Tag: Experience Story

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 […]

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, […]

“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 […]

©Anna-Maria Oléhn https://www.flickr.com/photos/agrajag42/5044627532/ Many people believe that decentralization means loss of control. That’s simply not true. You can improve control if you look at control as the control of events and not people. –Wilbur Creech In my role as Head of Enterprise Strategy for Amazon Web Services (AWS), I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to […]

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” — Warren Buffett I’ve supported compliance and security requirements throughout my technology career. In some cases, these requirements were extremely burdensome — for example, when my team was preparing for a Department of Defense audit, which consumed more than 50% of our time for months […]

“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” – William Pollard I discovered the future of enterprise computing five years ago, when I attended QCon in San Francisco. And, surrounded by some of the world’s leading […]

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. — Marcus Aurelius How do you stop the bleeding? That was the question we had to ask ourselves. One of our business units had experienced a decline in revenue for many months and something […]

“A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.” -Norman Cousins I had the pleasure meeting Jay Haque a few years ago when he started leading the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) cloud Journey. I was on a similar Journey at Dow Jones, and we had the […]

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust I recently returned from a 24-day tour through Asia. A few weeks prior to that I was also fortunate enough to spend some time in Australia. Throughout these travels I had the opportunity to speak to many companies, executives, […]

“Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms” –Anthony Storr Rick Lane is my kind of CEO. I had the opportunity to meet with the Trading Technologies (TT) CEO and a few members of his team last week to learn about their journey to the cloud. On this journey Rick led the company through a […]