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Barry Smart - Director of Data & AI

Barry Smart

Director of Data & AI

Barry is happiest when he's at a whiteboard sketching out a process, architecture, roadmap or solving a problem. He's got a gift for taking complex ideas and presenting them in a way that technical and non-technical audiences can grok. He has a passion for simplifying the complex, and helping organisations use technology to transform and amplify their impact.

Meet Barry

Barry Smart
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Barry has spent over 25 years in the tech industry; from developer to solution architect, business transformation manager to IT Director, and CTO of a £100m FinTech company. In 2020 Barry's passion for data and analytics led him to gain an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and Applications.

Barry’s blog

Polars Workloads on Microsoft Fabric

Polars Workloads on Microsoft Fabric

Barry Smart

Polars now ships inside Microsoft Fabric by default. Here's how to use it alongside Fabric's other analytics tools and what that means for your data workflows.
Practical Polars: Code Examples for Everyday Data Tasks

Practical Polars: Code Examples for Everyday Data Tasks

Barry Smart

Unlock Python Polars with this hands-on guide featuring practical code examples for data loading, cleaning, transformation, aggregation, and advanced operations that you can apply to your own data analysis projects.
Under the Hood: What Makes Polars So Scalable and Fast?

Under the Hood: What Makes Polars So Scalable and Fast?

Barry Smart

Polars gets its speed from a strict type system, lazy evaluation, and automatic parallelism. Here's how each piece works under the hood.
Polars: Faster Pipelines, Simpler Infrastructure, Happier Engineers

Polars: Faster Pipelines, Simpler Infrastructure, Happier Engineers

Barry Smart

We've migrated our own IP and several customers from Pandas and Spark to Polars. The benefits go beyond raw speed: faster test suites, lower platform costs, and an API developers actually enjoy using.
The Data Product Canvas: The Theory Behind The Canvas

The Data Product Canvas: The Theory Behind The Canvas

Barry Smart

The Data Product Canvas fuses the Business Model Canvas with Data Mesh's 'data as a product' principle, combining visual strategic collaboration with product-minded data ownership.
The Data Product Canvas in Action

The Data Product Canvas in Action

Barry Smart

See the Data Product Canvas in action with a real-world scenario. Follow along as we work through each building block to design a high-impact, feasible data product for a national garden center chain facing revenue challenges.
The Data Product Canvas: Deep Dive into the Building Blocks

The Data Product Canvas: Deep Dive into the Building Blocks

Barry Smart

The Data Product Canvas has nine building blocks, best completed right-to-left starting with Audience and Actionable Insight, to keep data products purpose-driven and user-centred.
The Data Product Canvas: Stop Building Data Products That Fail

The Data Product Canvas: Stop Building Data Products That Fail

Barry Smart

Turn data initiatives into business success stories with the Data Product Canvas. This practical framework helps teams design data products that deliver real value, avoid common pitfalls, and align with business objectives.
Big Data London 2025

Big Data London 2025

Barry Smart

AI agents dominated Big Data LDN 2025, but the real story wasn't the technology, it was which organisations could actually deploy it successfully. After five years tracking industry evolution through this event, one pattern emerged clearly: the winners had built their foundations first. For CTOs making platform decisions now, the strategic imperative isn't choosing between innovation and governance; it's recognizing that governance enables innovation at scale.
DuckLake in Perspective: Advanced Features and Future Implications

DuckLake in Perspective: Advanced Features and Future Implications

Barry Smart

Explore DuckLake's advanced capabilities including built-in encryption, sophisticated conflict resolution, and the strategic implications for future data architecture. Understand how DuckLake enables new business models and positions itself against established lakehouse formats.
DuckLake in Practice: Hands-On Tutorial and Core Features

DuckLake in Practice: Hands-On Tutorial and Core Features

Barry Smart

Get hands-on with DuckLake through a comprehensive tutorial covering installation, basic operations, file organization, snapshots, and time travel functionality. Learn how DuckLake's database-backed metadata management works in practice.
Introducing DuckLake: Lakehouse Architecture Reimagined for the Modern Era

Introducing DuckLake: Lakehouse Architecture Reimagined for the Modern Era

Barry Smart

DuckDB Labs introduces DuckLake, a revolutionary approach to lakehouse architecture that solves fundamental problems with existing formats by bringing database principles back to data lake metadata management.
DuckDB in Practice: Enterprise Integration and Architectural Patterns

DuckDB in Practice: Enterprise Integration and Architectural Patterns

Barry Smart

DuckDB comes pre-installed in Microsoft Fabric Python notebooks, so code developed locally deploys straight to production with enterprise monitoring, governance, and OneLake integration.
DuckDB in Depth: How It Works and What Makes It Fast

