Global Services Director at Softcat, accountable for a £550M services portfolio and three hundred people. Two decades inside large managed services. Sharpened by behavioural science and design thinking.
The conversations shaping the next decade of IT services are not happening in the rooms our profession built.
They are happening in operating models, in product teams, in boardrooms wrestling with what AI changes about how work actually gets done. Most operating models in the industry were built for a different problem. Tickets, not flow. Frameworks, not fluency. Process compliance, not customer confidence.
The next era of advantage is being claimed by the organisations brave enough to redesign the structures underneath the tools.
Mark Boyer works at the intersection of strategy, execution, commercial logic and human behaviour. Two decades leading services at scale across SCC, CDW, T-Systems and now Softcat. His talks challenge the profession he loves — not to tear it down, but to help it become what it is genuinely capable of being.
Two decades on both sides of the MSP table — running managed services at scale, and holding providers to account as the customer. The arguments on this site are not commentary. They are working notes.
64% of UK organisations say they are using AI. Only 24% have reached anything close to mature adoption. The gap is not technology. It is organisational design.
Smart glasses. Agents acting on a user's behalf. Ambient intelligence woven through every productivity tool a workforce already pays for. Most enterprise IT functions are still writing acceptable use policies for ChatGPT.
ITSM has become brilliantly organised at describing yesterday. We mistake legibility to ourselves for value to our customers. Comfort bureaucracy for governance. Defensible work for distinctive work.
Take any service catalogue. Strip out every acronym, every framework reference. Show it to a customer. Ask them what they are buying. If they cannot tell you, you have not built a catalogue — you have built a glossary for insiders.
As masterful as ever. He owned that stage. Not just the brilliant material, but a genuine public speaking masterclass.
Audience reaction · SITS 26, Main StageBy far the best speaker we saw — very relevant and inspirational.
Audience reaction · SDI Spark 26By far the most engaging and thought-provoking talk I watched across both days of the conference.
Audience reaction · SDI Spark 26Mark challenges the traditional model of IT support. The future of great service isn't just about better tools, it's about creating better experiences for customers and colleagues alike.
Simon Edwards · NEXTCIO 2025 Award WinnerThe SITS 26 keynote in full. ITSM was built to deal with change. Yet parts of the profession have become very good at resisting it. Forty slides closed her laptop. 98% SLA next to a spreadsheet of things IT can't fix. ~16 min read.
ReadThe SDI Spark 26 keynote in full. Why service desks were really designed. The uncomfortable truth that lives underneath: most great support is humans compensating for services that were never designed to be easy to live with. ~14 min read.
ReadThe PropelX London keynote in full. A multinational retailer with plenty of suppliers and no outcomes. Six moves that rebuilt Professional Services around confidence. The CIO line that rewrote how I think about commercial services. ~13 min read.
ReadWhether it is a keynote, a fireside, a workshop or a longer conversation — get in touch and we will work out what would land best for your audience.
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