14,000 nerds (including myself) just descended on Las Vegas to drink, gamble, party with Skrillex, and get first-hand information from Amazon Web Services on their existing solutions and new announcements. You can already search Google for some in-depth analysis of each announcement. But, this article is for those who think DevOps is a division of the military, and a g2.2xlarge sounds like a confidential report on some sort of husky garment.
In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about companies that have succeeded by continuing to become more efficient in their industries. He uses the analogy of a flywheel throughout the book, with Great companies continuing to push harder, sticking to their “Hedgehog.” I am a huge fan of this book, and I once coined my company mission statement around the word GREAT. Our mission was to continue to drive efficiencies with continuous improvement in everything we did, while sticking to a few core strategies in which we had a competitive advantage.
All of this sounds fantastic, but I am now convinced that 90% of companies that stick to this strategy over the next 10 years will be dead.
“A champion named Goliath came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span.He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels. On his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels.”
– 1 Samuel 17 Verse 4
We all know what happens next. The Philistine champion, weighed down with his traditional armor, was defeated by a smaller, faster, nimble warrior, with God on his side. Recently, I have had enlightening conversations with some potential Davids and a few Goliaths.
