We’ve probably all heard the DevOps principle “you build it, you run it.” In theory, DevOps makes each team responsible for both the development and operation of its code, giving DevOps teams complete responsibility — and complete visibility and transparency — for the entire value stream, including not just coding…

I remember an incident from my previous CIO role. A number of us were in a meeting discussing the severe problems we were having with the performance of a large contractor. At one point, someone suggested that we start a new RFP (request for proposal) process to replace the contractor…

Getting Started with Training for the Cloud Enterprise executives contemplating a move to the cloud sometimes worry that their current employees will not be up to the job. After all, the cloud involves a rather different set of practices and technologies, and making the most of the cloud through DevOps, infrastructure as code, automated security and compliance…

Large enterprises beginning a transformation journey often find that they already have pockets of transformation that have escaped notice. But why haven’t good practices spread from these isolated corners of the enterprise and transformed the rest of the organization? I think the answer is that transforming the whole of the…

When an enterprise migrates into the cloud, it is empowered with many new ways to manage its costs. One important benefit is increased agility which in turn leads to leaner delivery processes with corresponding savings. With agility comes the possibility for rapid feedback-and-adjustment cycles, from which comes improved quality and…

Training the Entire Enterprise to Harness the Cloud’s Full Value The cloud changes not just how enterprises deliver IT capabilities, but how they compete, how they advance their top lines, how they foster innovation, and how they organize themselves for success. It stands to reason, then, that training for the…

Lowering the Cost of Curiosity In his post on the AWS Public Sector blog, John Brady, the CISO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), talks about building a data lake in the cloud to reduce the cost of curiosity. The concept is brilliant and consistent with the way I…

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. …

Why the Commercial Sector Should Learn From Government IT (And Not Vice Versa) 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…