Businesses have to continuously tweak their processes to gain more efficiencies from their cloud deployments and extract deeper data insights for better decision-making.
Their cloud journey does not end at migration, as cloud consistently brings technological advancements to the table. Tapping the benefits of cloud requires a shift in mindset not only across areas such as application development but also in how companies get value from their data.
In particular, the use of automation and repeatable patterns can speed up time to market.
Key to this is building a technology roadmap generated by working backward from desired business outcomes. Measuring both return on investment and total cost of ownership is an essential component to the formulation of this roadmap. It helps businesses qualify and prioritise initiatives related to services and new products or features.
As it is, fueled by the global pandemic, many organisations have turned to cloud to drive their digital transformation. Cloud also is recognised as a key enabler of modern data capabilities.
The consumer sector, for instance, views the need for artificial intelligence and machine learning-based insights as among the top uses of cloud technology, according to a Deloitte study. The energy and resources sector also points to the importance of cloud in facilitating data integration to enable analysis of mine-site data.
The survey looks at cloud transformation among enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and India. It reveals that the healthcare and life sciences sector sees cloud technology as an enabler of real-time data sharing and interoperability between different delivery services.
Clearly, organisations are realising that the data they own is valuable and can be used to drive a competitive edge in the market by enabling new ways of delivering features and products to market.
Building Data Lakes to Speed Up Access to Insights
Australian health insurer Peoplecare grappled with pulling together disparate data sources until it moved to a cloud environment powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). CMD Solutions was selected to help the company modernise its data infrastructure and deploy a cloud-native data lake on AWS.
CMD Solutions is a Sydney-based AWS Premier Partner and professional services consultancy that specialises in building fully automated AWS cloud deployments. As a national not-for-profit health insurer, Peoplecare supports 70,000 individuals on 34,000 memberships.
With a history that spans almost seven decades, Peoplecare’s on-premises data system was inadequate to deliver timely insights on operations and member interactions. It needed to evolve to provide speed and scale to meet Peoplecare’s digital strategy.
The organisation handles a range of data types, including transactional data and third-party data sourced via relational databases, click streams, flat files and application programming interfaces. Its existing data systems had become overly complex and were unable to process data that was semi-structured, unstructured or event driven.
Peoplecare knew it had to move to a modern and flexible solution to ingest, transform and process its array of data sources. It needed more scalable services that could better support its changing data analytics requirements.
CMD Solutions designed a solution that tapped AWS services to extract data from Peoplecare’s disparate sources and consolidate everything into a single data warehouse. Data is now ingested into Amazon S3, AWS Database Migration Service connects relational databases and continuously loads change data capture logs into S3. From there, required data is pulled and readied for loading into a data warehouse that is hosted on AWS.
Duplicate data types are removed in the curated schema before they are merged to provide a “single source of truth” analytics schema that generates insights focused on improving a member’s journey. It provides a holistic view that enables Peoplecare to better analyse its data and offer a higher level of personal service to its members.
By consolidating and structuring all its data into a single data warehouse, the health insurer now has a data infrastructure that is highly scalable and offers more functionality than a traditional on-premises solution can offer. It can process data more quickly, significantly improving how different types of data are analysed to deliver a better member experience for the fund’s loyal members.
Continue to Iterate to Extract More Value
More important, CMD Solutions helped Peoplecare tap automation and reusable patterns. This has allowed the health insurer to roll out additional data pipelines and make repeatable tweaks to existing ones, so decision-makers can access even more data and insights.
Peoplecare understands it can increase its agility and speed by adopting a cloud-native data solution. It also recognises that it can continue to gain more efficiencies by streamlining processes and creating repeatable patterns.
For organisations to do so, they need to adjust their operations and processes once they have moved to a cloud environment. This will help them augment what they get from it and drive more ROI.
CMD Solutions helps its customers achieve these goals with automation and repeatable patterns. It continues to evolve its own toolsets, providing templates and standards for its code modules and around AWS services.
Such tools comprise solutions for verticals established around CMD Solutions' core practices, including data analytics, migration and application modernisation. They are automated through AWS services and CMD Solutions' own RunCMD templates and Terraform modules. For instance, its AWS Data Lake pattern is simple, low cost and extensible into traditional data uses, such as machine learning and internal reporting tools.
With technology changing rapidly, cloud enables organisations to transform their operations and gain more agility and speed to innovate. They can continue to gain efficiencies by reducing processes and establishing repeatable patterns and templates.
