Episode 15: Adrian Cockcroft
About Adrian Cockcroft
Adrian Cockcroft has had a long career working at the leading edge of technology, and is fascinated by what happens next. In his role at AWS, Cockcroft is focused on the needs of cloud native and “all-in” customers.
Prior to AWS, Cockcroft started out as a developer in the UK, joined Sun Microsystems and then moved to the United States in 1993, ending up as a Distinguished Engineer. Cockcroft left Sun in 2004, was a founding member of eBay research labs, and started at Netflix in 2007.
He initially directed a team working on personalization algorithms and then became cloud architect, helping teams scale and migrate to AWS. As Netflix shared its architecture publicly, Cockcroft became a regular speaker at conferences and executive summits, and he created and led the Netflix open source program.
In 2014, he joined VC firm Battery Ventures, promoting new ideas around DevOps, microservices, cloud and containers, and moved into his current role at AWS in October 2016. He has recruited a team of experienced open source technologists to AWS and given keynote presentations at AWS Summits and many other events around the world.
Cockcroft holds a degree in Applied Physics from The City University, London and is a published author of four books, notably Sun Performance and Tuning (Prentice Hall, 1998)
About this episode
Joining Mik in this episode of Mik + One is Adrian Cockcroft, VP of Cloud Architecture Strategy at Amazon Web Services.
In this episode, Mik and Adrian provide concrete advice on moving ahead in the digital world and cover many key discussion points including:
- Insight into Adrian’s experiences establishing technical practices in organizations like eBay, Netflix and AWS
- The importance of product-centred innovation in order to pave the path for faster success
- Business agility, and why all organizations must have this in order to innovate and stay ahead of the competition
- The importance of feedback loops when delivering software, with a key focus on the four stages of the OODA loop
- The notion of ‘Flow Time’ or ‘Time to Value’ and why it is a crucial and powerful metric that all CEOs must prioritize
- The use of VSM in order to achieve better decision making and build a scalable organization
Subscribe to the Mik + One podcast today so you never miss an episode and don’t forget to leave your review.
Follow Mik on Twitter: @mik_kersten #MikPlusOne www.planview.com
Additional Resources:
- Cloud for CEOs by Adrian Cockcroft
- Adrian Cockcroft - Medium
- Adrian Cockcroft - Dev.to
- Sun Performance and Tuning: Java and the Internet by Adrian Cockcroft
- Capacity Planning for Internet Services by Adrian Cockcroft and Bill Walker
- Sun Performance and Tuning: Sparc & Solaris by Adrian Cockcroft
- Resource Management by Adrian Cockcroft, Richard McDougall and Evert Hoogendoorn
To download the transcript for this episode, click here.
Ready for more insights? Browse the Mik + One Podcast archive.
Listen to over 50 business and technology leaders sharing how they deliver value and drive digital transformations in their organizations.
Browse All Episodes