Following the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a noticeable shift to remote work. This has also led to an increase in hybrid working and subsequent demand for cloud services to support collaborative working. How has this change affected digital transformation strategy across the business landscape? Read on to uncover informative data strategy and transformation insights, tips, use cases and trends.
What is a digital transformation strategy?
Digital transformation is the process of digitising a business’s operations, products and services with technologies that drive fundamental change. As a result, cloud infrastructure has become particularly prominent in recent years thanks to the emergence of data lakes and other data strategy solutions.
Did you know?
- The global digital transformation market is projected to reach $1,009.8 billion by 2025 (Finances Online)
- Global spending on digital transformation is set to reach $3.4 trillion USD by 2026 (Statistica)
- 21% of North American and European enterprises say their digital transformation is done (Finances Online).
The benefits of cloud adoption for digital transformation
Cloud adoption helps businesses:
- Improve operational efficiency and better manage business performance through data availability
- Remain competitive and relevant in the rapidly evolving digital landscap
- Adopt BI in line with digital strategy and transformation
- Manage less hardware and utilise more accessible infrastructure, suiting a wider variety of skill levels
- Efficiently manage costs due to the removal of excess licensing and hardware costs along with flexible storage and compute models
- Scale software to meet growing user demand
- Improved data security due to the enhanced capabilities offered by the cloud provider.
The role of cloud infrastructure in digital transformation
The adoption of cloud data engineering services along with cloud technologies is the leading approach to digital transformation, with cloud services allowing businesses to extend the capabilities of their existing solutions. For example, a large insurance company could be operating lots of disparate systems with each providing their own siloed reporting. In this situation, it may be too complex to gather cross-domain insights. Each siloed system may very well have licensing and running costs associated with legacy technology.
In this situation, Dufrain would implement a modern data platform to consolidate all of the systems in a single data lake. We’d also support the business by presenting the required information for analysis using BI, to be distributed throughout the organisation. This would help drive digital strategy and transformation and, to a degree, digital culture change. This process may also involve legacy system migrations to ensure compatibility with modern platforms. Such a strategy demonstrates the key benefits of scalability and flexibility that cloud adoption offers.
Find more inspiration in our case studies.
Meet our Dufrainians
“Strategic cloud adoption drives digital advancement by unlocking scalability, cost savings and business innovation potential.”
David Mills, Data Architect and Manager
Stephen Armory, Head of Architecture
Digital transformation tips
Seek a consultancy
At the very least, you should seek the expertise of a consultancy like Dufrain to perform the initial assessment and plan your strategy. This is particularly important if you lack experience in digital and cloud implementation, to ensure accuracy and informed decision-making from the start.
Monitor your costs
It’s important to closely monitor the costs associated with data architecture. We recommend seeking external assistance or allocating the required time and internal resources to do so properly.
Assign responsibility wisely
Many organisations default to assigning a single person to manage the cloud system. You need to have a system in place across your team that ensures there are no key person dependencies.
Regularly review your architecture
Whilst your existing cloud computing services may accommodate your current business needs, these are likely to evolve. Consequently, another system may be more suitable down the line. You should also be reviewing your architecture to ensure it aligns with best practices and remains secure and reliable.
Trends to look out for In 2024…
SaaS uptake
There is a growing move away from Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to Software as a Service (SaaS). This is reflective of the core value cloud platforms bring and the simplification of the climate state.
Ubiquitous AI applications
Thanks to huge developments in 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) integration is rising – with its role in digital transformation only set to grow.
… And beyond
Increased regulatory compliance
As software continues to scale, so too will the drive to meet increasingly stringent regulatory compliance.
The expanding role of data lakes
The data lake will expand from traditional enterprise systems and into operational systems, converging the two.
How a data health check from Dufrain can help
We can review your data systems and your current cost management with a free data health check. We can also advise on your security and offer an outside perspective to ensure you’re using the right tools in the right way. This will provide a greater understanding of your current position in your data strategy and transformation journey and opportunities for improvement.
Take advantage of our exclusive offer for independent advice from a market-leading pure play data consultancy. Explore our data services today.
Have we sparked your curiosity? Speak to our team about your digital transformation strategy on 0800 130 3656 or contact us today.