19/9/2018 1 Comment Cloud Adoption Roadmap in 10 StepsMany CIO, CTO and business leaders are all working through their cloud strategies. Most large companies in Australia have adopted a hybrid cloud approach, using both private and public cloud services. In this blog, I'm wanted to outline 10 critical steps on how you can create a cloud adoption roadmap and then align this roadmap to your current execution path. A cloud adoption roadmap is a really important tool, as it serves to visualise and communicate your plans to all key stakeholders in your organisation. The important part of the roadmap is to ensure you have a clear 1 page visual outlining the key milestones / decisions points, backed up by clear definitions behind the roadmap of what each component on the roadmap means. My suggestion is to use a modelling tool to create your roadmap and my top pick is the Abacus tool from Avolution. Before we delve any deeper into our cloud adoption roadmap, let's be clear on some basic terminology, to ensure we're all on the same page: Software as a Service (SaaS) These are services that end-users consume. Examples include: Social Media Tools, Salesforce, Office 365 and Xero. The apps that you download to your mobile phone are predominantly SaaS. Platform as a Service (PaaS) These are services that developers consume to create SaaS products. Examples include: Development Tools, Testing Tools and Datastores. Apps that you download to your PC or laptop at home to allow you to write code, test code and setup datastores in the cloud are all examples of PaaS. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) These are services that operations teams will build, test and commission to support developers, who consume PaaS and end-users, who consume SaaS on the PaaS, or SaaS via a 3rd party. IaaS can be virtual machines, networking or basic storage. If you're interested in digging deeper in cloud definitions, there is a simple whitepaper that the National Institute for Standards and Technology have produced. It covers everything in 3 pages: nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/legacy/sp/nistspecialpublication800-145.pdf I've also created a simple reference model below: DevOps This is cultural change centred around ensuring that the developers (working on PaaS) are collaborating and communicating effectively with the operations teams (working on IaaS). This is important to create secure, reliable and engaging SaaS apps. Great video on DevOps from the DevOps Institute: devopsinstitute.com/certifications/devops-foundation/ Hybrid Cloud All organisations I have worked with in Australia, that have more than 100 employees will have a combination of private and public clouds in their environment. This is the definition of hybrid cloud. Probably 99% will have an on-premise (or 3rd party hosted) private cloud for Active Directory and using public cloud for Office 365 with Azure Active Directory. The 1% is a single instance of G Suite I have come across. Great video on hybrid cloud here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5Le8aePB4 Now that we have defined these terms, we can take a look at our Cloud Adoption Roadmap and our 10 steps:
www.scaledagileframework.com/lean-ux/ If you're interested in learning more, I offer a range of Cloud, DevOps and Scaled Agile courses at ALC Training:
Cloud Courses (Foundation to Advanced) www.alctraining.com.au/courses/cloud-computing/ DevOps (Foundation to Advanced) www.alctraining.com.au/courses/devops/ Scaled Agile www.alctraining.com.my/safe-scaled-agile-spc/ www.alctraining.com.au/course/leading-safe/
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Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe for short, is a large interactive knowledge-based of best practices, case studies, courses and toolkits. The patterns and resources are proven, backed up by numberous case studies. It is specifically designed to work for very small businesses, right through to multi-billion dollar corporate giants. How does it do that? Well there are a number of components that allow the method to scale. This includes a list of the key principles, outlined above, but also used the concept of Agile Release Trains. These are teams of teams, containing all your resources, including suppliers and partners, that are co-ordinated through program increment (PI) planning. These planning sessions ensure all the trains are moving in the same direction and that all the work is decomposed into features and stories. This results in working code shortly after the first sprint. The framework itself comes in four flavours:
Essential SAFe Portfolio SAFe Large Solution SAFe Full SAFe Still not convinced.....well there are a wealth of case studies on the SAFe site: www.scaledagileframework.com/case-studies/ Below is are a few of my favourites: Want to know more about how to use SAFe? Please check out my Leading SAFe 2 Day Course. Please let myself or ALC Training know when and where we can run this course for your organisation:
5/10/2017 0 Comments #DevOpsDays Auckland #NewZealandI've just got back from Auckland, New Zealand, after my first experience of #DevOpsDays and without doubt, it is one of the best experiences I have encountered, and a winning formula for a community-based conference. DevOpsDays brings the OPEN to open-source software development. I've been to a few conferences in my time, ranging from the Health Informatics Society through to the Gartner ITExpo, and DevOps Days in New Zealand is one of the best. I think because DevOps is really about a community that wants to improve the way that IT is perceived. To move away from the perception that IT is there as the business prevention service, and move towards a perception that the technologists are leading the way, helping businesses move to market faster and coaching end-users on how to get the best from their technology investments. Whether it's showing clients how to make the best of AWS Lambda for serverless computing, through to how to integrate automated receipts scanning apps into Xero. There is a real desire for change and a desire to lead the business. There are 3 cool things that I wanted to share, that I think really made the conference special:
So, if you're serious about DevOps and want to learn more, you'd do worse than to attend a local DevOpsDays near you: https://www.devopsdays.org/ I noticed that there is some confusion, even amongst DevOps leaders, around where continuous integration / continuous delivery / continuous deployment fit within the DevOps toolchain. Firstly these 3 terms have very specific definitions and meaning, aligning to the DevOps Institute Foundation certificate examination:
Secondly, AWS seems to be a very hot platform in use at the conference, so I thought it would also help to map these concepts against the tools that AWS now provides, as a way of giving something back. This comes from our AWS Technical Essentials 1 Day course we run to anyone who wants to understand, and see, the AWS core services: Paul Colmer is the lead digital architect ALC Training and Consulting. He is responsible for creating and running all the cloud security courses, which include CCSP, AWS, Azure, Office 365 and cloud foundation certifications. For more information visit: https://www.alctraining.com.au/courses/cloud-computing/ Or engage with Paul on his crazy adventures on twitter: @musiccomposer1 using the hashtag #CCSP There are so many definitions around what DevOps is or isn't. One word that sums it all up: AUTOMATION DevOps in it's simplest form it's a cultural change that allows developers and operations staff to work together collaboratively to achieve various outcomes, over the traditional IT delivery model. The key ones include:
The diagram below is taken from teh 2017 State of DevOps report, and shows some of the positive factors when a DevOps culture is harnessed: So now we can see that DevOps may have some value, how do we transform our culture? Well, for one it takes time, and two, there are a number of key principles that I'd suggest focusing on, to drive this cultural change:
The key is to start with a small project, and measure the success. Not over 10 weeks, but say 2-4 weeks. How is this possible?
The next steps are to then work with your colleagues to start applying these Agile practices in day-to-day use. By introducing the techniques into a small project, you're allowing staff to fail-fast and quickly learn how to suceed. You're also exposing them to Agile practices, with informal on-the-job training. You should also be seriously considering a cloud solution to reduce OPEX risk. So where from here? It comes down to getting your supporters excited about these new methods and helping them understand the benefits to everyone. This could include:
Still not convinced? Have a look at these top three great resouces I can recommend looking at:
Paul Colmer is a lead digital architect and cloud instructor for ALC training and consulting: www.alctraining.com.au/courses/cloud-computing/
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CategoriesAll Active Directory AI Architecture Big Data Blockchain Cloud Comedy Cyber DevOps Driverless Cars MicroServices Office 365 Scaled Agile Social Media AuthorPaul Colmer is an AWS Senior Technical Trainer. Paul has an infectious passion for inspring others to learn and to applying disruptive thinking in an engaging and positive way. Archives
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