"CTO in Focus" Glenn Fitzgerald, Fsas Technologies – A Fujitsu Company
- Kevin Jones
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 24
Glenn Fitzgerald doesn’t chase the bleeding edge—he studies its second release. As CTO and Chief Technologist at Fsas Technologies – A Fujitsu Company, Fitzgerald brings a refreshingly grounded perspective to an industry often seduced by hype. With a career spanning public sector infrastructure, enterprise cloud architecture, and ethical frameworks for emerging tech, he’s helped shape not just what systems do—but how we talk about them. In this edition of Gaming Eminence’s CTO in Focus, Fitzgerald unpacks the difference between capability and leadership, cautions against mistaking complexity for innovation, and urges the gambling industry to confront its most unresolved frontier: ethics at scale. This is a conversation marked by sharp pragmatism, human insight, and a deep respect for what infrastructure—done right—can truly enable.
Gaming Eminence: You’ve long operated at the intersection of ambition and accountability—mapping what’s technically possible against what’s practically sustainable. As CTO, when you're faced with a seductive new capability—AI, quantum, edge—what governs your instinct on whether it’s truly worth pursuing?
Glenn Fitzgerald: "I always wait for the second release. It’s only when a new capability or product is being used in the real world (as opposed to as a testing platform) that its practical capabilities can be thoroughly assessed. This is also when users typically find issues with it, and AI is a great example of this happening right now. It’s important to remember that it is not artificial and it is not intelligent, it’s simply maths. Sure, it’s a useful tool, but AI as an offering is just about falling off the Gartner Peak of Inflated Expectation with a smorgasbord of significant issues surrounding its capabilities and the ethics of its usage coming to the fore.
This is why I often suggest an organisation looks at the last generation of a capability or product, not the next generation, as that is where it is at today. It’s also important to understand the context in which the capability or product is being deployed and who will be using it. Universities are always interested in the next generation of products, such as Quantum computing, but banks are looking for stability and reliability, and this means being realistic about real-world capabilities at the time of deployment. So, these are also things we consider when determining if something is worth pursuing or not."
Ultimately, Fsas Technologies is here to provide our customers with capable, reliable and resilient infrastructure, so we mustn’t stray from that simply because there is excitement around a new product or capability.
Gaming Eminence: Fujitsu’s clients span high-stakes, compliance-heavy environments—not unlike the regulated world of gambling tech. In your experience, what does it take to build a technology architecture that’s resilient enough for scrutiny, yet flexible enough to evolve without calcifying?
GF: "That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? To be honest, technology isn’t the answer alone, you must have the right people. The technology is only ever as good as the people using it, and that’s why it’s crucial for organisations to not only employ the right people, but to ensure they are fully up to speed with the technologies at their disposal. Of course, that technology needs to be fully capable and fully compliant, and this means balancing power, stability and flexibility. In highly regulated markets such as the global online gambling industry, rules and requirements can change at a moment’s notice, so the architecture must be capable of scaling, expanding, evolving and adapting, but in a controlled manner so as not to cause instability. It then needs to be put into the hands of the right people to make the changes required to be compliant."
Gaming Eminence: Looking back, can you recall a moment when you took a technical or architectural stance others found too cautious—or too radical? What drove your thinking then, and how has that decision aged in hindsight?
GF: "I’ve experienced both, but I think the most interesting was when I was perceived as being too cautious. Many years ago, I was working with a government body on a large system of national importance. The body in question wanted to move from an existing and rather old-school mainframe platform to a modern, virtual machine-based infrastructure. The problem was that the original application was written decades prior, and most, if not all, of the architects had either passed away or retired, so there were very few people who actually understood the critical application. In my mind, this meant trying to re-architect the platform was doomed for failure, so instead, I suggest starting again from the ground up. But I was told this was too expensive, so, instead, the state department spent £100m on a failed rebuild before ultimately taking the approach I suggested, but only after condemnation from the House of Commons and the sacking of several civil servants."
Gaming Eminence: You’ve written on cloud, AI, and infrastructure—but as an architect and Fellow, you’re also shaping the cultural language of how systems are built. What do you see as most misunderstood today about “technical leadership,” especially in industries that mistake complexity for progress?
GF: "I think the biggest issue is mistaking competence for leadership, as they are not the same thing. Someone can be very confident in their abilities and have a deep understanding of a technology, but this doesn’t mean they can express it clearly to others. In engineering generally and IT engineering specifically, many of the most skilled and competent practitioners can’t speak in simple English and often use jargon only they and their peers understand. But that’s not leadership. Leadership is about taking highly complex subject matter and being able to distil it down and explain it to those who are not IT professionals or versed in our wonderful but sometimes weird jargon. Being able to communicate is what separates a highly skilled and competent practitioner and a leader. How can organisations differ between the two? It comes down to governance. I say this as a proud nerd, but you’re never going to make nerds speak plain English, so it’s about having a level of governance that translates what they are saying into a language that the entire organisation can understand."
Gaming Eminence: If you look ahead a decade, where do you think the most intellectually demanding questions in gaming infrastructure will emerge—from edge latency and data integrity, to how we build for player psychology in real-time systems? What frontier quietly keeps you up at night—in the best possible way?
GF: "Ethics. Most of the technical limitations of the past have been overcome – latency, for example, is no longer an issue in the vast majority of cases – but the question of how we use the power and capabilities of cutting-edge technologies ethically and morally remains unanswered. In the gambling industry specifically, we need to square off how the pursuit of the gambling dollar sits with a commitment to safe and responsible gambling, and how technologies can be used to achieve both goals. Can these goals really co-exist? That’s a frontier we have yet to reach and is a destination I hope the bright minds and technology talents of the industry are working day and night to get to."
Gaming Eminence: You work across policy, engineering, academia, and enterprise delivery. What’s one personal habit or principle—outside of the job description—that’s kept your judgment sharp across so many different spheres?
GF: "I always try to remember that I have two ears and one mouth. It’s very easy to get swept up in the very attractive ego-mania of the CTO position, believing that you know everything and that you always know best. But the reality is that on taking the role, you don’t know anything anymore. You become a jack of all trades and a master of none. But in the teams around you and the people near you, there are true masters of their craft, so listen to them. The CTO job is about supporting other people who know what they are doing and solving any issues they have to enable them to achieve their full potential. Today, I am more politician and administrator than anything else, and my knowledge about individual technologies doesn’t go too far below the surface."
