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2/4/2020 0 Comments

What is amazon Web Services Elastic Compute cloud?

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I hope everyone is staying safe and making the most of their time indoors.  Today I am rediscovering the beauty and elegance of Amazon Web Services or AWS for short.  AWS provide a cloud computing platform that allows you to build apps and infrastructure to deliver business outcomes.

Today, my session is going to focus on a very basic service called Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 for short.  It is a simple service that allows you to build your own virtual machines or VMs.  These VMs are the most basic building block in cloud computing.  

Below is a fantastic Zoom video, that steps you through some of the basics of AWS EC2 and provides you with a simple hands-on demo on the AWS platform.  I really hope you enjoy it.
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9/7/2019 0 Comments

Case STudy: How Do Organisations Digitally Transform?

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In this blog article, I'm going to outline the key steps required to help transform a medium to large organisation.  Digital Transformation is the ability of an organisation to change their culture, in order remain competitive.  By using new technologies more effectively than their competitors, this leads to greater market share, lower price points, improved product and/or service quality and constant innovation for clients.  Notice that I start with culture, not technology.  

I'll draw on my 20+ years of hands-on experience as a solution architect and professional technologist with DXC Technology and Santander, as well as my expertise in running cultural change and technical courses at ALC Training & Consulting.

Here are the key steps and they are in order:
  • Use an Agile framework to help structure the entire transformation.  My recommendation is to use the Scaled Agile Framework or SAFe as it's the number 1 agile method. Couple this with The Open Group Architecture framework or TOGAF to reduce solution risk.  This will involve sending all the senior leaders on a Leading SAFe 2-day course and your architects, engineering and development functions on TOGAF Part 1 and Part 2 courses (4 days).  It's important here to align your initiative to value streams, not projects or programs.
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This is the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe):
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And this is the top slice of TOGAF.  You would use TOGAF as part of the architecture functions in SAFe.
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  • Understand what business objectives you'd like to achieve in the next 3-5 years.  There are techniques in both TOGAF and SAFe for helping flesh these out.
  • Work with all the key stakeholders to develop a common mission and vision.  Lots of great information on how to identify and manage stakeholders in TOGAF.  This was the most important skill I gained in my career.
  • Send your security experts to become certified on the Certified Cloud Security Professional certification.  This will ensure they have a good all-round grounding in cloud security specifically. Because it is different.  The diagram below shows the Top 12 Cloud Security Threats, and they are in order.  Data Breach is No.1....no surprises there really!
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  • Identify key execution leaders, usually the program manager, a senior project manager and the lead architect, to go onto the 4-day Implementing SAFe course to become SAFe program consultants.  I wouldn't recommend relying on outside consultants unless you want to hire someone.  3 would be the minimum for a large organisation (5000+ employees), minimum of 2 for a medium (100-5000 employees).
  • Run a value stream workshop with the key stakeholders to determine the best value stream to take forward that will deliver your first epic and the associated top 5-10 features.  Very important here to involve the business really early and start thinking about security and safety early in the piece.  Both TOGAF and SAFe have components that you can use in a workshop.  
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  • Start running internal Leading SAFe workshops to ensure everyone know how SAFe works and outline the value stream that we're going to take forward.  Use the workshop to seek feedback and help improve the decision-making process.
  • Think about training for your technical resources.  Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably looking at Office 365 Security & Compliance (2 Days) and either AWS Quickstart (1 Day) or Azure Fundamentals (1 Day). 
    • My personal pick is to stay with Azure.  It's the most popular with my students in Australia. You could also consider Google and Oracle.  I've had a handful of people use Google and only 2 use Oracle.  I think they were from Oracle. 
    • I would recommend the Office 365 Security & Compliance course, as it helps people understand how Office works on Day 1 and then walks them through the security components on Day 2.  It's a great course for non-technical people who want an appreciation of security, relevant to a product suite, they're used to using.
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  • Identify the first Agile Release Train, be clear on what success looks like and ask your people to self-organise across the train, using the SAFe principles.  Blend in the principles from the enterprise / solution architecture function and seek feedback from the teams.
  • Perform a training needs analysis workshop, by involving all those people that are required to build and deliver the solution.  This is where you'll need to identify the technical and soft skills that will be missing.  This will include specific vendor product training, probably through eLearning methods and vendor training.
  • For soft skills, start thinking about cultural change programs for everyone on the trains.  I'd recommend DevOps Foundation for everyone, DevSecOps Engineering for security and lead developers and DevOps Leader for the key leaders managing the train.  The diagram below is from the DevOps Foundation and outlines 3 cultural principle for success.  
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  • Don't forget to bring the business on the journey too, so I can recommend the Cloud Computing Foundation (2 Days), designed for non-technical professionals and leads to an accredited APMG certification.
  • Almost certainly your transformation will contain a significant data component, so I can recommend training for all your technical resources on the newly released Enterprise Big Data Professional certification.  Here is a slide outlining how the MapReduce framework works in Hadoop.  
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  • At this stage, you'll be very close to deploying your first Agile Release Train, so you'll need to ensure the relevant people have attended the SAFe Product Manager, Scrum Master and SAFe for Teams courses.
  • Finally, launch your train through a face-to-face Program Increment (PI) Planning workshop and allow your SAFe Program Consultants and Scrum Masters to coach the teams to success.  Don't forget to measure at every step to show progress.  This is all explained in the SAFe implementation roadmap.  If followed correctly, you'll be delivering multiple features in the first 50 days.
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  • Over time you'll launch more trains, that are aligned to value streams to deliver more epics and features.  As you grow, the trains will become much faster and with a team of 125 people or more, you'll delivering features much faster than ever before.
  • Importantly, constantly track where you are in your business objectives, your mission and vision, to ensure you keep the trains on the tracks.  There is where the Lean Portfolio Management components in SAFe that helps with the governance piece of this.

