AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy Blog

by Jonathon Dixon, Global Head of Mining and Resources, Amazon Web Services Foreword by Thomas Blood: In a preface to another mining-related post, I had mentioned that until the 1930s, my family owned and operated gold, silver, and copper mines in the United States. What I did not mention is why my family no longer owns […]

The world of traditional on-premises IT has become reasonably accurate at forecasting operating costs. We’ve been running IT in a very similar, familiar way for a long time, and we’ve become good at it. When adopting cloud, it can be helpful to reevaluate how we think about cost management, particularly around fixed-cost models and consumption-based […]

When I joined AWS just over a year ago, I was introduced to the concept of a “bar raiser.” In every interview process for a new employee, someone is designated as the bar-raiser—the person who will make sure that the new employee raises the bar for whatever function they will be performing. The bar raiser […]

In my role as an AWS Enterprise Strategist I am privileged to travel the globe working with amazing customers and their leadership teams. In nearly all of these encounters one of the questions, if not the first question is “What should my Target Operating Model be as we grow and use AWS Cloud?”. The TOM, […]

In previous blog posts I have described anti-patterns of enterprise IT that we often observe in enterprises we work with, and patterns of successful enterprise IT that are their antidotes. To make these patterns and anti-patterns more concrete, I will explain how they have played out at my old organization, US Citizenship and Immigration Services […]

An interesting question arose at one of my customer meetings recently. We were discussing the importance of innovation; in particular, how important it was for technology staff to stay abreast of new technologies to see whether they could add value to the enterprise. We agreed that current best practices suggest conducting rapid experiments to test […]

Enterprise leaders often ask us how to get started in digital transformation. The question usually comes after a discussion about the urgency of transformation and what a transformed enterprise looks like—the benefits of transformation and the business models it enables. At first, the journey seems long and involved; the changes dramatic and far-reaching. We often […]

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data technologies enable organizations to harness the troves of data being captured (or which were previously thrown away), bringing new insights, automating processes, and even creating new products, services, and businesses. AI, ML, and the associated data (powered by the AWS cloud) is a critical […]

Enterprises working with AWS to modernize their IT infrastructure often do so within the larger scope of a digital transformation. These transformations look to go beyond technology, including goals to address the changes to teams, process, and culture that are required to enable the enterprise to move faster and with more agility. The enterprise leaders […]

In the last post we talked about anti-patterns that often get in the way of enterprise digital transformation. In this post we’ll cover some good patterns. We call them Shrink, Strangle, Confirm, Cohere, Omit, Shorten, and Embed. Pattern 1: Shrink Reduce the size of deliverables. Make large projects into small projects. Reduce the amount of […]