The document discusses how to build a "cloud ready" IT team. It describes how cloud adoption can deliver significant cost savings over traditional on-premises infrastructure. It also outlines how IT teams need to change culturally to be more agile, adopt new skills like automation, and shift to more flexible and disposable structures as they transition to a cloud environment.

1. © 2014 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified, or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.
Building a “Cloud Ready” IT Team
Rodney Haywood,
Manager, Solutions Architecture, Amazon Web Services

2. The journey
IDC discovered that the five-year
total cost of ownership (TCO) of
developing, deploying, and
managing critical applications in
AWS delivered a 72% savings
when compared with deploying the
same resources on-premises or in
hosted environments. The findings
also showed a 626% ROI over five
years.
http://media.amazonwebservices.com/IDC_Business_Value_of_AWS_Accelerates_Over_time.pdf

3. What does this “IT Team” do today?
Activities
• Procure
• Architect / Design
• Implement
– Equipment rack and stack
– Software installation
– Configure hardware and software
– Test
• Operate
– Monitor
– Troubleshoot
– Optimize
– Upgrade
Characteristics
• Static
• Centralised control
• Enterprise wide rules
• Fixed capacity
• Non-disposable elements (pets)
• Hardware defined
• Multi-year deployment
• Minimum spend
• Technology silos
• Manual provisioning

4. “Cloud Ready”?
• Is it really different?
• Is it right for every application
or platform?
Provider of
Service
Broker of
Service
Enabler of
Service

5. Building a “Cloud Ready” IT Team
• Cultural changes
• Skills requirements
• Structures

6. Cultural Changes
• Focused vision & pace of urgency.
• Curious and passionate people.
• Ongoing iteration.
• Software defined with leveraging of components.
• New goals and KPIs.

7. Skills Requirements
Does the team have?
• Primary Skills
– Amazon Web Services
– Security
– Automation
– Integration
• Secondary Skills
– Performance
– TCO and Cost Optimization

8. Skills Requirements
Areas to engage with
• Security / Risk
• Change Management
• Operations
• IT and Finance Mgmt

9. Skills Requirements
Obtainment
• Hands on
• AWS Training
• Partners
• AWS Professional Services
• Secondment from previous teams
• Recruitment

10. Structures
ATTRIBUTES PATTERNS

11. Structures - attribute
Networks
Servers
Storage
Windows
Linux
Security
Develop
Deploy
OperateProcure

12. Structures - attribute
Networks
Storage
Servers
Windows
Linux
Security
Develop
Deploy
Operate
Procure
Virtualisation
collapsed a
core group into
a tighter team
with greater
interaction.

13. Structures - attribute
Networks
Storage
Servers
Operate
Security
Develop
Deploy
OS
Procure
Cloud Ready
collapses a
project group into
a single team.
Application
Owner

14. Structures - attribute
• When a task cannot be partitioned because of
sequential constraints, the application of more effort
has no effect on the schedule.
• In tasks that can be partitioned but which required
communication among the subtasks, the effort of
communication must be added to the amount of
work to be done.
Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month

15. Structures - attribute
“If you can’t feed a team with
two pizzas, it’s too large.”
Jeff Bezos

16. Structures - Patterns

17. Structures - Patterns
Shadow IT
?

18. Structures - Patterns
IT Service Catalog
ITaaS

19. Structures - Patterns
Tiger Teams
“a team of […] technical specialists, selected
for their experience, energy, and imagination,
and assigned to track down relentlessly every
possible source of failure in a spacecraft
subsystem.”
• Limited life
• Get it done
• Single
project
focused

20. Structures - Patterns
Continuous
Integration &
Continuous
Deployment
(CI/CD)
Networks
Storage
Servers
Develop
Security
Operate
Deploy
OS
Services
• Additional
focus on
delivering
ongoing
efficiency
& reduced
cycle times

21. Structures - Patterns
Dev/Ops
Networks
Storage
Servers
Develop
Security
OperateDeploy
OS
Services
• Additional
focus on long
term
operational
performance

22. Change in Characteristics
Existing
• Static
• Centralised control
• Enterprise wide rules
• Fixed capacity
• Non-disposable elements (pets)
• Hardware defined
• Multi-year deployment
• Minimum spend
• Technology silos
• Manual provisioning
Cloud Ready
• Elastic
• Business in control
• Application flexability
• No capacity constraints
• Disposable elements (cattle)
• Software defined
• Pay-per-use
• Pay-as-you-go
• DevOps
• CI/CD and API provisioning

23. Four take away items
• Impactful outcomes can be achieved
• Enabler by integrating IT further into the
business
• Team changes in skills and structure
• Measurement outcomes (goals and KPIs)

24. Expand your skills with AWS
Certification
aws.amazon.com/certification
Exams
Validate your proven
technical expertise with
the AWS platform
On-Demand
Resources
aws.amazon.com/training/
self-paced-labs
Videos & Labs
Get hands-on practice
working with AWS
technologies in a live
environment
aws.amazon.com/training
Instructor-Led
Courses
Training Classes
Expand your technical
expertise to design, deploy,
and operate scalable,
efficient applications on AWS

25. © 2014 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified, or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.