How one IT leader is seizing the AI moment to ditch legacy tech

National Grid's tech lead on riding the AI wave to drive change in the tech stack

IT leaders should take advantage of the current interest in AI to push through long delayed automation projects, says Paul Miller, technical lead of global technology operations at National Grid.

Speaking at a ServiceNow event in London recently, Miller said that unlike previous technology revolutions such as Agile ("a techie-led, bottom-up revolt against the status quo"), the AI revolution is being driven from outside the IT department.

Rather than being uninvolved bystanders, this time round CEOs are being pressured by investors, hedge funds and board members to get ahead with AI, with the opportunity to gain "political credit" for demonstrating progress.

"You should use that credit to make the big calls," Miller advised. "We would not have been given permission to do a greenfield if that wasn't the vision that we were going with."

As part of a five-year, £60 billion modernisation programme to upgrade the grid for electrification, renewables, and smart technologies, National Grid is overhauling many of its enterprise IT systems.

In Miller’s area, this includes transforming ITSM, hardware and software asset management (HAM and SAM) and HR systems. The organisation is replacing siloed solutions with an integrated platform approach, using technologies from Microsoft and ServiceNow, with AI-driven features for self-service and automation. Scheduled to go live early next year, the initiative is expected to deliver significant productivity gains.

"A lot of decisions that made sense nine years ago make less sense today," he explained. "So we're using this AI revolution to help us justify greenfield."

The shift from standalone systems to a unified platform has streamlined decision-making, Miller added. "Every decision we make is evaluated against our AI vision: does it move us forward or hold us back? If it’s the latter, it’s rejected. This has been a huge business change, but having a clear vision has made it possible."

However, with no legacy technology to blame for delays, the pressure is immense. "The excuses for not getting there are gone as a designer. We've taken off the safety blanket by moving to greenfield."

This means that IT leaders must gain hands-on experience with the new technologies and their AI-enabled capabilities. “Make sure you ask questions and pull on all the threads. Keep pulling those threads ‘til the lightbulb goes on.”