Digital laggards may rush migration to the Cloud and yet experience data overload. So what is the secret to good DX?

Public cloud end-user spending for this year is forecast to grow 18% growth, according to predictions by Gartner. According to them, “the ability to use on-demand, scalable cloud models to achieve cost efficiency and business continuity is providing the impetus for organizations to rapidly accelerate their digital business transformation plans.”

The whole world has already taken the digital transformation (DX) buzzword and run with it. However, the finer points of digitalization go beyond just migrating to the Cloud and bruteforcing your organization into e-commerce or some online presence.

Tony Frey, VP & GM, Asia Pacific & Japan, Informatica

According to Tony Frey, VP & GM (Asia Pacific & Japan), Informatica, the essence of effective digital transformation hinges on these three broad mindsets aforethought in the organizational DNA:

  • Adopting a Cloud-first approach
    Employees and customers alike are adapting to new ways of working and living. While work is conducted from home and customer meetings are held over videoconferencing solutions, companies must have a Cloud-first mindset or their business continuity will suffer.

    If your organization is considering digitalizing or further developing what has already been modernized, do consider integrating a cloud strategy to fast track the transformation and keep the competition at bay.

    Data, which is at the heart of digital transformation, will be vital in keeping businesses sustainable in a post-pandemic world, because key business decisions can be made swiftly when valuable data is at the fingertips. As such, digital transformation must always be data-led to allow companies to innovate at scale and react to market changes even faster.
  • Managing data unwieldiness in the Cloud
    When workloads are moved and run in the cloud, the sheer volume of data running in the Cloud can be daunting and difficult to manage.

    One proven strategy is to embrace ‘Cloud-native’ data management tools as a modern and intelligent computing platform to help your organization improve operational efficiency, increase productivity and scale at the enterprise-level with lower total cost of ownership.

    When considering a Cloud-native approach, implement an end-to-end cloud-native data management tool that covers the three important pillars of data:

    • Data integration
    • Data orchestration (cleaning, organizing, giving it more structure)
    • Data governance (ensuring all the right security and privacy standards and protocols are in place

    This will create a reliable enterprise cloud data management capability that can address the complex challenges surrounding your organization’s data while allowing accelerated DX.

    When the organization is cloud-native, best-in-class data governance is essential to mitigating any data risks. Data loss not only causes financial losses, it also affects business operation and compliance, and could potentially also damage market reputation.

    According to Frey, establishing a robust data governance and protection framework is therefore imperative in keeping data well defined, documented and regulated to ensure data integrity and to maintain the trust of the marketplace and of customers.
  • Driving business intelligence with AI
    Each day over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created, and that pace is accelerating with more businesses moving to the cloud.

    To make the best out of data generated across the multitude of systems and applications in your business, AI-powered DX gives organizations deep insights for decision making and a 360-degree view of the landscape, allowing for more efficient processing of day-to-day tasks.

    Today we see customers in supply chain, healthcare, government, manufacturing and financial services benefiting from enabling AI in their business processes as part of their digital transformation. One American subsidiary of a global insurance and reinsurance company, for example, had completely redesigned and consolidated its data architecture with a cloud-based data warehouse, advanced analytics platform, and business intelligence tools across its insurance value chain.

    This now allows better and faster insights into the aggregated data, resulting in the company’s ability to cross-sell and upsell insurance policies thereby increasing value to shareholders.

As more companies move to the Cloud to tap into the greatest potentials, we see that data is at the heart of the digital transformation. Frey noted: “The power of data is truly formidable. The transformative use of data is even more so. Going Cloud-first and Cloud-native with data-led DX will become the lifeline for surviving, sustaining and staying resilient during this unprecedented time and beyond.”