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12 Steps to Get Started with the Cloud

Executives are under increasing pressure to deliver Cloud transformation results quickly. Getting fully setup for success should not stop you from getting going. That said, understanding lessons learned from those who have gone before saves time and money.

As an enterprise strategist for Amazon Web Services, I currently travel around the globe helping the largest companies in the world discover and unlock the power of AWS Cloud. Having lived the journey to cloud and worked with countless customers, I find executives are always keen to understand what lessons they can learn from those who have gone before. With the benefit of hindsight here are 12 steps to get going when starting, that consistently deliver results:

Step 1 - Don't Over-Think It; Assign a Developer and start!

Step 2 - Empower a Single-Threaded Leader

Step 3 - Create your '2 Pizza Cloud Business Office'

Step 4 - Establish your Tenets (and be prepared to amend them as you go)

Step 5 - Create your Questions Parking Lot

Step 6 - Create your 2-Pizza Cloud Engineering Team

Step 7 - Bring in a Partner or AWS ProServe

Step 8 - Work Backwards from your Security, Compliance & Availability Objectives

Step 9 - Ship something to Production that is important but not critical

Step 10 - Train, gain experience and certify your teams

Step 11 - Start migrating

Step 12 - Trust, but verify

Many larger enterprises question ‘how do I balance control (especially security) and innovation?’. Jonathan Allen shares a key tenet in this piece, ‘All of your assumed constraints are debatable’ and to look at each perceived problem as an opportunity instead. Download the full whitepaper below to find out more.

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About the Author

Johnathan joined AWS as an Enterprise Strategist & Evangelist in May 2017. In this role he works with enterprise technology executives around the globe to share experiences and strategies for how the Cloud can help them increase speed and agility while devoting more of their resources to their customers.

Profile Photo of Johnathan Allen, Enterprise Strategist & Evangelist, AWS