Cloud Engineer Spotlight – Getting self-sufficient in the cloud with Sidney

Sidney is an AWS Cloud Consultant at Xebia with an extensive background in system and network engineering. He combines his expertise to effectively tackle the technical challenges of our clients and converts them into great opportunities for growth and innovation. When asked about his proudest moment so far in his career at Xebia, a specific case directly comes to mind.

“At Xebia, we – as engineers – get to work with a very diverse set of customers. Our customers are active in various industries. The problems they are trying to solve by moving to the cloud also vary. In addition, some customers are at the very start of their journey whereas others may already have several or even all of their workloads running in the cloud.

One of the cases which I worked on and which I am very proud of was at a customer who had experienced continuous and extensive growth. This resulted in a common problem: the IT-department could no longer effectively manage their on-premise data centers. The solution was obvious: move to the AWS cloud. We see this a lot at Xebia: successful companies who look toward AWS to facilitate future growth but need help at the start of their journey. Our track record appealed to this customer and they selected us to partner with them as their journey into the cloud started.”

Landing zones

“Typically, we kick-off these types of engagements with an extensive design workshop, where all challenges and opportunities with the diverse applications are mapped out. We explain in detail how a deployment of the Managed Cloud Platform delivers full scalability, security and compliance. What stood out for this customer, was the ease with which they adopted the AWS Cloud into their own work environment.

We started solving our part of the case by deploying a landing zone for the CloudFoundation on which the customer wished to further develop their business. Due to our broad experience delivering landing zones, this has become one of our core competences. A landing zone can be based on a native service such as AWS Control Tower or a highly customizable solution called AWS Landing Zone which APN Partners such as Xebia can offer. Some of these offerings are still new and in the past we’ve built solutions from scratch with integrations deep into the customer’s IT landscape. So it’s safe to say that we know our way around landing zones.”

You build it, you run it

“During the delivery, part of the customer’s team noticed our efforts and asked more about what exactly had been built and how it had been built. We explained our methods, and this lit a spark. Before we knew it, the client set up a platform team and after a few sessions they got the hang of the AWS suite – without having experience beforehand. We took this opportunity to further accelerate the client’s knowledge and expertise on this platform. Within half a year, our client developed their own AWS philosophy (which we learned a lot from too!) and became knowledgeable enough to take over for themselves.

For the customer, this triggered a DevOps transformation. They went from being software developers reliant on their IT organization to an actual self-serving organization. In the short time that we worked with them, they took control over their infrastructure and adopted the ‘you build it, you run it’ mentality. The efficiency of the Cloud Foundation, combined with their innovation driven spirit, allowed them to build and develop more consciously in their own environment.”

Self-sufficiency

“The process of introducing a customer to AWS and seeing them gradually learn more about it and eventually master the platform is something we like to call a role model client. You can compare it to seeing your kids grow up to become the responsible individuals you had envisaged. It neatly fits with our own philosophy: We guide our customers to become self-sufficient and innovative on a successful and effective cloud-journey. After we complete our assignment we like to see our clients able to achieve success on the AWS platform independently. But if they need us again or if they want us to help them get even more value out of the platform, we’re only a phone call away.”

How will your story start?

Curious as to how your career could go with us? Make sure to check out our careers page to learn more about Xebia and what you can expect from a career choice with us.