Category: Cloud Adoption & Migration
ICYMI: Do You Need a Cloud Center of Excellence? [podcast]
On this episode of Modern Digital Business, we explore the necessary transition to a digital business model and the challenges that come with it, specifically in the realm of cloud computing. As the leader in enterprise IT, it’s important to adapt to newer, more flexible and scalable technologies. The solution? Establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence! We dive into the benefits of a CCoE and how it can help guide organizations towards a common goal. Tune in for expert insights, actionable
The Long March: Cloud Native Panel Discussion
This January I was fortunate enough to be a panelist at Predict 2023, for an engaging panel discussion titled The Long March. The other panelists and I discussed how to make Kubernetes more accessible to a larger group of companies, and the cloud-native technologies needed to support mission-critical workloads in the data center and in less compute-intensive environments. You can watch the full panel discussion here: The Long March: Predict 2023 Panel Discussion If you enjoyed this conver
At This Year’s AWS re:Invent, the Focus Was on Data
Another AWS re:Invent is now over, and as has come to be expected, the cloud giant made a number of notable announcements during the event. This year was a bit different, however. Rather than focusing on a slew of new services and service capabilities, AWS instead decided to focus on data. How do you get raw data into AWS? How do you get data out of AWS systems and into other systems? And what do you do with the data once you get it? Answering these questions supports the company’s primar
Cloud-Native Observability with Bruno Kurtic of Sumo Logic [podcast]
Operating a modern digital business means building and operating large, highly scaled applications that are more and more cloud native in their architecture and implementation. Observability is critical in maintaining the highly scaled, highly available, and highly adaptive nature of these modern cloud-native applications. You just can’t keep a large, complex, modern application operating without having a solid, modern observability platform as part of your system. And ideally, in today&rsq
Special Halloween Edition: The 3 Scariest Mistakes Companies Make in the Cloud [podcast]
Welcome to the special Halloween edition of the Modern Digital Business podcast. In this episode, we discuss the 3 scariest mistakes companies make in the cloud. It’s that special time of the year when we turn our attention to all things scary: scary movies and TV shows, scary books, scary decorations, scary costumes. Sometimes it’s fun to be scared. But when it comes to working with customers and clients on their cloud projects, sometimes I get quite scared … and not in
Avoiding the 4 Most Common Pitfalls of a Cloud Migration
When starting a cloud migration, organizations often come in with lofty expectations: “Moving my applications to the cloud will modernize my business and solve all my problems!” But sometimes the cloud doesn’t meet all your expectations. Things you’ve been promised about migrating to the cloud may end up not being true. And you may find that some promises you’ve made to your stakeholder are impossible to keep. As it turns out, migrating to the cloud isn&rsqu
The Finances of a Cloud Migration [podcast]
The first episode of the Modern Digital Business podcast has just dropped. What’s it about? The finances of a cloud migration. How are the finances of your company affected by a cloud migration? Showing a financial benefit of using the cloud can be a bit tricky. You need to show that shutting down an operating data center and moving that money to pay the bill of a cloud provider will, in fact, save you money. How can a cloud provider provide technical resources cheaper than doi
Is a Cloud Center of Excellence Right for Your Organization?
