Discussion on:

Deciding what you want from the cloud: First steps

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are saying. I am meant to be building an enterprise architecture to support the complex needs of a business, and yet I've mentioned SMEs and playing with the AWS service. I guess from your use of those acronyms that you understand enterprise needs.

I start small, from a personal point of view, and work towards a solid scalable system. I am using baby steps to make sure everyone understands how to succeed and no-one gets left behind. The goal is an operational system that is resilient (HA), recoverable (DR), scalable, monitored and secure.

Not all enterprise cloud work belongs here. If I were being thorough, I might start by building a case: I would find my customer's pain, suggest a few solutions and estimate the time, money and resources required for each. I might talk to managers, find some ideas are more strategically sound than others and get backing for a proof of concept. That's all good enterprise stuff, but it's only that proof of concept work that really belongs here. It is crucial to the success of an enterprise cloud, but it's business administration.

Please feel free to comment on anything you want. You will be helping me with my progress.