AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy Blog
Author: Stephen Orban
Stephen is the GM (General Manager) of a new AWS service under development, and author of the book “Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT” https://amzn.to/ahead-in-the-cloud Stephen spent his first three-and-a-half years with Amazon as the Global Head of Enterprise Strategy, where he oversaw AWS’s enterprise go-to-market strategy, invented and built AWS’s Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), and helped executives from hundreds of the world’s largest companies envision, develop, and mature their IT operating model using the cloud. Stephen authored Ahead in the Cloud so customers might benefit from many of the best practices Stephen observed working with customers in this role. Prior to joining AWS, Stephen was the CIO of Dow Jones, where he introduced modern software development methodologies and reduced costs while implementing a cloud-first strategy. These transformational changes accelerated product development cycles and increased productivity across all lines of business, including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch.com, Dow Jones Newswires, and Factiva. Stephen also spent 11 years at Bloomberg LP, holding a variety of leadership positions across their equity and messaging platforms, before founding Bloomberg Sports in 2008, where he served as CTO. Stephen earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from State University of New York College at Fredonia. https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=4575032
Today’s CIO on Merging Business with Technology
“Start with the end in mind.” — Stephen R. Covey In my last post, I asserted that today’s technology executive needs to play the role of the Chief Change Management Officer (CCMO™) in leading his or her organization on the Enterprise Cloud Journey. This post explores the first of three themes associated with this responsibility: merging business with […]
Today’s IT Executive is a Chief Change Management Officer
“Success is about dedication. You may not be where you want to be or do what you want to do when you’re on the journey. But you’ve got to be willing to have vision and foresight that leads you to an incredible end.” -Usher As more and more enterprises consider the cloud, today’s IT executive has […]
7 Best Practices for Your Enterprise’s Journey to the Cloud
“Life is a Journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.” -Pope Francis Last December, I wrote about cloud becoming the new normal, and that the process of meaningfully adopting cloud into an established enterprise is a Journey. This Journey is an iterative process that will take time. In my post from December, I laid out […]
Reborn in the Cloud: Talen Energy’s Journey to the Cloud
“We don’t do load balancers anymore, we just do load balancing.” -Bruce Kantor, Talen Energy I don’t often get the opportunity to learn how the cloud is helping the energy industry rethink the way it delivers IT. There’s obviously a lot of great science behind power generation, but getting to hear about the technologies and […]
Enterprise DevOps: What to Expect When You’re DevOps’ing
© Andrew Hurley https://www.flickr.com/photos/15717926@N04/6254409229 “You cannot create experience, you must undergo it” -Albert Camus I’m wrapping up my DevOps in the Enterprise series with a piece on what to expect once your organization has some DevOps experience. These are just a few of the things I’ve experienced or seen in organizations that embrace automation, customer-service-oriented IT, […]
Enterprise DevOps: Why You Should Run What You Build
“You build it, you run it” -Werner Vogels It’s an all-too-common scenario: You’re spending time with your family and your phone suddenly steals your attention away. The dreaded airhorn alerts you to a SEV1 failure. Your application — one that periodically suffers from a memory leak that operations “fixed” by restarting it — is now exhausting server resources within minutes […]
Two Reasons Customer Service is Key to Enterprise DevOps
“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” -Damon Richards Customer service is, as I outlined in my introduction to this DevOps series, one of three tenets I encourage organizations to consider when implementing a DevOps culture. Today’s world is full of technology solutions. There are a myriad of […]
Considering DevOps in Your Enterprise?
“Development is an endurance exercise with incremental improvements” -Sri Mulyani Indrawati DevOps is a relatively new term for a concept I believe has been around a long time. At this point, it’s widely accepted as a cultural way of being in some organizations, a confluence of formerly siloed teams that together can produce faster, more […]
Some Cloud Adoption Observations from Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust I recently returned from a 24-day tour through Asia. A few weeks prior to that I was also fortunate enough to spend some time in Australia. Throughout these travels I had the opportunity to speak to many companies, executives, […]
Be Wary of Analysis Paralysis When Using the Cloud
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” -Elbert Hubbard Last week I returned to the east coast after a productive three weeks on the road. I was able to attend and speak at the AWS Summits in San Francisco, London, and Sydney and meet with several […]