AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy Blog
Mental Models for Your Digital Transformation
Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior. – Peter Senge As leaders, we are responsible for making decisions in the […]
Best of Both Worlds: Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in the Enterprise
In our Executive Summit roundtable session at re:Invent 2019, Phil Potloff and I discussed the topic of innovation in large enterprises with executives spanning many industries and public sector organisations. Much has been written about how large companies often lose elements of their original DNA as they grow, including their aptitude to innovate. Given this, […]
Part 2: Microservices: Technical, Organizational, or Business Architecture? Yes
Organizations which design systems…are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. — M. Conway In a previous post, I covered what microservices are and their benefits. My aim was to help non-technical executives understand what microservices are and the role they play in supporting business objectives. Implemented correctly, a microservices architecture […]
Drive Change but Avoid the Chasms
Every change will be met with an equal, opposite, unpredictable change of its own. —Inspired by Isaac Newton In “Today’s CIO—Orchestrator in Chief,” we covered how changes can be introduced into organisations, but only eluded to matching different approaches with different audiences. This approach is similar to how marketers segment customers to target different buying […]
How to Build Data Capabilities
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts—for support rather than for illumination.” —Andrew Lang When it comes to the data, it is culture first and capability second. In my previous post, I talked about how executives can create a data-driven culture in their enterprises. In this post, I am going to dive […]
The Case for a Single Cloud Investment From an Abstraction Addict
By Bill Salak, CTO of Brainly Foreword by Thomas Blood, AWS Leader of Digital Innovation in EMEA As a former Enterprise Strategist and Leader of Digital Innovation in EMEA, I frequently talk to business executives and IT leaders. Leaders sometimes ask me about creating a single-pane-of-glass interface to manage multiple cloud providers. I always tell […]
Financial Liberation: Taking Control of Costs in the Cloud
After culture, people, and process, the most common topic I hear about is the surprise organisations have in shifting their thinking on financial management once on-prem applications move to the cloud. If done well this is a liberating opportunity to closely align cost with value, to engage the business at large in decisions previously abdicated […]
Letting Go: Enabling Autonomy in Teams
My detailed project plan won the war. — said no military commander, ever. In the chaos of battle, it is accepted military doctrine that highly centralised decision-making fails. Information cannot be rapidly assimilated from the front line and turned into timely decisions. To address this, a commander’s intent is communicated, guiding each platoon in their […]
Part 1: Microservices: Technical, Business, or Organizational Architecture? Yes
With a bucket of Legos, you can tell any story. You can build an airplane or a dragon or a pirate ship—it’s whatever you can imagine. Christopher Miller One of the hallmarks of any digital transformation is increased speed and agility. Decisions need to be made more quickly using data and algorithms. Digital services need […]
Digitally Transforming What Exactly?
If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it. Albert Einstein I’ve been asked multiple times recently what “digital transformation” means? Given that by 2023 conservative estimates of annual expenditure on digital transformations are north of $2 trillion but with well […]