Cloud is the engine for transformation, enabling organisations to reinvent operating models to deliver better services, products and experiences. The fuel for that engine is fast-growing volumes of data that must be stored, processed and actioned in a secure, fast, sustainable, cost-efficient and resilient way.

The explosion in data volumes in recent years – in terms of unstructured, structured, real-time and other data – has been truly transformative. Innovators in every sector have revolutionised their markets by using data to precisely understand their customers and

bring them ever more personalised and convenient services: think Uber, Amazon, Airbnb and Revolut.

Turning data into actionable insights

The one component that has enabled organisations to achieve this is the very thing that can hinder innovation: data. Organisations can have the most innovative ideas, but without the right data in the right place at the right time, their ambitions will be difficult or impossible to implement.

The management of data is therefore an imperative: not just managing the data needed to gain actionable insights, but also the data needed to action those insights. AI and machine learning technologies (working either at the centre or at the ‘edge’) are needed to process, analyse and deliver all the data needed for the digital services and apps of tomorrow.

That requires end-to-end management of data across each business process while maintaining compliance with data security and privacy regulations such as GDPR.

Transcending organisational siloes

In the era of paper bureaucracies, it was simply not practical to share much of the data that organisations had available. Yet the reasons for the lack of data-sharing go much deeper. Even today, many organisations work in siloes that make data-sharing difficult; what’s more, there may be legal constraints on sharing personal information.

However, these cultural norms are now looking out of date. This is where cloud solutions come into play as organisations must flex their computing and data storage needs over time to meet specific business requirements in a cost-effective way. In many instances, it is not efficient to store data that is rarely ever used on expensive on-premise infrastructure. In these cases, it is more appropriate to have a hybrid cloud strategy which enables organisations to cost-effectively manage where and when data is stored, while ensuring that storage is in line with security and regulatory constraints.

Data for reinventing the operating model

Having the right data in the wrong place at the wrong time may impact application performance. Public and private sector organisations may benefit from cloud as an option to cost effectively and efficiently manage their data assets.

In summary:

• Without data management, successful innovation is impossible. Paying attention to the subject of data at the outset of the transformation programme is key.
• Cloud is an enabler for more economic delivery of new services. By adopting cloud solutions, business don’t need to build platforms for peak capacity; cloud resources expand and contract quickly, so businesses can buy only what they consume. This means cloud is ideal for expansions, since organisations can buy on demand according to desired business outcomes.

Today’s citizens and customers increasingly expect to access services and information instantly, online, whenever and wherever they need them. The challenge and opportunity for organisations is in shifting away from merely digitising existing processes and, instead, reinventing their operating model to deliver truly personalised, fast, easy, joined-up digital services that make life better for the customers they serve.