of professional sports and technology leadership and Carl's journey from the football field to the forefront of cyber security with F5 I think this underscores the versatility of skills like integrity and elite communication

[00:25:08] ultimately proving invaluable across seemingly disparate arenas and as we reflect on the growth areas that Carl highlighted today such as retail and the adoption of generative AI I'll turn the microphone over to you what are your thoughts on integrating diverse experiences to enrich personal

[00:25:28] development and technological innovation please email me now techblogwriteroutlook.com twitter linkedin instagram just at neil c hughes share your views with us and join the conversation on how diverse backgrounds can redefine industry standards but as the full-time whistle goes it's

[00:25:48] time for me to get out of here now so thank you so much for listening hopefully you'll join me again tomorrow but thanks for listening as always and until next time don't be a stranger