AWS Executive Insights

Building a security culture starts in the C-suite. While this is championed by the CISO, every business and technical leader has a role in communicating and practicing good security behavior across their teams. Steve Schmidt, CISO for AWS Security, shares his best practices and approaches for driving the right behaviors related to proactive security posture, the impact security has on the bottom line, and a plan of action that every executive should have when partnering with their security teams.

Netflix is a company that believes in invention and reinvention. Vernā Myers, Netflix's VP of Inclusion Strategy shares some of the secrets behind Netflix's culture, addressing the importance of having the courage to break new ground, how the company approaches diversity, inclusion, and equity, and why curiosity is one of the most important traits to creating an inclusive culture.

Amazon strives to maintain a Day 1 culture and operating model that is curious, scrappy, and customer-obsessed, embracing new trends and making high-quality decisions at speed. By contrast, a Day 2 mentality focuses on business goals over earning customer trust, breeds complexity and hierarchy, and lets process become a substitute for the right results, leading to stasis and organizational decline. Learn how Amazon builds mechanisms that help ensure that it's always Day 1.

Sheri Rhodes, the CIO of Workday, sits down with Enterprise Strategist Miriam McLemore to discuss collaboration and leading change. Leading the internal deployment of Workday, transforming how teams operate, and collaborating with other leaders resulted in a variety of learnings. Listen in to hear how Sheri has navigated the change, led her teams, and what advice she recommends for other leaders.

How does a CEO change their mind about how to run their business? What are the challenges and thought processes? Rick Seaney, CEO of 3Victors and FareCompare LP, speaks with Simon about his own personal journey and the lessons he learned.

Su Shan Tan, Group Head of Institutional Banking at DBS, discusses customer-centered innovation, changing the company's culture, and celebrating failure.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Ishit Vachhrajani, and Bryan Landerman tackle the question: "Is there a one-size fits all cloud strategy?". Leaders wonder, can I use a per-defined or templatized cloud adoption strategy? Can something like this exist? Listen in to hear Jake, Ishit, and Bryan answer these questions and share their advice for leaders as they begin their AWS Cloud journey.

Ron Huxter, the VP and CIO of the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) sits down to share the surprising benefits they observed following migration.

Louise Higgins, CFO of Technology at ANZ Bank, shares her perspective on the critical role of the CFO in leading major cultural change and earning trust with stakeholders.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani address a common leadership question, "Is there an order to transformation, migration, and modernization?". Leaders often ask which step is the right one to take first for their organization - migrate then transform and modernize, modernize then transform and migrate, or something else?

The ability to think, plan, and execute in a clinical fashion is the key to realizing transformation. More now than ever, organizations need to rapidly and accurately assess situations, experiment quickly, and scale up with relative ease to keep pace with market changes. Rob shares how the dynamic of racing prepared Formula 1 for the race schedule disruptions and their business response.

In these continually change times, it’s not surprising that AI and ML, widely recognized for its problem-solving and predictive prowess, have become an essential navigational tool for many organizations. Listen in as Swami shares how customers are embracing machine learning and AI in the wake of COVID-19 to scale customer communications, increase agility and efficiency, and help get people back to work safely.

Disruption can produce chaos, making it more challenging to prioritize and take action. However, despite the challenges that governments and businesses are facing, this crisis has been the catalyst for much-needed transformation. It’s provided organizations a value- and mission-driven approach to take the appropriate action to support their employees and customers. During this discussion, Teresa will share how AWS customers are engaging partners, educating their leaders, and empowering their workforce to manage successfully in this situation and beyond.

Amanda Jobbins, the Chief Marketing Officer at Infor, shares how shes planning to get the organization’s industry-specific cloud solutions in front of more customers.