​Do you have questions with these steps?  Feel free to reach out to me directly:

Twitter: twitter.com/musiccomposer1
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/paulcolmer/
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Have an awesome week, beautiful people.
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14/6/2019 0 Comments

Why the CCSP is the Gold Standard for Cloud Computing Security?

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The Certified Cloud Security Professional certification is offered by the ISC2 and is one of the many courses I have helped develop at ALC Training.  It is proving to be one of the most popular certifications that I run....I have 11 others that cover cloud computing, agile, cybersecurity and big data areas.  But why?
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As you can see, it covers 6 domains and we focus on a range of techniques and best practices associated with cloud computing.  For those studying CCSP, I have created a free flashcard quiz below.  This is handy for anyone that is involed in CyberSecurity and is a good way to re-enforce your knowledge.
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​​​For a detailed list of learning outcomes check out the ISC2 website below....
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 The reason I think CCSP is popular, is because CyberSecurity is in the Top 5 items that keep senior leaders awake at night.  The fear that the organisation you have worked hard to protect, could one day be maliciously attacked is a troubling thought for many...resulting in a cold sweat nightmare at 3am in the morning. 

To be honest there are many things that business leaders need to consider.  So let me outline 2 of the key items that spring to mind this morning....

1 - Secure the use of Identity and Access Management Systems

The key here is people....because they are the solution....not the problem.   Here is a simple checklist that everyone can follow...not just at work...but also at home.  
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Tip 05 can be adapted for business, by building a list of trusted sources, i.e. a whitelist.  You can do this manually, or by using a whitelisting tool, preferably one based on Artificial Intelligence technology.  That way it can detect not just trustued sources that you list, but predict or warn when something looks malicious.  
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2 - Simulate Probable Security Scenarios

Again the key here is people.  Create a realistic scenario....data breaches are the most common, so this is a good place to start.  Brief a small number of individuals, including leadership, that you're creating a simulated security challenge....execute the scenario for real on a non-production system with the team....then treat it like a fire drill and allow the remainder of the team to see how they react and recover from the simulation. It's a bit like paintballing...where one team attacks the castle....and the other team defends it.  Although in this scenario....the defending team is really ascertaining what happened and how best to protect the organisation going forward. 

If you need inspiration for what threats you should be simulating....take a look at the Treacherous 12....which we cover in the CCSP course.  
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Have a secure and safe day beautiful people. ❤😎🚀
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8/1/2019 0 Comments

Why General Motors, Holden and Toyota should be worried about Tesla?

It's not often I blog about someone else's work, but these stats on Tesla's meteroric rise, are too good NOT to share.  Credit has to go to Tom Randall (@tsrandall), Senior Reporter at Bloomberg for the awesome pics and stats in this blog post.

But first I wanted to share my awesome experience of the latest version 9 Autopilot, that I tried out in Brisbane, a few months back,

Boy....has there been some serious improvements.  Last time I took a Tesla Model S for a test drive, was around 1.5 years ago.  And since then, the 'stay in lane' feature has come on leaps and bounds.  I used the feature for around 5 minutes on a stretch of highway.  The car in front was doing 70kmph in a 90kmph zone, and the Tesla slowed down gracefully.  It kept perfectly in the centre of the left lane, as the road curved, left, then right and sharply left again.  

At the next slip road, the vehicle in front exited.  Once it was clear of the Model S, the car gracefully accelerated up to the speed limit of 90kmph without a hitch and without any input.  All I had to do was to keep my hands on the wheel, so the car knew I was still alive.  The 'hands-on wheel' feature was brought in by Tesla after a couple of accidents in the US, where drivers had totally relied on the Autopilot and were not paying attention to the driving.  This feature aims to prevent such occurences.