Virtually all sizable organizations have a need to understand how the cloud and cloud computing impacts their organizational IT needs, to say nothing about impacting the overall culture and direction of your organization as a whole. If you work in enterprise IT, you are at the heart of this struggle, and finding your way around organizationally in this cloud-centric world can be a challenge. May I suggest looking into the benefits of building a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) in your organiza
Tapping the Full Potential of the Cloud for Your Business
The cloud has traditionally been thought of as a cost-effective method of hosting applications. While this mindset has led to some positive cloud migration cases and effective cloud native application development, the opportunities go much further for ambitious businesses wanting to make the move and realize the full potential of the cloud. A cloud-initiated transformation within a business can be the mechanism for providing consistent customer experiences on a global scale. What has often held
Assessing Your Organization’s Cloud Maturity Level
Operating successfully in the cloud is still a daunting challenge for many companies today. Too often, organizations have overly high expectations about the benefits of being in the cloud while underestimating the amount of work required to get there. An unfortunate result can be a vicious cycle of blame, finger pointing, and business leaders grasping for something—anything—that could be considered a victory. When they find that small bit of success, organizations may decide they&rsq
10-Step Checklist to Migrate Your Business to the Cloud
I have been involved in cloud computing for more than a decade, and I’ve heard from many IT executives about the challenges they faced trying to move key enterprise applications to the public cloud. Far too often, their teams struggled or had only limited success with their cloud migrations. In some cases, the migration failed altogether. If your organization is looking to modernize mission-critical applications and you’re planning a cloud migration as part of this process, you don&r
More Kubernetes, Less Serverless, According to Latest CNCF Report
An interesting trend is emerging in the world of cloud computing: non-cloud native technologies are growing in popularity while cloud native technologies are decreasing in popularity. This is according to the December 2021 “State of Cloud Native Development,” released by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), developed in conjunction with research firm SlashData. This report reflects the change in use of various cloud-related technologies by the 6.8 million cloud native de
The 3 Scariest Mistakes Companies Make in the Cloud
With Halloween just around the corner, I’ve been thinking lately about scary things. The truth is, I sometimes like being scared when watching a scary movie or reading a scary book. But when it comes to working with customers and clients on their cloud projects, sometimes I get quite scared—and not in a good way. I get scared when I hear stories about how a company is preparing to migrate to the cloud incorrectly, or when someone shares a misguided plan about how their organiza
Cloud Myth: ‘Lift and Shift’ Is a Cloud Migration
Early in the process of adopting the cloud, many companies consider moving applications to the cloud by simply taking the application off of servers running in their own data center and move them to servers they’ve created in the cloud. This type of migration is often called a simple “lift and shift.” Lift and shift is a valid way to very quickly get your application out of your data center and into a cloud-based data center. But while this approach is quick and easy, it isn&r
Cloud Providers Have Different Personalities: Whom Do They Remind You Of?
I recently wrote a blog post about the Pentagon’s decision to go multicloud instead of opting for a Microsoft Azure-only strategy. Because, after all, it IS the age of multicloud and polyclouds and hybrid clouds, and, well, it got me thinking about characterizing different vendors’ clouds and how those cloud vendors differ from one another. Some day I’ll get more serious and explain the functional differences, but not today. Today I’ll give each cloud vendor di
Cloud Myth: Serverless Solves All My Problems
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of the cloud, and the latest and greatest cloud service offering often seem like the solution to all your problems. However, like any new technology, understanding how and where to apply the technology is critical to successfully using the technology. This most certainly applies to the serverless computing, which many people believe will solve all their problems. Function as a Service (FaaS) offerings, better known as serverless computing, are provi
Dear Andy Jassy
Dear Andy, Congratulations on becoming CEO of Amazon. It seems like only yesterday that I worked with you at AWS, starting the Elastic Beanstalk service in 2009. You’ve done an amazing job with AWS over the years. And now, as of July 5, you’ve taken over the CEO role from the man himself, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos, just as Steve Ballmer did for Bill Gates and Tim Cook for Steve Jobs. Congratulations! You’re in heady company. Of course, the media is asking, “Can Andy Jass
Was the Pentagon Smart to Ditch a Single Cloud Strategy and Embrace Multicloud Instead?
You may have seen the recent news that the Pentagon has decided to implement a multicloud strategy to replace the previous JEDI program. Essentially, Pentagon officials decided against a Microsoft-only cloud strategy and moved to a multi-vendor plan, which will now include Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle, and others. This decision is a great victory for the cloud and competitive cloud offerings in the government arena, but is it a good strategy for the U.S. military itself? Will it be