Okay, hello Cloud Gurus, how y'all doing?
I'm Scott Pletcher and welcome to Cloud Adoption Essentials. Now,
when I say cloud adoption,
I'm not talking about little orphan clouds with a big anime eyes,
trying to look cute while a sad song plays in the background. No, no, no.
I'm talking about when organizations take a serious look at potentially moving
some or all their stuff into the cloud. Cloud adoptions can take many forms,
from the smallest pilot project to major global strategic shifts.
This series is designed to help you build a robust and comprehensive business
case for moving to the cloud. Now, my goal is not to sell you on the cloud,
but rather make sure you're going into a cloud adoption decision with eyes wide
open. Technology is just a small part of cloud adoption.
There are financial aspects, architectural strategies, security measures,
governance approaches, and perhaps the most important,
which is organizational and people considerations.
We'll be covering all these in this series to help you develop a more complete
picture of what a cloud adoption entails.
So just who is this person before you?
I've been kicking around corporate information technology for about 27 years.
I started as a PC technician crawling around under desks,
replacing motherboards,
and I've been fortunate enough to hold a variety of roles for range of
companies, both large and small,
and work with lots of cool people on lots of cool projects around the world.
I've served as a help desk technician, a programmer, a project manager,
a data warehousing lead, which I guess is a big data lead nowadays,
an IT operations manager, a development manager, a scrum master,
an SAP technical director, and a cloud practice director.
I currently hold a PMI,
ACP and a PMP from the Project Management Institute and also the AWS
Solutions Architect Professional certification and the AWS Machine Learning
Specialty certification. Now,
I earned my undergraduate degree in management information systems from the
University of Alabama in Birmingham and my MBA from the
Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
In addition to being a full-time Senior Community Training Architect here at A
Cloud Guru,
I am also working towards my Doctorate of Technology at Purdue University. But,
BUT,
I am painfully aware that none of that stuff automatically qualifies me as
someone you should listen to, but here's what does.
With all those experiences comes a stack of stuff I wish I had known going into
the same type of project that you're considering now. Not just cloud projects,
but ERP implementations, consolidations, mergers, and acquisitions,
and all those crazy complex situations they just don't teach you about.
So perhaps my mistakes, my missteps, my do-overs,
might be able to help you steer clear of those same things.
So here's how to use this series.
The first module is focused on what a cloud adoption business case might look
like.
The remaining modules dive deeper into the various components that are typically
part of a cloud adoption proposal. Now,
you can pick and choose the modules that you think will be valuable for you.
For example, if you have a deep background in IT systems architecture,
you can probably skim through or totally skip the cloud architecture module.
Of course,
feel free to go through those modules as you might still find inspiration or
learn a new way of explaining things to colleagues who don't have that
background. We've also compiled some questionnaires, worksheets,
and other online resources to help with your cloud adoption efforts.
Finally, let me leave you with this.
Don't fret too much about finding that one golden path to the cloud because
there's not one. Unless you're miraculously lucky,
there will be starts and stops, breakthroughs and setbacks, celebrations,
and disappointments. If you keep your focus,
things will happen the way they need to happen. And you're going to get there.