Confessions of a Customer Marketer: Popping Champagne Over Fidelity’s DevOps Transformation of the Year Award

3 min read

I have a problem and I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m customer obsessed. I get giddy when something exciting happens for one of our customers. It’s like when your best friend wins MVP in t-ball and you’re not even on the team but you jump up and down, dance and yell anyway. 

That was me last week when Fidelity Investments’ Enterprise Cloud Computing group was awarded Best DevOps Transformation of 2020 by DevOps.com. The DevOps Dozen awards recognize the best of the best in DevOps across 24 categories. (I know…it’s one dozen times two.) It’s like a Tony award but for DevOps.

A few months ago, nominations opened and I knew Fidelity needed to be nominated. For the last year and a half, I’ve been working with Fidelity to help them share their DevOps journey with the broader community. Ger McMahon, head of cloud center of excellence, Keith Blizard, senior vice president of public cloud services, Jimmy McNamara, senior manager, application lifecycle tooling, Nicholas Penston, director of software engineering and Aoife Fitzmaurice, principal architect of Fidelity’s Enterprise Cloud Computing group shared best practices through speaking opportunities, media interviews, panel sessions, webinars, blogs and podcasts - highlighting their results and celebrating the accomplishments of their team. 

I became fast friends along the way with Kathleen Bentley, vice president of engagement and awareness at Fidelity. We have built a mutual respect for each other and she knows I’ll always follow Fidelity’s rules and protect her brand as if it’s my own. We offered up opportunities for Fidelity to be a hero and Kathleen chose the ones best-suited to their strategic and branding goals. A win-win, if you ask me.

The nomination kind of wrote itself but achieving victory wasn’t so simple. The path to a DevOps Dozen award is a two-step process. Nominations are submitted and scored by a panel of judges. Finalists emerge. Then, the general DevOps community votes. Winners are selected based on 60 percent of the judges' scores and 40 percent of the community scores. Fidelity rose to the top and claimed the Best DevOps Transformation prize.

Yes. Fidelity gets a coveted digital trophy and a physical one is in the mail. But the true prize is the recognition for the entire team that their teamwork, their contributions and their results have had a best-in-class impact at Fidelity and for their 35 million customers. The professional recognition is terrific - both inside Fidelity and externally, within the industry.  Isn’t it amazing what can happen when you step out and tell your story? 

Believe it or not, I get paid to do something I love. This is what I do. I help our amazing customers tell their stories and then take a victory lap every time they do. 

Nope. I’m not a salesperson who’s compensated on hitting my quota. I just like to see our customers get the acclaim they deserve and when they do, I’m giddy. They get some time in the spotlight and the bragging rights of being among the best of the best. 

I think, tonight, I’ll put my feet up, pop open some champagne and toast my friends at Fidelity. Bravo! Well deserved. 

If you’d like to learn more about Fidelity’s DevOps journey, check out the following blogs, podcasts and presentations.

Stay up to date

We'll never share your email address and you can opt out at any time, we promise.