Roland Scharrer, the Group CTIO at AXA, sits down with Enterprise Strategist Miriam McLemore to talk about leadership, innovation, and the benefits of agility.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani close the loop on governance. Listen in as they debate the need for a Cloud Center of Excellence and when to bring that team in during migration.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Ishit Vachhrajani, and Bryan Landerman continue diving into the concept of governance, and how it relates to leading a cloud migration. There are recommended concepts to think about when leading your organization through migration, but the strategies will vary based on your choices.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani discuss governance and one way vs two way door decisions. During a large transformation, leaders will be faced with many decisions, some are reversible and some are not. Listen in as they discuss how to prepare an organization to make these decisions and determine if governance is a one-way or two-way door decision.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Phil Le-Brun discuss Phil's blog: Experiment More, Fail Less. "Fail fast and fail often" is a quote often used by Phil, but one not everyone agrees on. Listen in as they share their thoughts on the subject and the importance of creating an environment for experimentation.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani cover why being data driven is so important, what exactly does it mean, and how you can become a data driven organization. Listen in to hear more.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani continue their conversation about leading a migration and the option of outsourcing a project with the AWS Cloud. Listen is as they talk about the importance of being intentional about decisions and having a strategy that supports the direction you are trying to go. When you are intentional, and have a thoughtful strategy, you can better make decisions for the right reasons.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani address a common question they get from customers: "Should I outsource my migration to the AWS Cloud via consultants or try to use my own team?". Listen in as they talk about the pros and cons of each approach, their personal experience, and best practices of AWS customers.

Mario Thomas from AWS sits down with Joseph Daly, Director of Cloud Optimization Services, Nationwide, to discuss Nationwide’s journey of innovative cloud financial management to ensure efficiency and accountability.

Joe Foster, the Cloud Computing Program Manager for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, joins us to share how he lead his organization through a rapid cloud adoption. Listen in as Joe explains how he supports varying customers, and organizational needs, at NASA.

Ian Wilson, the VP of HR for AWS, joins the podcast to share his insights on AWS' response to COVID-19. Listen in as he and AWS Enterprise Strategist, Jake Burns, talk about how AWS responded, how they are currently leading the organization, what is top of mind as things change, and advice on how he is planning for the future.

Brett Orr, the General Manager of Bigmate, talks with Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns about leadership during rapid change. Hear him talk about how he gets the best out of people, how he encourages growth, and his views on overall organizational leadership.

Jo-ann Olsovsky, the EVP and CIO of Salesforce, talks about how they value agility, their COVID-19 response, and her CIO leadership experience. In conversation with Enterprise Strategist, Miriam McLemore.

Thomas Blood, a Digital Innovation Leader at AWS, and Jonathan Allen, a Director of Enterprise Strategy at AWS, are back to talk more about their new book, Reaching Cloud Velocity: A Leader's Guide to Success in the AWS Cloud. Listen in as they share some stories about writing the book, being resilient and reliable with the AWS Cloud, and more.

Thomas Blood, a Digital Innovation Leader at AWS, and Jonathan Allen, a Director of Enterprise Strategy at AWS, sit down with fellow Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns to talk about their book, Reaching Cloud Velocity: A Leader's Guide to Success in the AWS Cloud. Listen in as they dive into the book and why they wrote it.

Christa Koenen, the CIO Deutsche Bahn Group & CEO Deutsche Bahn Systel, sits down with AWS Enterprise Strategist Miriam McLemore to talk about Deutsche Bhan and Deutsche Bahn Systel's rapid transformation to the AWS Cloud. Listen in as Christa shares how her organization became more agile, how her team developed and re-skilled their work force, and how the overall culture of the company has shifted.

Gregor Hohpe, an Enterprise Strategist for AWS, sits down with fellow Enterprise Strategists, Jake Burns, to talk about his book, Cloud Strategy: A Decision-based Approach to Successful Cloud Migration. Listen in as he talks about the book, why he wrote it, and whats next.

