Joey Bowles wouldn’t be offended if you told him he had his head in the cloud.

The cloud is a big focus for the manager of IT applications. Bowles’ team shepherds in the newest cloud-based technology at Williams.

When Bowles first started his career two decades ago, clouds referred to atmospheric conditions, not our modern-day answer to collaboration and storage.

“I had what I call a cloud-piphany with emerging technology such as Office 365,” he said. “By shifting to the cloud, we could lower costs while providing more secure, reliable and updatable applications that allow us to scale up and down as the business changes.”

That flexibility helped during the pandemic. While other companies struggled to transition to remote work, Williams already had set up digital business processes and collaboration.

“There is a term we use called friction, which means usage slows down as users navigate layers of systems,” he said. “By going to the cloud, we reduced the amount of friction. An employee can work from their kitchen or a coffee shop, in the same way they do when in the office.”

Bowles holds a Bachelor of Computer Science and Master of Telecommunications Management from Oklahoma State University. He started working as a college intern at Tulsa-based MAPCO, which was acquired by Williams not long after Bowles was hired full-time.

He said Williams has been an early adopter of new technology, and his roles progressed along with new applications. For his team, it’s critical to maximize the company’s investment in the tools that keep the business moving forward.

“We are a forward-looking IT department, which allows us to partner with the business,” he said. “We influence how people communicate and how business is done by improving user productivity. That’s exciting.”