Overcoming IT Complexity: Simplify Operations, Enable Innovation, and Cultivate Successful Cloud Outcomes

The cloud promises cost savings, agility, and more. But the increasing complexity of modern IT systems often prevents businesses from realizing the outcomes they sought by moving to the cloud in the first place. At the core of this complexity is technical debt. Ad hoc decisions, traditional approaches, and "quick and dirty" solutions add up to fragile, more complex systems (and organizations)--reducing the pace of change, driving up costs, and degrading security. To succeed in the cloud, you first have to manage the problems IT complexity creates. This practical guide will help.

If you're tasked with designing, delivering, or approving IT systems that support business growth, this book will teach you the principles and strategies you need to break out of silos, reassess traditional thinking, provide the business a better competitive position, and achieve cloud success across the company.

You'll learn:

How to assess your current IT environment to identify complexity-centered risks

How to structure cross-functional teams to reduce friction points

How to create a framework for IT investments that's aligned with your business goals

How to measure your outcomes for continued success

Lee Atchison is a recognized industry thought leader in cloud computing and the author of the bestselling book Architecting for Scale (O'Reilly), currently in its second edition. Lee has 36 years of industry experience, including eight years at New Relic and seven years at Amazon and AWS, where he led the creation of the companyâ??s first software download store, created AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and managed the migration of Amazon's retail platform to a new service-based architecture. Lee has consulted with leading organizations on how to modernize their application architectures and transform their organizations at scale. Lee is an industry expert and is widely quoted in publications such as InfoWorld, Diginomica, IT Brief, Programmable Web, CIO Review, and DZone. He has been a featured speaker at events across the globe from London to Sydney, Tokyo to Paris, and all over North America.