How do you lead an organization through rapid change while keeping your customers at the forefront? Listen in as the former Head of AI/ML for Zappos, Ameen Kazerouni, shares how he tackled that question, his thoughts on the core elements for approaching machine learning, investing and up-skilling employees, and more.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Ishit Vachhrajani, Bryan Landerman, and Jake Burns answer a common customer question: How to manage costs when migrating to the AWS Cloud? Listen in to hear them share their experiences wtih making budgeting changes, recommendations for managing overall finances, and their opinions on how to generally spend money to receive the most benefits.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Bryan Landerman, Ishit Vachhrajani, and Jake Burns discuss Amazon's leadership principle "Have Backbone, Disagree, and Commit". A leadership principle that is complex, but when company culture supports this concept, is very beneficial to the organization. Listen in to hear why.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani talk about the importance of not always striving for perfection. Leaders play a key role in creating a positive environment for their employees to fail, learn from failure, and grow.

This week AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani talk about the concept "hitting the target and missing the mark". At Amazon, we use one-way vs. two-way door decisions, examining the impact of mixing targets and goals with the measurements that we use to improve and course correct.

AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani discuss why the CIO and their leadership team must have a deep understanding of business priorities in order to form a vision of what technology can do and the value it can drive.

Scott Reese, the SVP of Manufacturing, Cloud & Production Product at Autodesk sits down with Miriam McLemore, an Enterprise Strategist for AWS, to discuss Autodesk's transition to the AWS Cloud. Scott shares his insights on motivating employees, key areas of focus for their teams, and how the AWS Cloud is positioning Autodesk for the future.

Enterprise Strategist Miriam McLemore sits down with James Rinaldi, the CITA of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to discuss her new eBook "The Customer Centric CIO". Listen in to hear James' thoughts on the book, the concept of being customer centric, and how he has lead organizations with this concept in mind.

Mark Schwartz, a Director of Enterprise Strategy for AWS, is the author of a new book, War and Peace in IT. Listen in as he sits down with fellow AWS Enterprise Strategist, Jake Burns, to answer questions submitted by customers about the book.

Listen in as AWS Enterprise Strategists Jake Burns, Bryan Landerman, and Ishit Vachhrajani discuss how overcoming inertia and breaking the status quo is helping leaders to become more agile in the face of COVID-19.

Closing out our Training and Certification series, Maureen Lonergan, the Director of Training and Certification at AWS, sits down with Enterprise Strategist Jake Burns to talk about AWS' approach. Listen in as they discuss why leaders should pay attention to talent development, how AWS can help customers meet their goals, best practices, and more.

Continuing our Training and Certification series, Ollie Simpson, the Leader for Cloud Transformation and Learning at BP, talks to us about how BP is responding to their need for skills and talent throughout their cloud adoption.

Kicking off our training and certification series, Prakash Kota, the CIO of Autodesk, sits down with Jake Burns to discuss how Autodesk is training and motivating their employees as they migrate to the AWS Cloud.

Miriam McLemore, an Enterprise Strategist for AWS, sits down with Michelle McKenna, the CIO of the NFL, to talk about some of the NFL's newest projects. Listen in as they discuss how Machine Learning and AWS Cloud technology is supporting initiatives like Next Gen Stats, the virtual draft, and their newest project, The Digital Athlete.

Closing out our modernization conversation, Jake, Bryan, and Ishit take time to answer the common questions they're asked by other executive leaders, providing three different perspectives on today's most pressing modernization topics.

Continuing our modernization conversation, Jake, Bryan, and Ishit take some time to talk about where their modernization strategies differ. The Strategists discuss architecture patterns, dealing with databases, and strategies for course correction.

Kicking off a series on IT modernization, Jake, Bryan, and Ishit describe their personal experience leading modernization projects, and discuss its benefits and potential challenges.

Continuing with our Machine Learning series, Jake sits down with Shahram Ebadollahi, the Head of Data Science and AI at Novartis. They talk about Novartis' migration to the AWS Cloud, how they are training their current employee base, and how he is leading the organization as their culture continues to evolve.

Continuing the conversation on modernization, the Strategists discover commonalities in their approaches to change management, highlighting the importance of understanding how your stakeholders define value, maintaining momentum, and melting "the frozen middle".