Focus is Greater Than Automation AND Agility
When I first started using Amazon Web Services (AWS) back in 2007, the majority of people I talked to who were interested in leveraging AWS wanted to talk about how they could use AWS to help reduce their IT costs. In the vast majority of cases, those customers were interested in shifting IT related expenses from capital to operating expenditures.
As time went on, a change in how people thought about Public Cloud occurred - rather than using AWS to help them save money organizations now wanted to talk about how they could use AWS to deliver IT projects faster.
Customers wanted to get their products (or services) to market faster than their competitors and leveraging a public cloud service like AWS helped them do just that.
Don’t get me wrong - budgets still exist - probably more important than ever. Why? The dynamic nature of AWS means it’s easy to stand up services whenever you need them. Because of this, you need a plan in place to continuously optimize for cost.
So how did organizations reduce the time it takes to deliver a solution? AWS made it easy by creating a universal API to tie all their services together. Compare that to the fragmented situation most of us have to deal with when it comes to on-premise IT, and you can see how reducing time to market was quite easy.
So you might be wondering what next. Reducing the amount of time it takes to get your solutions to market is important, but there’s something else that’s even more important. Here it is:
Focus > Automation AND Agility
Focus means offloading as many undifferentiated tasks as you can to AWS to allow valuable resources to focus their limited time on tasks that set your organization apart from your competitors. How do you free up more time for your teams? Supercharge your automation efforts by leveraging AWS Managed Services and Serverless Computing as often as you can.
Here are a few of my favourite ways to Focus by using AWS:
- Shut off OS’ wherever I can
- Avoid manually deploying solutions by using CloudFormation (for everything)
- Using Immutable infrastructure