Cloud Unfiltered, Episode 46: Succeeding with Cloud, DevOps, and Big Data Initiatives

Do you ever wish you could just bring someone in that would tell you how to do this whole cloud thing right? A person with the expertise to explain where you should focus your energy, which technologies you should adopt, and how to change your company culture? Someone who already knows where the potholes on this cloud journey lie and who is equipped to steer you around them?

Of course you do.

And today you are in luck, because I just interviewed Anoj Willy, the CEO of Xentaurs.

Anoj might be the most quotable guest we’ve ever had on Cloud Unfiltered. The man has metaphors galore, and he’s not afraid to use them. Which is actually really helpful, because doing cloud right is complicated. There are so many technologies to consider, processes to reform, and dependencies to account for. It can become a bit of a 3D chess match if you try to envision it all at once—and frankly a metaphor here and there to clarify things is quite nice.

In fact, the thing I enjoyed most about speaking with Anoj is his ability to make big, impossible projects seem quite small and do-able. You see, he’s a consultant—the CEO of a company called Xentaurs—and his job is to help companies make their cloud, devops, and big data initiatives a success. Some of the specific things he covered during our discussion include:

• Why a VAR is like the instruction manual in a box of Legos
• Which two long-term decisions you should be considering when implementing cloud solutions
• Why the agile methodology is not perfect for everything
• Why your code security methods need to be a lot more like casino security and a lot less like the TSA
• How resellers are handling the current transformation from speeds/feeds selling to cloud conversations
• How an overly complicated internal sales cycle can cheat you out of valuable conversations with vendors
• The importance of leaders having shared goals when it comes to cloud initiatives
• Why gathering all the requirements up front isn’t always the best way to start solving your IT problems

To hear the details straight from them, check out the full episode on: YouTube,  iTunes, or SoundCloud. To hear a brief clip, click on the video below.

And if you’d like to check out past episodes of this podcast (we’ve got more than 40 of them!), just pop on over to the archive at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/cloud/podcasts.html. Really. Do it. You’ll have a great time.

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