AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy Blog

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A customer recently asked me how we introduced the concept of “failing forward” at Cox Automotive. It is a change many enterprises are […]

I am often asked a question along these lines: Mark, I get that Agile and DevOps approaches favor learning and adjusting over rigidly following a plan. But our budgeting process locks in our spending (and therefore our annual plan) in advance, and our investment management process necessarily locks in spending levels and schedules for each […]

“A learning organisation is an organisation that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.” Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline There is something excitingly headline worthy about big initiatives. There is also something depressingly familiar about their poor success rates. In Continuous Transformation: Stop Stopping Mark Schwartz stated that “…your digital transformation must prepare […]

“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 […]