By: Craig Leppan, Head of Business Development at Synthesis Technologies
The #GetFitForCloud journey starts now! October leaves six crucial months of training to get your Business Solution into the AWS Cape Town Data Centre by March 2020.
Like preparing for any race, it is about more than just the actual cycling or running on the day. Success comes down to preparation, goal setting and serious work. Change and energy are needed to adapt the organisational muscles and skills to stand up to a secure production workload in AWS in 2020.
It’s about more than the bike, technology and the equipment. Those things are easy. They can be bought or rented. The best bike won’t help an unprepared rider and the best preparation comes down to training the people to take the race. It is all about the people who take the journey. It is about navigating and managing people and skills change.
As with many journeys, the technology is not the hard part, it’s the people part that counts. Yes, you have to have the technology in place, working, maintained and monitored, but getting fit for cloud is as much about people change, new habits and disciplines as it is when a non-cyclist prepares for a race of 3-to-5 hours when they might only have spent 30 minutes in vigorous exercise!
So, here is a fun table of some of the parallels and analogies of getting fit for cloud as they relate to training for the Cycle Challenge 2020.
| 108km Cycle Race | AWS Production Workload |
| Equipment/Basics | Technology Map |
| Bike | AWS account |
| Helmet | Security in place |
| Race entry | Architecture sign off |
| Shoes | S3 buckets secured |
| Chamois | Landing zone |
| Sunglasses | Monitoring tool |
| Cycling top | Front end |
| Bike service | Well Architected review |
| Sunblock | Security assurance tooling |
| HR monitor/head unit | Monitoring dashboards and alerting |
| Skills/Training | Skills/Training |
| First ride around the block | AWS certification |
| Ride with friends 1 hr | First access to AWS sandbox/hackathon |
| Indoor training | Dev ops disciplines |
| Hill training 2 hrs | AWS game day |
| Bike repair / mechanical Lesson | Cloud economics |
| 2 hour rides every week | JetPack training |
| 90km training ride | Non-Prod Account |
