An E-Book of Cloud Best Practices for Your Enterprise
Over the last eight months, I’ve written a series of posts detailing several best practices for enterprises using (or considering) the cloud. These are practices I encourage any technology executive or professional looking to transform their business and/or career to consider. They were first inspired by my time as CIO of Dow Jones, from 2012 to 2014, where the cloud quickly became the second most impactful means by which we changed technology’s role within the company (the first most impactful being the amazing team of people that made it all happen). Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to continue refining them through my work with other technology professionals, many of whom come from the largest companies in the world and all of whom are at various stages on a similar Journey.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve found myself sharing links to individual posts as a follow up to some great conversations. I believe these best practices will lead to better results when they’re practiced in concert, so rather than continue to share links one-by-one I’m hoping that this post will serve as a useful table of contents into all the best practices I’ve written about.
(Note: these best practices, and a number of others, are now available in my book Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT).
Preface: The Journey
I wrote about meaningful cloud adoption being a Journey — an iterative process that allows organizations to move faster and devote their resources to the things that matter most in their business — in this post in September of 2014. Then, in December of 2015, I created this post as a kick-off to a more in-depth series examining some of the best practices that enterprises employ on their Journey. The “chapters” that follow contain links to all the posts I’ve authored on each of the best practices.
Best Practice One: Provide Executive Support
- Today’s IT Executive is a Chief Change Management Officer
- Today’s CIO on Merging Business with Technology
- What Makes Good Leaders Great?
- Great Leaders Make New Rules
Best Practice Two: Educate Staff
- You Already Have the People You Need to Succeed with the Cloud
- 11 Things to Consider When Educating Your Staff on Cloud
Best Practice Three: Create a Culture of Experimentation
- Create a Culture of Experimentation Enabled by the Cloud
- 4 Dos and Don’ts When Using the Cloud to Experiment
Best Practice Four: Engage Partners
Best Practice Five: Create a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE)
- How to Create a Cloud Center of Excellence in Your Enterprise
- Staffing Your Enterprise’s Cloud Center of Excellence
- Common Responsibilities for Your Cloud Center of Excellence
- Your Enterprise’s Flywheel to the Cloud
Before I wrote the CCoE series, I wrote a series on DevOps in your enterprise, which has a lot of relevant points to the CCoE model
- Considering DevOps in Your Enterprise?
- Two Reasons Customer Service is Key to Enterprise DevOps
- Enterprise DevOps: Why You Should Run What You Build
- Enterprise DevOps: What to Expect When You’re DevOps’ing
Best Practice Six: Implement a Hybrid Architecture
Best Practice Seven: Implement a Cloud-First Strategy
I hope that you find this list useful, and I’d love to know what you think is missing!
Keep building,
- Stephen
orbans@amazon.com
@stephenorban
Read My Book: Ahead in the Cloud: Best Practices for Navigating the Future of Enterprise IT