DuckDB in Depth: How It Works and What Makes It Fast

Barry Smart

Dive deep into the technical details of DuckDB, exploring its columnar architecture, vectorized execution, SQL enhancements, and the performance optimizations that make it exceptionally fast on a single machine.
DuckDB: the Rise of In-Process Analytics and Data Singularity

DuckDB: the Rise of In-Process Analytics and Data Singularity

Barry Smart

Modern laptops can now handle datasets up to a billion rows, yet 94% of query spending goes on big-data compute that isn't needed. DuckDB brings analytical SQL directly into your process.
Launchpad to Success: Building and Leading Your Data Team

Launchpad to Success: Building and Leading Your Data Team

Barry Smart

High-performance data teams start with C-suite sponsorship, align to organisational goals, adopt a product mindset, and position themselves as innovation engines rather than order takers.
Data is a socio-technical endeavour

Data is a socio-technical endeavour

Barry Smart

Our experience shows that the the most successful data projects rely heavily on building a multi-disciplinary team.
SQLbits 2024 - The Best Bits

SQLbits 2024 - The Best Bits

Barry Smart

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2024 - Europe's largest expert led data conference. This year SQLBits was hosted at Farnborough IECC, Hampshire.
Wardley Mapping - Exploring the Mining Value Chain

Wardley Mapping - Exploring the Mining Value Chain

Barry Smart

The article explores the opportunities that the AI, digital technology and data present for the mining industry using a technique known as Wardley Mapping.
Star Schemas are fundamental to unleashing value from data in Microsoft Fabric

Star Schemas are fundamental to unleashing value from data in Microsoft Fabric

Barry Smart

Ralph Kimble's 1996 Star Schema principles still apply in Cloud Native Analytics.
Adopt A Product Mindset To Maximise Value From Microsoft Fabric

Adopt A Product Mindset To Maximise Value From Microsoft Fabric

Barry Smart

Treating data as a product turns data teams from order takers into innovation engines. A product mindset gives you a framework to fail fast, build user empathy, and focus resources on high-value work.
Exploring Strategies Enabled By Microsoft Fabric

Exploring Strategies Enabled By Microsoft Fabric

Barry Smart

Explore building situational awareness and leveraging strategic opportunities with Microsoft Fabric in this concise overview.
Developing a Data Mesh Inspired Vision Using Microsoft Fabric

Developing a Data Mesh Inspired Vision Using Microsoft Fabric

Barry Smart

Explore Microsoft Fabric, inspired by Data Mesh, for a data-driven strategy. Learn to approach a Data Mesh vision using this powerful tool.
How Does Microsoft Fabric Measure Up To Data Mesh?

How Does Microsoft Fabric Measure Up To Data Mesh?

Barry Smart

Explore Data Mesh's influence on Microsoft Fabric, addressing gaps in data product marketplace, standards, master data management, and governance.
Microsoft Fabric Is A Socio-Technical Endeavour

Microsoft Fabric Is A Socio-Technical Endeavour

Barry Smart

Creating a successful organisation-wide data and analytics platform isn't just about architecture, schemas and semantic models. It's also about culture, organisational design and people. This blog explores the socio-technical nature of data and analytics and how this should influence your approach to adoption of Microsoft Fabric.
Azure Synapse Analytics versus Microsoft Fabric: A Side by Side Comparison

Azure Synapse Analytics versus Microsoft Fabric: A Side by Side Comparison

Barry Smart

In this Microsoft Fabric vs Synapse comparison we examine how features map from Azure Synapse to Fabric.
SQLbits 2023 - The Best Bits

SQLbits 2023 - The Best Bits

Barry Smart

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2023 in Newport Wales, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.
How to create a semantic model using Synapse Analytics Database Templates

How to create a semantic model using Synapse Analytics Database Templates

Barry Smart

Explore Azure Synapse Analytics Database Templates and learn to create semantic models in this 2nd blog of the series.
Putting total cost of ownership (TCO) into action

Putting total cost of ownership (TCO) into action

Barry Smart

Total cost of ownership can be used a various stages in the lifecycle of a digital asset to support data driven decisions.
What are Synapse Analytics Database Templates and why should you use them?

What are Synapse Analytics Database Templates and why should you use them?

Barry Smart

Database Templates let you define structure over your data lake so it behaves more like a relational system. In this series we test whether they can serve as a useful contract between upstream data engineers and downstream consumers.
How to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO)

How to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO)

Barry Smart

There is a broad spectrum of costs that a digital asset will accrue over its lifetime, which will typically span many years.
What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) and why is it important?

What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) and why is it important?

