Category: Enterprise Strategy

When we talk about enterprise agility in the cloud, we’re often talking about achieving it through DevOps or other Agile software delivery approaches — about the ability to quickly provision infrastructure, load it up with deployed software, receive fast feedback from users, and scale up and scale down instantaneously. But software agility is only one type of […]

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/mikdam “… Reform the environment and not man; being absolutely confident that if you give man the right environment, he will behave favorably.” — Buckminster Fuller As an enterprise strategist at AWS, I often talk to customers about strategies that will help them move workloads to the cloud. Occasionally, I’ll hear from senior executives who don’t want […]

Before I joined AWS several months ago, I was the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), one of the 15 operational component agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It was my first and only foray into government — prior to that role, I had been a CIO and CEO of commercial-sector companies. How […]

Galapagos Islands “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” -Charles Darwin We’re constantly inventing and improving at AWS. And, while we currently offer customers more than 90 services (with many, like EC2, also providing a wide variety of sub-choices), the pace of our […]

Automation is good, so long as you know exactly where to put the machine. -Eliyahu Goldratt I’ve spent time with hundreds of IT executives over the past several years, many of whom are in the process of implementing cloud-first operating models in their enterprises. Among the countless things I’ve learned from these conversations, two things are […]

Lessons From the Edmunds.com All-in Migration to AWS The notion of a buddy system has been used for decades in many facets of life, including school, work, and adventure. Whether it’s a college freshman being paired with an upperclassman at orientation, an Air Force pilot and his or her wingman, or your weekend scuba diving partner, […]

3 Reasons You Should Document YourCulture and Hire for Culture Fit “In our early years, we didn’t talk about culture much. We hadn’t documented it all. We just built a business that we wanted to work in. And, that was great. But the real return on culture happened when we started getting more deliberate about it. […]

“Don’t wish for what you haven’t got; it blinds you to the possibilities of the present” As an AWS Enterprise Strategist, I have the privilege of meeting executives from around the globe who are faced with a wide range of business and technology challenges. Each customer is unique. Many of the challenges, however, like history, tend […]

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done” — Bruce Lee There’s a quote that’s always stuck in my mind, and Marvel Comic fans will know it well — “With great power, comes great responsibility.” For me, that great responsibility was making sure that millions of our customers at Capital One UK could […]

In my role as Head of Enterprise Strategy for AWS, I have a lot to be grateful for. After having led a large-scale business transformation using the cloud as the CIO of Dow Jones, I now have a front-row seat to watch some of the largest companies in the world (News Corp, Capital One, GE) […]