Chirag Patel – Deputy CTO, Infrastructure, team.blue

What I bring to my work

For four years, I was Head of Infrastructure and Operations , reporting to the Group CTO. As the organisation has moved from a functional structure to divisions, I’ve taken on the role of Deputy CTO in the new Infrastructure Division.

This is the next stage of my work: building on that experience with a clearer focus on the infrastructure small and medium-sized businesses need to succeed in the age of AI.

My focus is on helping businesses connect their ambitions for AI with the practical requirements of adopting it. That means understanding what they want to achieve, what their workloads need and how their infrastructure can support them as those needs evolve.

For me, the starting point is the business need. Whether a company is exploring its first use of AI or developing its own AI workloads, the aim is to help it make informed infrastructure choices and build a foundation it can grow with.

Infrastructure and data centres

I’ve worked as a data centre engineer and systems administrator, managed infrastructure and led technical teams. My experience includes data centre development and the consolidation of four data centres into a single site in Reading.

Acquisitions and integration

I’ve been involved in technical due diligence for acquisitions across the UK & Ireland and in post-merger efficiency programmes. That work has included consolidating systems and platforms, closing acquired data centres and migrating services into our UK & Ireland data centre infrastructure.

Procurement and supplier relationships

I’ve been involved in requests for proposals (RFPs) for compute, storage and network hardware, alongside supplier selection, vendor management and contract negotiations for hardware, software and data centre space.

My responsibilities have covered the UK & Ireland and work at group level across the group, bringing a technical perspective to supplier decisions and commercial discussions.

People and business leadership

I’ve managed customer services, sales and support desks, held regional and international responsibilities within Register Group and overseen the UK business as Country Manager.

Those roles have given me experience of the connections between customer needs, commercial decisions and technical delivery.