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On Monday, February 10, 2025, Starbucks made good on its Super Bowl ad promise: Starbucks Reward members could claim a free tall hot or iced coffee. “It was a fun day for our customers, but not for me,” says Imran Ali, the director of IT infrastructure and cloud engineering at Starbucks, with a laugh.
No one at Starbucks will soon forget “Starbucks Monday.” Customer traffic broke records across Starbucks’ eleven thousand stores. If you offer people free coffee, they will claim it in droves.
The good news is that the system Ali has spent more than eighteen years curating, scaling, and building out survived the day without a glitch. The director and his entire team were on the other side of the Starbucks app, just waiting as the system strained under the massive traffic influx. But it held firm.
The first question you ask a person in Ali’s position is: How could anyone handle the stress of this job for nearly two decades? Ali directs a hybrid global data ecosystem running over 80 percent of business-critical systems for the most famous name in coffee. He oversees automating data center infrastructure, executing infrastructure modernization across countries, and implementing digital transformation programs. Then there are the data centers in North America, EMEA, and China.
“You have to build a team that understands this mindset, and you have to build the kind of program that is capable of scaling, resilient, and secured.”
Imran Ali
It’s a job that cannot be ignored after 5 p.m. Ali is always thinking about his job in some capacity.
“This job fits my personality,” the director says. “Someone like me needs a challenge every single day. If this was the kind of job where I had ten things to get done and that was it, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I need challenges that evolve as my work evolves. And I like solving problems before they become problems.”
That’s a big part of what’s kept Ali capable of handling such a heavy workload and occasional bouts of chaos. No system is foolproof, even with the many backups that a team prepares. But part of Ali’s expertise is creating processes and procedures that mitigate risk as much as possible while still finding a way to enable Starbucks’ business.
“I love developing and implementing automation, but to develop those for something as large as our organization, you have to build the processes and procedures that allow this to happen,” Ali explains. “You have to build a team that understands this mindset, and you have to build the kind of program that is capable of scaling, resilient, and secured.”
One of Ali’s pressing and omnipresent initiatives as of late involves Starbucks’ cloud migration efforts. Starbucks operates in a multicloud environment, with data centers connected to multiple cloud environments. Previously, Ali says, security, governance, and compliance approvals for cloud applications often took weeks or months. To speed up the process, Ali’s team developed a way to automate the process while also building security into its operations as well as services that app teams wouldn’t have to configure themselves.
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The team created landing zones—preconfigured, secure, and scalable environments that act as starting points for deploying workloads and applications. Landing zones allow organizations to adapt their cloud infrastructure as their own needs evolve. When well executed, landing zones can mitigate all the issues Ali was running into, particularly when it comes to security and compliance.
“This project just started a few months ago, and we continue to centralize of that control around the cloud,” Ali says. “We’re hoping it will help us control some of our spend, which has been increasing year over year.”
“Imran’s leadership and vision embody the future of IT,” says Juan Orlandini, the chief technology officer for North America at Insight Enterprises. “Partnering with him on Starbucks’ hybrid and multicloud strategy has been incredibly rewarding. Our deep expertise in digital transformation helps ensure scalable, secure solutions that support evolving business needs—especially on days when flawless performance matters most.”
As Starbucks continues to invest in AI, machine learning, and model training, which require significant processing power. It also needs options to procure processing capacity, and that creates unique challenge for data center strategy. Ali notes that while cloud migration promises to reduce reliance on data centers and gives numerous advantages provided by cloud computing, on-premises data centers can offer more control, customization, and long-term lower cost for high performance computing needs.
“If this was the kind of job where I had ten things to get done and that was it, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I need challenges that evolve as my work evolves.”
Imran Ali
Starbucks also has multiple manufacturing facilities, which include roasting plants and distribution centers. Ali describes the roasting facilities as Boeing hangars, and in some of these plants, it can take twenty-five minutes to traverse. These facilities rely on massive amounts of automation and a highly available IT infrastructure.
In response to the growing demands of these facilities, Ali’s team is conducting a study that explores the possibility of implementing private 5G networks. These networks would provide secure, dedicated connections that could offer better performance in the areas that need it most.
“It’s an interesting process, working through these studies,” Ali explains. “It’s an exciting concept, and we’re looking forward to seeing what kind of developments and solutions our partners can provide.”
Ali says his go-to order is a Starbucks Reserve Latte and a croissant. He likes to go in early to the office and grab a few moments in the café corner before multiple parties start vying for his attention. Ali has spent eighteen years supporting the most famous name in the grounds game, and there’s no sign of him letting up anytime soon.
As a leading solutions integrator, Insight drives speed, scale, resilience and innovation to our clients across the globe — combining our technical expertise, broad solutions portfolio and supply chain capabilities to help businesses achieve their most ambitious technology goals.
