Category: Enterprise Strategy

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together” Vincent Van Gogh In my previous blog I outlined the role of the CIO in driving organisational change, and the first steps to be taken to build the case for change and a supporting coalition. In this post, I will dive into how […]

by John Brigden, VP of AWS Managed Services Introduction by Mark Schwartz In the digital world, speed is all-important. Short lead times allow companies to get products to market faster; build their products in fast, low-risk increments that incorporate customer feedback; respond quickly to disruption; and reduce risk through rapid customer testing and timely response […]

“Nothing is more difficult than to introduce a new order. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince A regular topic with customers is how they can approach transforming their […]

I believe the fear that led to the deployment of large amounts of resources and budgets to remediate Y2K, followed by the dot-com bubble bust, had an unintended consequence. Many enterprises became extremely conservative when it came to building products, and defaulted to buying off the shelf wherever possible. Today, many enterprise IT teams are […]

“Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” Plato As with many subjects, Plato was ahead of his time in understanding the challenges of a CIO. In many businesses today, we have excelled at the desire (“We will lead our industry with digital transformation.”) and the emotion (“I’m passionate about transforming our […]

“I never lose. I either win or I learn” Nelson Mandela A phrase that I find is not resonating well with enterprise executives is “fail fast.” Despite the best attempts to justify this exhortation, executives at an airline, financial, or restaurant company are clearly not going to embrace accepting a philosophy where the wrong type of […]

Although new to AWS, I am already hearing similar stories from enterprise customers regarding their challenges as they look to proactively grow and even disrupt their own businesses. While our AWS customers are interested in the technology, their stories more commonly address organisational, people, and process challenges. In this post, I will address some of […]

Application modernization is one of the big drivers of cloud adoption, with enterprises considering it as an opportunity to not just reduce operating costs as they move their core technology to the cloud, but also to improve performance, resiliency, and speed of delivery for new products and features. Enterprises also begin to modernize their architecture […]

Bryan Landerman recently hosted this webinar about what it means to build modern applications on AWS.  He covers the changes enterprises need to make regarding people, process, and technology and highlights how Amazon embarked on their own transformation back in 2001.

In my previous post, I examined the modern application and highlighted the typical approach used to build modern applications: Shrink the scope. Choose the right tool for the job. Offload the undifferentiated pieces. Connect the building blocks. Automate everything. AWS continues to build services that make choosing the right tool for the job, offloading the […]