Meet the judges—Chris Howell

In our Meet the judges series, we’ll be chatting to some of the cloud tech experts on our judging panel to find out more about their experience, their passion for cloud tech, and what they’re making a beeline for at the awards ceremony buffet… 

Chris Howell is EMEA Public Cloud Alliance Manager at Fortinet and a returning Digital Revolution Awards judge.

With over 15 years of experience in channel and industry transformation across areas such as vendor alliances, modern workspace, security and infrastructure, and having spent time at the likes of Sophos, Microsoft and Barracuda Networks, Chris is a leading public cloud security evangelist.

Outside of the office, Chris is a parent of two, a big football fan, and a youth coach at Caversham AFC.

Let’s find out more about Chris.

Which category are you most looking forward to judging and why?

Tech for Good; this was also one of my favourites last year and the why is simple. In the current world we live in, it’s just nice to get a win and hearing how a company has used the power of cloud technology for the greater good always puts a smile on my face

How has cloud technology made an impact on your life, or within your business?

Cloud for me is all about enabling secure home working. With covid, working from home has now become the norm and utilizing cloud and SaaS-based solutions to secure my setup enables me to communicate. And yes, it has been key to surviving these last 12 months—or is it 24 now? I forget!

You're at an awards ceremony; what food are you making a beeline to the buffet table for?

Probably come sort of cheese and cracker combo!

Chris Howell

EMEA Public Cloud Alliance Manager
Fortinet

Are there any people or businesses from the cloud tech space that have caught your eye with their work in the past year?

Traced Mobile Security—their focus is around making the invisible visible in a world where now your phone is basically your business, your network, and your life—even though that sounds sad! It’s so important, and their approach is more unique than the other players in the market.

These awards are all about celebrating what's happened in the last year; what kind of developments are you expecting to see in the cloud industry in the coming year?

I think things like serverless computing are going to increase next year. Also, although they’re not really new, I think we’ll see the emergence of new cloud players to compete with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

If you were to win an award yourself, perhaps for a secret talent, what would it most likely be? 

Hmm, most weight lost maybe, as lockdown last year wasn’t very nice! But I'm back on track now after nearly three stone lost, so I'm getting back to my best. On a more serious response, I am a secret karaoke king so maybe an award for Best Swing Cover Song!

Chris Howell

EMEA Public Cloud Alliance Manager
Fortinet

What do you think the biggest opportunity will be for organizations in the cloud space in 2022? What will be the biggest challenge to overcome?

I think the biggest challenge will be around how we work. It almost feels like we are hitting reset on this front.

Companies need to work out how to adapt with people going back to work and travel returning. Tech firms need to work out how they can enable people to be just as proactive on the road as they were stuck at home.

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Meet the judges—Chris Howell