Category: Enterprise Strategy

Business Cases for Cloud Migration I’ve seen some companies struggle to assemble and vet a business case for the cloud. Intuitively, they know the investment is solid. But they get bogged down in projecting their infrastructure needs and have difficulty connecting their cloud activities to broader returns on investment across the enterprise. Fortunately, there’s a […]

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. —Edsger W. Dijkstra By Chris Hennesey and Phil Le-Brun, AWS Enterprise Strategists As a CIO or CFO, have you ever questioned how IT costs are allocated within your business? Ever been overwhelmed with the complexity and lack […]

Today’s executives have a lot on their hands. Not only does the business environment change more rapidly and dramatically than ever, but the set of available technologies also evolves at a stunning rate. Those technologies are no longer “things that IT does far down in the engine room”; they have become a critical ingredient for […]

In this guest post John Naylon, AWS Principal SA for Telecoms, talks about path dependence—the idea that solutions are sometimes subject to historical accident—and why the AWS notion of “reinvention” in the cloud is a possible solution. While his examples are drawn from the telecom industry, the point is an important one for all of […]

LinkedIn reports that hiring for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) roles has increased more than 90% since 2019, as companies expand their investments in ensuring that their organizations, products, and communications reflect the diversity of the customers they serve. DEI is also a growing regulatory concern—particularly with regard to pay equity. In the US, most […]

Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering. A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, […]

You don’t hike up a mountain in a straight line. Rather, gentle slopes and switchbacks allow you to make a gradual ascent. Even though you aren’t heading straight for your goal, you keep an eye on the top of the mountain and track your progress by the changing scenery or elevation. If you haven’t encountered […]

While the term digital transformation has become slippery and overused, it nevertheless remains a priority of many business and technology executives. In this blog post, Dr. Saša Baškarada, a senior transformation architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Professional Services, explains the drivers of digital transformation as well as its three interdependent stages. The resulting conceptual […]

  Creating a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) is often a great way to jumpstart a company’s migration to the cloud and to guide the migration with an eye on best practices and long-term suitability. The company sets up a team of experts on cloud best practices and uses their skills and their passion for […]

The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. —Peter Senge       A CIO is hired and charged with “fixing IT.” They launch a major reorganisation based on a desire to be an agile, digital-first, data-enabled, platform-based organisation (thank you, Dilbert). IT-staffed product teams are created, although bereft of the outsourced infrastructure […]