Last week I received a message through the community that two of my best buddies at Microsoft had written a book! Without wasting more time, I immediately spun up my trusted workstation in search of this master piece of contemporary literature.

My friends Jan Depping and Herman Keijzer have in fact succeeded in writing a book in the style of the Microsoft Cloud-practice Playbooks, where they try and help explaining fundamental principles you can apply to all of your Azure projects.

Jan Depping works as a Partner Technology Strategist (PTS) in the Netherlands. Jan has worked for many years in the service provider and public sector space. With a background in computer technology and psychology, he is always looking the optimal balance between people and product. His main focus is creating new business models with AI, Blockchain and Cloud Computing.

Herman Keijzer works as a Partner Development Manager (PDM) on datacenter migration programs in western Europe. Before that he was a Partner Technology Strategist in Netherlands. Herman has worked for most of his IT life in the service provider space and has many years of experience in offering services online. In the early days, these were IP services or ASP services; these evolved into online services, private cloud and now into public cloud services. His service provider point of view means he is always looking at how to run services both as efficiently as possible and with the highest level of quality.

In the playbook they address 8 principles:

  • Build to fail

  • Self-Service

  • Freedom of Choice

  • Trust

  • Continuous Change

  • Software Defined Everything

  • Pay-per-use

  • Scalable

They boiled the principles down, after initially starting with 19 principles. Now, applying these principles is not a one-time task you can achieve over night. They are a culture and mindset (change) that drives all aspects of your cloud usage. You practice the principles during development and during operations. They become part of your agile DNA when practicing DevOps and CloudOps. Mastering these principles will become your Intellectual Property (IP) that you can use in how you add value to your cloud offerings for your customers or how you consume cloud resources.

The book currently consists of about 50 pages and is easily readable, despite the English language. The principles described in this playbook can help you to get you on your way on this learning journey for experienced IT Pros, where you need to adopt new ways of working and be willing to learn. For your convenience, find the download-link below. You can find the other playbooks through: http://aka.ms/playbooks

https://www.azureman.com/wp-content/uploads/Cloud-Principles-Playbook-2019-08-13.pdf

Happy adopting!

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