Olajide Shobowale Leads the Next Chapter in Cloud Computing with Intelligent Storage for AI Workloads

~William Jones

Olajide Shobowale’s journey began in Nigeria with a vision to democratize technology. Early on, as Training Director for the InfoTech Community Group during Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps, he created programs that gave underprivileged children access to ICT resources, efforts that earned national media recognition. He went on to earn a BSc in Computing and an MSc in Forensic Information Technology from the University of Portsmouth, which built deep expertise in systems architecture, security, and emerging cloud technologies.

Shobowale brought this vision to the private sector. At Hewlett-Packard, he generated multi-million-dollar revenue through virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) across West Africa, partnering with Nigeria’s Edo State government to deploy thin-client solutions and private cloud offering in over 1,000 schools. Later, as a manager at NetApp, he led complex, multi-million-dollar data center migrations and developed automation workflows that cut deployment time in half and secured $2M+ in contracts. These experiences honed his ability to deliver scalable, efficient solutions in diverse environments.

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), Shobowale became a pivotal figure in cloud infrastructure. He joined the original AWS DataSync launch team, building foundational support infrastructure for one of cloud computing’s most transformative data transfer services. Today, DataSync moves petabytes of enterprise data each month for thousands of organizations worldwide. Concurrently, he authored globally adopted technical content and certified thousands of engineers, which established him as a go-to subject-matter expert in hybrid cloud storage.

During his time at AWS, he also pioneered key innovations: he developed a serverless monitoring solution for AWS Direct Connect Gateway, built a hybrid storage gateway with intelligent object tagging and encryption, and created an automated S3 multipart-upload cleanup utility, each project designed to save enterprises significant storage costs.

Beyond engineering, Shobowale has established himself as a thought leader. He authored “Intelligent Data Management and Security: A New Paradigm for Hybrid Cloud Environments” for CyberSecurityNews, which set new standards for automated data classification and hybrid-cloud security.

In another published paper, “The Hidden Infrastructure Powering AI,” he outlined frameworks for high-performance AI storage technologies tailored to both enterprise and developing-economy use cases. His research highlights that storage speed and architecture are central to AI performance, an insight that he has also demonstrated in practice by reducing AI data transfer times with GPUDirect Storage by 80%.

Olajide’s commitment to education and community impact is equally strong. In May 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he designed and led the first-ever AWS Snowball SME Virtual Bootcamp, training thousands of engineers across Seattle, Ireland, Tokyo, and India through innovative virtual labs. Earlier in his career, he led ICT-access initiatives in Nigeria’s schools and youth programs, securing scholarships and equipment donations for children and directly improving technology education. These efforts reflect his belief that technology should create opportunity, regardless of one’s background.

This mix of technical innovation and user focus has yielded measurable business results. Olajide’s governance and automation solutions have saved customers $20M+ per year in cloud costs, and his integration of an AI-powered enterprise assistant cut support tickets by 60%. He currently serves as a Senior Technical Account Manager for strategic accounts, advising enterprise clients with $200M in annual recurring revenue, and he has directly influenced $23M in customer cloud migrations. These accomplishments underscore his talent for translating deep technical work into real-world efficiency and savings.

Olajide noted that as organizations increasingly adopt AI, storage performance has become a critical bottleneck. Industry research shows 73% of enterprises cite storage speed as their primary AI limitation. Leveraging his expertise (including work on GPUDirect Storage), he tackles this problem head-on. “Most enterprises face storage performance limitations in their AI implementations,” he observed; his response is to develop “AI-optimized storage infrastructure” that accelerates data pipelines and unlocks faster AI model training. In doing so, he positions himself as a global expert in “AI storage optimization” and “hybrid cloud intelligence”, fields at the frontier of modern cloud computing.

This mission is embodied in his proposed venture, ZettaBrain. Shobowale plans to launch ZettaBrain to address emerging AI storage challenges with breakthrough technology. In the near term, ZettaBrain plans to roll out high-performance storage products that deliver significant AI training speed-ups, while also creating quality technology jobs in Northern Virginia. Within 3–7 years, he envisions ZettaBrain becoming a leading AI-storage infrastructure company, expanding globally and helping organizations around the world (including in developing economies) overcome the current gaps in AI-ready infrastructure.

Over the longer term, he aims to position ZettaBrain as a reliable backbone for AI innovation: “We want to help solve enterprise storage challenges limiting AI implementations and improve AI access for organizations globally regardless of size or location”. His personal mission remains consistent: to bridge technology gaps between developed and developing regions and to apply AI solutions in healthcare, education, and research in ways that have a positive social impact.

Throughout his career, Shobowale has distilled key lessons about innovation. He advises peers to start with empathy for users (solving real problems rather than chasing technology trends) and to scale successes through people, not just hardware. He advocates “virtual-first” collaboration that transcends geography, and always stresses the importance of tying technical excellence to business value.

His persistence, coupled with flexibility, has helped him navigate skepticism and cross-cultural challenges alike. These principles of user-centric design, thorough documentation, and diverse perspectives have underpinned all of his projects, from grassroots training in Nigeria to global cloud migrations.

Looking ahead, Shobowale’s trajectory is clear. He has consistently proven that he can deliver enterprise-scale results, from pioneering AWS data migration services that moved petabytes of data in weeks, to saving millions in cloud budgets, and he now brings that track record to the AI era. His story is a testament to a blend of technical mastery and human-centered vision: the same person who once helped rural schools get online is now leading the charge in AI storage optimization.

As he said, the next frontier of cloud computing isn’t just clever algorithms, but the intelligent data storage that makes those algorithms possible. With ZettaBrain’s launch, Olajide Shobowale is writing the next chapter of that story, one in which cutting-edge infrastructure unlocks the full potential of AI for everyone. Connect with Olajide on LinkedIn.