An understanding of IT’s past is important to moving forward with the cloud. When James Schweitzer, an IT specialist working in the IBM Watson Solutions Division, looks back on how the work of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage changed computing, he can’t help but get excited about Watson’s potential. In this interview with Schweitzer, we discover how he got involved in open source and explore the evolving role of system administrators???particularly with the cloud. He tells us about a few open source projects that make his life easier and explains that automation is the foundation for self service.