All I can say it that is absolutely amazing, and I'm sure the experience translates precisely into the Model S and Model X cars.  Unfortunately you can not test drive a Model 3 in Brisbane, so here is the closest I got:
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In Q3 of 2018 you can see that the production of the latest Model 3 car increased exponetially.  And it's likely this curve will continue through 2019 and 2020, as Tesla forfil a backorder in excess of 500,000 Model 3 orders. 

It took Tesla 10 years to see 0.5 million cars, which includes significant amounts of research and development time and money.  This was to hone the battery technology, the look of the various cars, and ensuring that all the components integrated seamlessly, and costs effectively.  This includes the following models:
  • Model S - The first popular high-end all-electric luxury car.
  • Model X - With Back to the Future style wing style opening doors, aka the Delorean.
  • Model 3 - The cheaper, but still luxury, Sedan.

It looks like it will take only 15 months to reach the first 1 milion cars.  Check the stats below:
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You can see from the stats below that the Model 3 is the 5th Best-Selling Sedan in the US.  
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Not bad for a car that still costs around $55,000 USD.  

Let's now take a look at the value, known as market capitialisation, of the world's most valuable automotive makers:
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Now this next graphic shows the progression of Tesla's cash flow.  This will likely lead to a positive $837millionUSD, as opposed to spring 2018, which was a negative at $795millionUSD:
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 Mmmmm...maybe I should invest in Tesla stock???
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14/12/2018 7 Comments

What's New in tOGAF Standard Version 9.2?

I passed my TOGAF Essentials 2018 assessment this year...but why?  Well I run coaching and mentoring masterclasses, covering a range of new digital courses.  The most popular at the moment is the Certified Cloud Security Professional course (CCSP), which leads the CCSP certification endorsed by the ISC2.  The next most popular is the TOGAF standard, a standard of the Open Group.  As an instructor, I have to maintain my currency on all the latest materials and the TOGAF Essentials 2018 assessment is a great way of doing that.  It basically makes clear all the differences between the TOGAF Standard Version 9.1, from 2011 and the TOGAF Standard Version 9.2 standard which was released only a few weeks ago.

So let's cut to the chase.  What are some of the key differences:
  1. Content in the tools / techniques section, such as Business Scenarios, have been removed from the TOGAF standard and separated out into separate guides in the TOGAF Library.  THis makes them easier to maintain, aligning to a more #Agile approach.
  2. New Guides have been added that covers things like Value Streams, Business Capabilities and Establishing an EA capability.
  3. Security, SOA and the Reference Models are now in separate documents and removed from teh core book.
  4. Business Architecture, Phase B, has been strengthened to include new definitions, which in turn has meant some changes to the content metamodel.  Examples include new definitions of Buiness Capability, Business Model and Value Stream.
  5. Updates to basic architecture concepts that better align with the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 standards.
  6. Technology Platform is now known as Technology Services in the metamodel.
  7. Enterprise Security Architecture aligns more closely with the Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture, known as the SABSA framework.
  8. Inconsistencies and errors in the ADM Phases has been rectified.
  9. Architecture Repository view has been updated to now include the Solutions landscape and the Architecture Requirements Repository.
Overall I really welcome the changes, and it's good to see the TOGAF standard being broken into smaller artifacts, so that they can be updated independently.  Great to see the Open Group slowly moving to a more Agile approach.

I've also released a FREE set of flashcards specifically to help you remember all the TOGAF 9.2 terminology for the Part 1 and Part 2 exams.  Check them out on Quizlet:   quizlet.com/_57zkpz

Check out our course at ALC Training:

​www.alctraining.com.au/course/togaf-9-level-1-2-certificate-course/wotertAod ApplieThered Business SBusinecurity ArchitectureSherwood Applied Business Security Architecture
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TOGAF(R) is a registered trademark of the Open Group.
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    Author​​

    Paul Colmer is a digital coach and a freelance technology consultant.  Paul has an infectious passion for empowering others to learn and to applying disruptive thinking in an engaging and positive way.

    Paul has experience in building digital architecture strategies.  This includes the development and execution of training material and workshops, architecting and leading digital transformation initiatives, providing expertise on social media marketing, as well as advanced presenting using comedy, drama and music.

    Certifications cover the Scaled Agile Framework (SPC), Cloud Security (CCSP), Amazon Web Services (AWS Ass Arch), DevOps Culture (DevOps Foundation & DevSecOps Engineering), Big Data (EBDP), Data Science (EBDA), Microsoft Azure (AZ-900), Office 365 and mnay others...... 

    He is currently one of the Rise.Global Top 50 Global Cloud influencers on social media.

    ​www.rise.global/the-cloud-social-influencers-power-100/p/1804096/r/2556192

    And one of the OnalyticsTop 100 Big Data influencers on social media:

    onalytica.com/blog/posts/big-data-top-influencers-and-brands/

    He is also a keen writer and an award-winning open-mic comedian.

    Contact Paul Colmer via LinkedIn.
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    Or simply watch his videos on YouTube.

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