If you’re a homeowner, you evaluate
“build, buy or borrow” scenarios all
the time.
Tackling a landscaping project in your backyard is a
good example. You could build a lasting solution by
picking up the right tools and handling the job your-
self. You could buy your way out of the problem by
paying a couple of hardy teenagers to do the job in
the summer. Or you could borrow the expertise of a
landscaping firm to do the work and also teach you
the best way to sustain your lawn well in the future.
Which choice you make would depend on many fac-
tors – your energy, your financial situation, your rela-
tionship with neighboring teens and the value you
place on having a neat, trim plot of land.
Enterprises moving to the cloud face a similar chal-
lenge – but the stakes are much higher. The process is
a huge investment of time, focus and resources. It is
crucial to have the right mix of skills on hand to guide
your cloud implementation where it needs to go, in a
reasonable amount of time, and at a reasonable cost.
So, which path should you follow—build, buy or borrow?
As is the case with the landscaping project, the
answer is often more complicated than choosing
from column A, B or C. What’s right for one CIO start-
ing a cloud journey with one particular enterprise,
might not be right for another. What’s right now,
might not be right later. And more often than not, the
right answer involves blending build, buy and borrow
tactics to fit an enterprise’s specific scenario.
If you’re preparing a cloud implementation, you’re
probably asking yourself a lot of pointed questions.
Here are a few you should be considering as you eval-
uate whether to build, buy or borrow your way to
cloud success.
• What do each of the three “B’s” mean from a
resource standpoint?
• Why is each valuable on its own?
The Rationale Behind Building From Within
Essentially, the “build” option gives you control over
the process. Howeve r, you’ll need to lean on people
that you trust inside your organization, to carry out
the implementation. You will have to assign people to
do specific jobs, and you will have to make sure that
they have the necessary training to get their jobs done.
Building from within should also save on costs. You
have the people already on staff; it’s important to
make sure they’re managed correctly and put in a
position to succeed. You may have to pay a little more
in raises or incentives, but this expense should pale in
comparison to the cost of acquiring talent.
Capital One is a great example of an organization that
borrowed resources for their initial cloud strategy
and migration, but has since developed a training
program for their existing team to continue the cloud
journey. “We have made investments in education,
creating a comprehensive training program with
AWS,” said Biba Helou, Managing Vice President of
Capital One. “We now employ one of the largest
shares of AWS-certified developers in the country.
Today, a full 2 percent of all AWS-certified developers
work at Capital One.”
Still, there are limiting factors in this scenario. In any
organization, anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of your
IT people have to focus on business as usual (BAU)
projects to “keep the lights on.” That leaves just 20 to
40 percent of your staff that can actually afford to
shift off of regular projects and take on something
new, like cloud.
Moving workloads to the cloud and managing a pro-
cess that’s new to the organization can be a chal-
lenge. If you’re trying to move to the cloud quickly,
relying on internal resources has the potential to set
your timetable back. It could take longer to rebuild,
reskill or retrain staff. Additionally, you may not have
access to enough resources, and it will likely take
time to build new muscle memory to have an effective
staff to execute projects.
• When should each be used?
• How does each decision impact finances and
your organizational constructs?
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