This is part 3 of the Information Technology Transformation series, describing the creation of the current “As Is” Baseline. This involves talking to people, creating a library of technical Blueprints and sharing information via summarised Baseline Posters.
Category: Architecture Design & Strategy
General Enterprise Architecture Design & Strategy
IT Transformation – Part 2 – The “A-Team”
This is part 2 of the Information Technology Transformation series, describing the creation of the “A-Team” / Architecture Office and the associated Architecture Review process.
IT Transformation – Part 1 – The 90-Day Plan
You have been hired as the new “Chief Architect and Strategist” or “Chief Information Officer” for an organisation that is struggling to deliver services to their customers. Customers are not satisfied, the company is losing money, staff are demoralised and looking for new jobs; things do not work – how are you going to transform the IT Division? How do you make sure that your plans and actions will actually fix the problems your customers are complaining about?
Continue reading IT Transformation – Part 1 – The 90-Day Plan
“Hardening” the Architect
I have always been petrified of public speaking. During my VCDX certification journey, the presentation was always my toughest task, I would spend hours and days stressing and freaking out about talking to the panelists. Yesterday, I realised I was cured. Now public speaking does not bother me in the least; no nerves, no second guessing, just the concise delivery of information to my audience. How did this reversal occur?
New Company, New Job: Empty Your Cup
I have just completed the first week at my new company. I have moved from a medium sized bank with 3,000 employees to the largest service provider in the Middle East with 30,000 employees and millions of customers.
During my time with my previous employer, I was a significant part of the team pushing infrastructure consolidation and application transformation over five years to reach 99% virtualisation with the VMware vCloud Enterprise suite of products. Things were small enough that I could perform a lot of the work myself, which definitely will not work here: team-work and a unified sense of purpose will be the key to success.
The Next Elite Architecture Certification
The current Elite Architecture Design Certifications are: VMware Certified Design eXpert (VCDX) and Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr).
At VMworld 2014 US, there was a lot of speculation about the integrity and future of the VCDX program with Mark Brunstad and John Arrasjid moving to greener pastures. With Chris Colotti taking over as Principal Architect and VCDX Evangelist, I think the VCDX Program is in good hands. This will be further reinforced once the new VCDX Program Manager is announced.
VUPaaS – start listening to it!
I was lucky enough to be on VUPaaS recently. It is hosted by GS Khalsa, Josh Atwell and Chris Wahl. I have found it very useful for hearing about how other customers are using virtualisation and cloud automation technologies to solve their operational issues and then applying those lessons within my own organisation. This series of podcasts was also a very important part of my VCDX preparation, particularly in developing use-cases and alternate design scenarios for my defence.
So if you have not subscribed to the show on iTunes, then you should do yourself a favour and give it a go!
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