Barry Smart

Understanding the total cost of ownership is key to making informed decisions about technology investments.
A simple toolkit for IT budgeting and planning

A simple toolkit for IT budgeting and planning

Barry Smart

We describe how to create a high level view of your digital assets, where everything is measured equally and actionable insights can be generated that allow you to optimise your budget and build a roadmap focused on business value.
How to apply behaviour driven development to data and analytics projects

How to apply behaviour driven development to data and analytics projects

Barry Smart

In this blog we demonstrate how the Gherkin specification can be adapted to enable BDD to be applied to data engineering use cases.
Extract insights from tag lists using Python Pandas and Power BI

Extract insights from tag lists using Python Pandas and Power BI

Barry Smart

Discover how to extract insights from spreadsheets and CSV files using Pandas and Power BI in this blog post.
SQLbits 2022 - The Best Bits

SQLbits 2022 - The Best Bits

Barry Smart

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2022 in London, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.
A visual approach to demand management and prioritisation

A visual approach to demand management and prioritisation

Barry Smart

Explore a simple, visual approach to prioritisation that aids decision-making and stakeholder engagement.
Digital Asset Register

Digital Asset Register

Barry Smart

We describe how to create a high level view of your digital assets, where everything is measured equally and actionable insights can be generated.
Flex Your DevSecOps Muscles With Bicep (and get started with our cheat sheet)

Flex Your DevSecOps Muscles With Bicep (and get started with our cheat sheet)

Barry Smart

Bicep provides a significant improvement in tooling for organisations seeking to deploy infrastructure as code on Microsoft Azure.
A remedy for home working: build your own desk!

A remedy for home working: build your own desk!

Barry Smart

Customise your home office and make your home working experience more enjoyable and productive by building your own desk for less than £200 over a weekend.
Data is the new soil

Data is the new soil

Barry Smart

Thinking of data as the new soil is useful in highlighting the key elements that enable a successful data and analytics initiative.
Do robots dream of counting sheep?

Do robots dream of counting sheep?

Barry Smart

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?
Learning from Covid-19

Learning from Covid-19

Barry Smart

Summary of key themes from the Doing Data Together conference hosted virtually by The Scotsman newspaper and Edinburgh University in November 2020. The conference agenda was pivoted to focus on the use of data to help tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. It provided a fascinating insight into the lessons learned.
Benchmarking the Cloud against on-premise data centres

Benchmarking the Cloud against on-premise data centres

Barry Smart

In the third and final part in this series we compare the risk of Azure vs the risk of on-premise data centres, using the Swiss Cheese Risk Model.
Cloud Adoption: A Deep Dive into the Swiss Cheese Model

Cloud Adoption: A Deep Dive into the Swiss Cheese Model

Barry Smart

In the second part of this series, we take a deep dive into the Swiss Cheese Model and show how this type of threat modelling is essential for understanding the risks that adopting Microsoft Azure post your organisation, and how you mitigate them.
Cloud Adoption: Risks & Mitigations Analysis

Cloud Adoption: Risks & Mitigations Analysis

Barry Smart

In the first part of this series, we look at how you take a strategic look at the risks of adopting Microsoft Azure, and how you report these to C-level execs.

Barry’s Talks

Data Mesh and Microsoft Fabric - a perfect fit?

Data Mesh and Microsoft Fabric - a perfect fit?

Barry Smart
Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 5 - Observability

Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 5 - Observability

Barry Smart
Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 4 - Task Flows

Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 4 - Task Flows

Barry Smart
Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 3 - Testing Notebooks

Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 3 - Testing Notebooks

Barry Smart
Compelling Data Storytelling with Power BI: Global Brand Insights - 20 Years of Financial Trends

Compelling Data Storytelling with Power BI: Global Brand Insights - 20 Years of Financial Trends

Barry Smart
Microsoft Fabric and Data Mesh - a perfect fit?

Microsoft Fabric and Data Mesh - a perfect fit?

Barry Smart
Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 2 - Data Validation with Great Expectations

Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 2 - Data Validation with Great Expectations

Barry Smart
Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 1 - Overview of the Course

Microsoft Fabric Machine Learning Tutorial - Part 1 - Overview of the Course

Barry Smart
Perspectives on Microsoft Fabric

Perspectives on Microsoft Fabric

Ian Griffiths, Ed Freeman, Barry Smart
Creating a high performance Data Team: lessons learned from the field

Creating a high performance Data Team: lessons learned from the field

Barry Smart
Azure Synapse Database Templates in 10 Minutes

Azure Synapse Database Templates in 10 Minutes

Barry Smart
Data Storytelling with Power BI: The World Bank World Health and Wealth Report

Data Storytelling with Power BI: The World Bank World Health and Wealth Report

Barry Smart
Fake it 'til you make it - generating production quality test data at scale.

Fake it 'til you make it - generating production quality test data at scale.

Barry Smart
How to Start Your Career in Data Science

How to Start Your Career in Data Science

Barry Smart

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