Data Culture in Your Cloud Journey

Amazon Web Services has announced that an AWS Region is now available in Cape Town.

They promise that customers can compute and store on-premises, with fully managed and configurable compute and storage. The new region means that customers can service and run workloads with reduced latency. 

Since October 2018, when AWS CEO Andy Jassy first announced that they would be opening a region in Cape Town, it has finally arrived:

"Cape Town is unique because it's a long way to get to Europe, so the new region will be particularly meaningful in South Africa where the latencies are going to change fundamentally."

If you are on the cloud journey, this could mean a significant shift in your current plans to migrate your operations. The question you may ask is, what does a frictionless operating model look like to support your decision-making process? Here are a few guidelines we recommend you answer first.

‍Test your preparedness to respond to regulatory compliance 

Automation is key to regulatory compliance. Many initiatives to migrate to the cloud are sensitive to data leakage, with security being top of mind, resulting in a data defense approach to minimize downside risk, mostly to ensure compliance with regulations (such as rules governing data privacy and the integrity of financial reports). These efforts primarily provide comfort by ensuring the integrity of data passing through the company's internal systems and by identifying, standardizing, and governing authoritative data sources; for this reason, cloud initiatives are not readily embraced.

Assess the migration impact to lessen disruptions and improve your IT stability 

Invest in DataOps, DevOps, and MLOps for a frictionless transition. Adopting Lean principles and Agile methodologies is crucial to delivering in a highly productive, scalable, and efficient manner.

A new skill set will need to be acquired on your cloud journey. Invest in and prepare your teams for new technical capabilities, or partner with the right vendor, preferably for co-delivery and transformation, with clear accountability boundaries.

Focus on Data Literacy organization-wide

Key considerations must be made to understand the organization's data estate by democratizing data and insights. Data literacy is critical to facilitate conversations around data consumers, data producers, data sources, and ideas. According to Gartner:

"Data literacy is ranked as the second-biggest internal roadblock to the success of the office of the chief data officer; by 2020, 80% of organizations will initiate deliberate competency development in the field of data literacy to overcome extreme deficiencies." - Gartner

Mitigate your risk

Work on a catalog of applications to modernize your legacy estate, and be clear. Avoid large product roadmaps and strategies that go beyond three to four months. All data initiatives must adopt approaches to product thinking with a clear benefit to users.  

Your cloud strategy must include a multi-cloud response. The competition amongst cloud providers is becoming fierce. Ensure your cloud strategy and contractual obligations support multi-cloud adoption.

Focus on security from the start

Work closely with the Chief Information Security Office to modernize your security posture and controls. It is essential to embed security as part of your delivery process. When a response to critical business events is the highest priority, it is essential to engage in cloud implementation early, often in parallel with strategy and planning efforts. Taking such an approach requires a growth mindset and a willingness to iteratively improve processes based on direct lessons learned.

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