In 2015, on-premise investments were steeply increasing, and Starbucks saw that their business aims and digital capabilities could become constrained without the effective use of the public cloud.

Cost saving was not the driver, rather how to unlock their teams to deliver more value, faster capacity and agility, and critically how to leverage the benefits of cloud services that would become available.

Rather than emptying their data centres in a lift and shift, they planned and laid the groundwork for an effective modernisation strategy – while also balancing and optimising an extensive existing on-premise legacy footprint which still runs around 40% of all workloads.

Their Global VP of Infrastructure & Cloud Services, Chris Halstead, outlined Starbucks’ six-year modernisation journey.

Only ADAPT Research and Advisory clients can watch Chris Halstead’s full presentation.

Contributors
Chris Halstead Global VP Infrastructure & Cloud Services at Starbucks
Chris Halstead is Vice President of Infrastructure and Cloud Services at Starbucks Coffee Company. Chris and his team are responsible for foundational... More

Chris Halstead is Vice President of Infrastructure and Cloud Services at Starbucks Coffee Company. Chris and his team are responsible for foundational technology service delivery across the worldwide Starbucks enterprise, which includes private data centers, corporate offices, manufacturing and distribution locations, Starbucks Reserve Roasteries, and integration with public cloud partners.

In addition to engineering and operating core technology infrastructure services, the team plays an instrumental role in financial management and strategic technology alignment to deliver on critical business initiatives, leveraging on-premises capacity and integrating an expanding footprint of cloud environments.

Chris joined Starbucks in 2007 and has been leading infrastructure teams there since 2011. Prior to Starbucks, Chris held both individual and leadership roles at John H. Harland Co., Delta Air Lines, SourceLabs, and Amazon. He contributes to industry advancement and improvement through membership in Infrastructure Masons and participation in Customer Advisory Boards for Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Business Application Platform.

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Modernisation Cloud