On Cloud

AIOps is being embraced by savvy companies to help them build—and operate—better apps, faster. In this podcast, Mike Kavis and Constellation Research's Andy Thurai discuss how companies can use AIOps to reduce IT complexity and deliver better products. Andy cautions that the onus is on the enterprise to assuage employees' fears and get management buy-in for a successful AIOps implementation.

Post-pandemic, savvy companies are applying the lessons they learned from it—especially vis-à-vis their workforce. In this podcast, David Linthicum talks with Workday's Greg Pryor about how companies can use data and machine learning technology to improve their employees' experience. They also discuss the future of work. The upshot? Employees will need to ramp up their social agility and build strong connections, and leaders will need to develop empathy as a primary management skill.

Cloud adoption rates differ across geographies and industries, but one thing is certain--even the most reluctant companies are starting to migrate to cloud, though hurdles remain. In this podcast, David Linthicum and Hystax's Edwin Kuss discuss cloud migration strategies and how cloud providers are overcoming migration barriers. Edwin also explains how the emerging discipline of FinOps has the potential to mitigate one of the most worrisome issues—rising cloud costs and wasted spend.

Healthcare has often lagged behind the digital revolution. That's changing. Powered by cloud, new technologies have emerged to enable healthcare providers to offer more, and improved, digital experiences to patients. These first steps will pave the path to a future where personalized digital interactions—perhaps augmented by virtual reality technology—become the norm. However, privacy and building patient trust are critical challenges that providers must continually address.

Cloud is a great place to be, and its future can be even better. How? Start by reducing cloud complexity, automating what you can, and balancing governance with autonomous, empowered DevOps teams.

Digital transformation requires more than technology. To be successful long term, companies must focus on improving their customers' experience, adding value, and making sure that their digital ecosystem is secure and compliant.

Is there such a thing as failing forward? Absolutely, with incident management and chaos engineering, which help companies learn from failures and stress-test their production systems to improve performance.

Today's CTOs are caught between two worlds. They must capable of hands-on work, but they must also be keen decision-makers guided by how much business value their decisions will create. It's a delicate dance that's often hard to perform.

Slow delivery and underperforming cloud apps bedevil many organizations. The issues are often the result of poor team design. Building autonomous, effectively aligned teams can help speed workflow and deliver better products.

Multicloud is a fact of life for most organizations, but it's also incredibly complex to manage a multicloud ecosystem. However, there are key strategies that can help reduce that complexity and deliver more business value.

Multicloud issues can bedevil even the most experienced organizations. So, it's critical to have a sound management strategy to realize your goals while controlling costs and achieving speed to market.

There are many misconceptions about what edge computing is, how it's connected with cloud, and how organizations can leverage edge computing to create new products and services that delight their customers. In this episode, David Linthicum sits down with Deloitte's Myke Miller and Carnegie Mellon Professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya) to discuss all things edge and how organizations across all industries will build an edge-native future that's brighter than we can imagine.

How do cloud-tech companies make the journey from hot startup to hot growth? For a growing number, it's through a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, because SPACs may be more willing to make investments that more traditional investors see as risky. In this episode, David Linthicum and Deloitte & Touche LLP's Barrett Daniels discuss how a SPAC works and how some companies leverage SPACs to help them raise capital to grow.

It may seem counterintuitive, but to reduce cloud complexity, it's sometimes necessary to slow down to speed up. Why? Because planning and balancing standards with flexibility before you migrate can save time, resources, and pain in the long run.

Old software paradigm: Update every five years and bear the cost and the pain. New paradigm: Move to SaaS and get continuous updates with less complexity--all in a secure environment that fuels agility, insight, and innovation.

Companies are always looking for ways to boost their cloud success. Freddie Mac may have found one. Effective leadership with a solid support structure, modern delivery methods, and partnership between the business and IT seems to be their winning formula.

Traditional software delivery methods don't work well at the speed of cloud, so many companies are turning to agile, pod-based development teams to speed their journey to cloud—and to help them continue to innovate at scale once they get there.

The pandemic forced many companies to cloud, even though some were hesitant. Now, many are making the move to cloud permanent because it lets them offer better products, services, and customer experiences--and it lets them leverage new tech like 5G and intelligent edge.

As cloud adoption has gained steam over the past half-decade, the education sector has often lagged behind. However, that's changing—in part due to the shift to remote learning brought on by COVID-19, but also due to a desire to enhance the student experience.

DevOps is well known for increasing collaboration between application development and operations. Savvy organizations are now leveraging the ethos behind DevOps to foster teamwork, train employees on new processes, and implement change throughout the enterprise.

Cloud isn't simply someone else's datacenter. It's no less than a revolution in the very foundations of IT. Cloud has completely transformed the way software is designed, and it helps companies build IT ecosystems that are secure, safe, available, reliable, and resilient.

Cloud migrations require both a paradigm shift and a cultural sea change. Companies that see flexibility as a key component of success, and that leverage a team approach to navigate the changes cloud brings, will be well equipped for their cloud journey.

Cloud gaming is coming into its own via 5G, but the tech behind it can also bolster remote learning and working. And, it can fuel new ways of working and learning through augmented reality, immersive experiences, and spatial computing. It's a game-changer!

As cloud adoption soars, so does the complexity of the accounting treatment for cloud. And with the adage that, "Now every company is a tech company" now a near reality, accounting for cloud has never been more important to the bottom line.

Doing DevOps right involves more than technology. It requires changing the organizational culture to build a joint-responsibility model based on outcomes and value. How companies implement that culture change will be critical in determining DevOps success.

