I would most importantly like to thank my girlfriend Georgina Mason. I know I haven't been able to leave the house much at weekends for 3 months as I have been writing this book, so I know it couldn't have been much fun. But thank you for your patience and support, as well as all the tea and coffee you made for me to keep me awake during the late nights. Thank you for being an awesome girlfriend.

I would like to thank my parents, June and Martin, for always being there and keeping me on track when I was younger. I would probably have never got through university never mind written a book if it wasn't for your constant encouragement, so hopefully, you both know how much I appreciate everything you have done for me over the years.

I would like to thank Paddy Power Betfair for allowing me the opportunity to write this book and our CTO Paul Cutter to allow our team to create the i2 project solution and talk to the technology community about what we have achieved.

I would also like to thank Richard Haigh, my manager, for encouraging me to take on the book and all his support in my career since we started working together at Thomsons Online Benefits.

I would like to thank my team, the delivery enablement team at Paddy Power Betfair, for continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible with our solutions. You are the people who made the company a great innovative place to work.

I would like to thank all the great people I worked with throughout my career at Paddy Power Betfair, Thomsons Online Benefits, Cofunds, and Accenture, as without the opportunities I was given, I wouldn't have been able to pull in information from all those experiences to write this book.

I would also like to thank Nuage networks for permitting me to write about their software-defined networking solution in this book.