Sam O’Neill

Technology

• Advising the largest mobile network operator in Africa on its strategic alliance agreement with Microsoft, which included a multi-million-dollar cloud migration project whereby the IT and networking workloads of more than 21 companies in the group will be migrated to Azure.
• Advising a leading GCC-based airline on the procurement of design, development, hosting, and support and maintenance services from Amazon Web Services in respect of a metaverse platform to be used to train employees as part of the onboarding process.
• Advising various UAE government ministries on the procurement of critical IT systems and related services, including the procurement and implementation of state-of-the-art systems to be used by ministries to administer their regulatory responsibilities.
• Advising a leading UK book retailer on the acquisition of new business-critical cloud-based IT systems for its product ordering and delivery processes.*
• Advising a leading bank on the procurement of its core banking IT system from a specialist provider of software solutions to the banking, building society and lending sectors.*
• Advising a leading global technology research center on the procurement of various technology-related products and services, as well as the commercialisation framework for technology assets developed by its research centres, including AI systems, navigation technology, autonomous vehicles and unmanned ariel vehicles.
• Advising a leading global technology research centre on a number of AI-related matters, including the procurement of training and development services for its LLMs; the terms on which the LLMs will be licensed for use; the risks associated with training AI models on copyrighted content and content containing personal data; and its template agreements for the procurement of training data.
• Advising an NHS Trust on the supply of its proprietary genomics data management software to genomic laboratory hubs across the UK.*
• Advising an electronic trading platform operator on outsourcing the hosting, operation, support and maintenance of its platform, and the licensing of the underlying technology for the platform to third party trading platforms.*
• Advising a regulated financial services company on the outsourcing of various IT services, including resource augmentation and software development services (agile and waterfall methodologies) to a leading European provider of IT consultancy and software development services.*
• Advising one of the largest public sector pension schemes in the UK on the implementation of a framework for the acquisition of IT systems (on-premises and cloud-hosted) and services by local authorities across the UK.*

Commercial

• Advising a leading cleantech company specialising in automated connection and electrification systems on various high-value agreements for the provision of its systems to ports and airports around the world.*

Corporate Support

• Advising a digital data hub on the commercial contract, IP, IT and data protection aspects of its proposed joint venture with the ICT business of a leading GCC telecommunications service provider, including on complex data centre arrangements and critical IT projects (e.g., government run IoT systems and government-focused IT systems/cloud services).
• Advising a fintech investment arm of a British multinational bank on the technology licensing aspects of a corporate joint venture with a multinational IT services company to establish a provider of an AI-enabled digital lending platform in Africa.

Data Protection

• Advising a broad range of clients on data security and data protection compliance matters in respect of the UK GDPR, EU GDPR, UAE’s Personal Data Protection Law, DIFC’s Data Protection Law and ADGM’s Data Protection Regulations, as well as the sectoral data protection rules and regulations that apply in the UAE’s banking, healthcare and telecommunications sectors.

*Denotes experience prior to DLA Piper