Post-pandemic, companies will be looking to chart a new path to success. Key to that success will be overcoming barriers to cloud, finding the right partner for the journey, and embracing new ways of working. Building robust ecosystems will play a large role as well.

AI has the promise to transform business, but only if it's implemented correctly and used effectively—and kept as bias free as possible. So, to keep projects on track, it's critical to keep humans in control and practice good governance.

Still hesitant about a cloud-first strategy? Don't be. A cloud-first orientation gives organizations the scalability, resiliency, and business continuity capabilities they need to optimize their operations and realize greater business value.

Cloud adoption has wildly accelerated in 2020, and that trend will continue into 2021. However, to fuel continued acceleration, companies will need to bolster Ops, focus on using cloud strategically, and use cloud to get to market faster. Edge computing will also be a key 2021 theme.

Digital transformation is often hobbled by bureaucracy. According to AWS's Mark Schwartz, the quickest way to break through the bureaucracy is to wade straight into the quagmire using monkeys, razors, and sumo wrestlers.

Cloud and COVID-19 have combined to magnify the need for effective cybersecurity. Companies that focus on data, automation, and risk assessment will have a better chance at cybersecurity success.

Like many companies, global tech leader Broadcom shifted to remote work when COVID-19 hit. However, with the help of a cloud-based, mobile technology solution, Broadcom is able to safely bring its workforce back to the office.

Innovation is key to cloud success. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has made it their mission to fuel innovation through leveraging the power of open source to make cloud ubiquitous.

There's often tension between security and DevOps. That tension is magnified in a cloud environment. To relieve that tension and implement effective security in cloud, it's essential to foster understanding and cooperation. How? With DevSecOps.

Cloud security is as complex as cloud itself. SaaS-based, data-driven security-automation platforms can help companies automate much of their cloud security process, enabling them to reduce complexity and focus more on their business.

AI/ML can help transform how companies glean insights into their business, but it's often difficult to put AI/ML models into wide-scale production. Enter MLOps, which takes a disciplined approach to scaling AI/ML to the enterprise.

Serverless computing definitely has its advantages, such as the ability to scale quickly and manage costs effectively, but there are also latency and complexity concerns. However, there are open source projects in the works to address these issues and make serverless more attractive.

Before cloud, system architects lived by rigid system requirements—receive them, build to spec, and move on. That was their world. However, with the ascendance of cloud, that world has changed. Architects are now expected to be just as smart and agile as the applications they build. In this episode, David Linthicum and guest, Deloitte's Vasa Vishveshwara, discuss the ever-changing, ever-expanding role of the system architect in the world built by cloud.

Traditionally, software testing has been firmly planted in the staging process, so as not to disrupt in-production systems and functionality. However, by testing in staging only, developers may miss issues that only occur with live systems. In this episode, Mike Kavis and Split.io's Talia Nassi discuss how savvy software companies are breaking tradition and moving their testing process from staging to production.

Companies are retrenching their operations in the face of unprecedented headwinds, and HR is no exception. Cloud-based HR can improve connections between employees and management and help companies build the workforce of the future.

Value-stream mapping isn't just about eliminating work, it's about looking at processes across the organization, finding bottlenecks, and then using a team approach to understand and remove them—in other words, it's about finding the value in workstreams. In this episode of the podcast Mike Kavis and guest, Visible Value Stream Consulting's Steve Pereira, talk value-stream mapping—why it works, how to get started, and what it should look like long term.

When most people think about SRE, they think numbers, percentages, SLIs, and SLOs. That stew of acronyms is important, but, really, what drives site reliability engineering is the goal of building systems that truly satisfy customers and keep them coming back.

Cloud is revolutionary, but at some companies, cloud deployments don't revolutionize their IT outcomes. Why? Because they don't change their IT culture. To realize more success with cloud, it's essential to change culture along with technology. In this episode of the podcast, Mike Kavis and guest, Deloitte's Jon Smart, discuss how companies can change their IT culture to achieve more success with cloud. Jon's take is that companies can build, "better value, sooner, safer, happier," by discovering anti-patterns that provide headwinds to cloud success, fixing those, and building a culture of psychological safety that reduces fear and focuses on outcomes, communication, and teamwork.

Ever wonder how all that software that helps you get what you need out of the cloud gets to market? It starts with getting the feel of the market, establishing relationships with cloud providers, and partnering with them to meet their customers' critical needs.

What's the latest from Google Cloud Next 2020? It's this: organizations that effectively leverage technology as a strategic enabler to accelerate their digital transformation journey will have a better chance of not just surviving but thriving.

When systems fail, the blame game often begins, and, surprisingly, it begins with a simple question: "Why?" Instead, to build more resilient systems, as well as more trust among team members, ask what happened and how.

Cloud—especially when paired with AI—is proving its value, even to conservative disciplines such as audit and tax, where it's helping people work smarter and fueling collaboration and innovation. One key to success: Leadership should set the tone from the top.

In a fast-moving cloud environment, companies must be ready to change course quickly to meet an uncertain future. Two keys to success are flexibility to deploy multiple tools to meet specific needs and democratized information to gain critical insights.

DevOps and SRE are critical to software delivery--especially in cloud. A focus on people and collaboration, as well as shifting from a project to a product mentality, are strategies that can increase the chances of a successful implementation.

DevOps can accelerate software delivery, but many organizations still struggle with it because of ineffective processes and resistance to change. Organizations that "do DevOps right" are those that eliminate silos, automate, embrace change, and communicate effectively.