Free ebook: Enterprise Cloud Strategy
We’re happy to announce the release of our newest free ebook, Enterprise Cloud Strategy (ISBN 9781509301966), by Barry Briggs and Eduardo Kassner.
Download on the Microsoft Azure page.
Lead the journey to the cloud and drive innovation
Implemented through collaborative IT and business leadership, the infrastructure, applications, and services delivered through the hybrid cloud model can lead to a transformational process of innovation, efficiencies, and competitive advantage. This collaborative journey to the cloud requires different skills, thinking, and culture for successful navigation. The process of cloud migration also requires a plan and a solid understanding of the various components of a cloud strategy. This book shows you how to assess your application portfolio, design the programs and processes, and manage the organizational change as you move your IT ecosystem to the cloud.
Introduction
When briefing CIOs and senior IT executives at Microsoft, we are often told that migrating IT workloads to the cloud ranks among their highest priorities. That statement is almost inevitably followed by “How do I start?”; “How should I build a plan for cloud migration for my entire portfolio?”; and “How will my organization be affected by this change?”
This book, based on real-world cloud experiences by enterprise IT teams, seeks to provide answers to these questions. Here, you’ll see what makes the cloud so compelling to enterprises; with which applications you should start your cloud journey; how your organization will change, and how skill sets will evolve; how to measure progress; how to think about security, compliance, and business buy-in; and how to exploit the ever-growing feature set that the cloud offers to gain strategic and competitive advantage.
About the Authors
Barry Briggs is an independent consultant with a long history in software and enterprise computing. He served in a number of roles during his 12-year career at Microsoft. Most recently, he was the chief enterprise architect at the Microsoft DX (Developer Experience) Team. The DX team's job is to design and build "epic" applications with Microsoft customers that exploit new capabilities of the Microsoft stack, including both Microsoft and open-source products and frameworks.
Previously Barry served as chief architect and CTO for Microsoft’s IT organization. Principal among his responsibilities were creating and leading Microsoft IT’s cloud strategy team, which put in place the strategy and processes behind the migration of Microsoft’s internal IT ecosystem to the cloud. In addition, he led the Enterprise Architecture practice which aligned the business strategies to technology assets for maximum impact and agility. He drove a strategic incubations unit which builds cutting-edge software designed for IT-wide impact, and technology adoption strategies, which fostered the deep relationship Microsoft IT has with its product groups. Prior to the CTO role, Barry led the team that created the world’s largest Master Data Management (MDM) solution for Microsoft. He joined Microsoft in 2003 as senior architect for Business Process and Integration Division, which built Microsoft BizTalk Server.
Prior to Microsoft, Barry served as CTO for a number of companies (Aptsoft, Wheelhouse, BroadVision, and Interleaf); before that, he spent 11 years at Lotus/IBM. There, Barry was the lead architect for Lotus’ famous spreadsheet product, 1-2-3, for a number of years. In addition, he also helped develop Lotus Notes and led the technology integration of Lotus with IBM following the latter’s acquisition of the former. He also created and led the team responsible for the world’s first Java-based productivity suite, Lotus eSuite. In 1995, he was named a Lotus Fellow.
You can see what Barry’s up to on his website at https://www.barrybriggs.com.
Eduardo Kassner is the director of cloud solution architecture in the Worldwide Enterprise and Partner Group at Microsoft. He has more than 20 years of experience managing and designing complex IT environments, and connecting IT and business objectives in real-life scenarios. Eduardo has designed WW consulting areas, teams, and he has personally lead the strategy and the consulting engagements teams that have enabled international corporations and governments alike to build their cloud adoption strategies in a direct and no-nonsense approach. Eduardo has a proven ability to link the required technology stacks to a bottom- and top-line time-to-value equations for enterprise or government environment alike. He achieves this by designing and deploying structured frameworks with hard-earned experience that link the required technical stacks all the way to the business value frameworks.
Being one of the founding designers of the Microsoft cloud architecture roles, Eduardo then became the cloud and solutions architecture director and role owner, which is tasked to design and lead the Microsoft Cloud Solutions Architecture community worldwide. He directs the team that manages the role, bringing on strategies and methods as well as the cloud patterns, practices, and insights gained from this vast worldwide community. The Microsoft cloud architecture community has the charter to consult with our customers worldwide, and at the deepest technical level design, and build the pilots, patterns, or prototypes, to then finally create the deployment resources, requirements, and plans to enable corporation or government to take or expand their IT environment to the cloud.
Eduardo was one of the three original authors of the Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization Models, a framework to assess the IT and operational maturity. He recently authored the Cloud First Mobile First model and is working on several cloud adoption frameworks. He has influenced and led the virtualization, private cloud, and operations management strategies for the Microsoft field technical sales and marketing communities for the past 10 years, and is a sought after speaker in forums across the world on these topics. Eduardo has spoken at more than 400 events across the globe on topics such as enterprise cloud strategy, cloud adoption strategy and best practices, public, hybrid and private cloud, virtualization, datacenter management, datacenter efficiency, IT total cost of ownership, and optimized desktop and flexible work style strategies.
Before joining Microsoft, he worked for Dell as a regional sales manager, and before that as the director of the EDS service management center which consisted of 36 outsourced datacenters, their finances, billing, all of their resources, and service support areas, as well as the five remote print and output centers. These 36 datacenters service more than 128 customers in a full outsourcing model.