What We Learned from MS Azure Bootcamp

The brain power was palpable. We hosted the Global Azure Bootcamp at our space in Richmond, Virginia, and the attendees were ready to tackle some big cloud issues during breakouts and presentations.

We asked attendees to fill out a survey about their cloud adoption and implementation journeys, as well as their top challenges. They revealed themes that are reminiscent of trends we’ve seen in our clients’ cloud journeys.

Top 2 challenges in cloud adoption:

• Security risks
• Shifting expertise

Based on our conversations at the Bootcamp, the concerns about security are widespread. Many of our attendees believed there is a maturity issue with their cloud providers. Another issue was creating a shared responsibility model between cloud provider and adopter organization. Others expressed a lack of inclusion of key stakeholders during adoptions, as opposed to only IT. Still others were concerned about their organizations’ embedded, risk-averse security culture, instead of having one of innovation. This could lead to inaction, a security risk in its own right.

Why shifting expertise? That may seem obvious: these were practitioners (experts) who wanted to bone up (shifting) on cloud; hence, attending a “bootcamp.” But this is a problem we see in a lot of organizations. A problem we see consistently is that organizations often couple a cloud adoption with a talent overhaul, as opposed to a talent optimization. We very much believe that orgs can bring along their own talent when undergoing cloud adoption. It saves money and actually results in a smoother culture change than bringing in all new people, if done correctly.

Top challenge in cloud implementation:

• Lack of training or skillsets.

If that sounds a lot like the aforementioned top challenge of shifting expertise, that’s because the problem persists throughout cloud journeys.

On that note, we’ve included some of the presentation decks from the Bootcamp below to help you shift your expertise in the right direction. Please use and share them with your teams!

MS Azure Bootcamp Presentation Decks:

Why Choose Azure – Dave Williams

Data Services and Streaming Data Solution with Azure – Tara Mason

Compliance and Security in Azure – Jeff Gainer

Why You Need Infrastructure as Code – Dave Williams