Digital transformation is a necessary step for virtually any business today. While most companies understand they need to make this transition, how to do so may be less clear. Thankfully, tools and services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) have made the process far easier.
AWS accounts for 41.5% of the public cloud market, making it by far the most popular service provider. Here are five ways to incorporate AWS into your digital transformation strategy.
1. Reduce IT Costs and Complexity
One of the most helpful ways to use AWS is to scale your digital investments with lower expenses. Digital transformation can be expensive, often incurring high prices from new technologies or increased IT staff needs. Services like AWS help mitigate these costs by taking care of much of the technical burden.
The most straightforward way to do this is to move some cloud processes to AWS instead of hosting them on-premise. Paying for space on AWS costs far less than constructing and running your own data centres, especially when you factor in management expenses.
Depending on your specific business strategies, you don’t have to move everything to AWS, and you may not want to. However, outsourcing some IT complexity like data centre management to Amazon can scale your digital infrastructure more efficiently.
2. Improve Cloud Security
Another leading concern with digital transformation is security. Moving everything to cloud environments comes with new cybersecurity challenges that you may not know how to handle. If that’s the case, you can use some of AWS’s security tools to reduce your vulnerability.
If you host any data or processes on AWS, you have several security features at your disposal. For example, you can use its automated cloud configuration to avoid misconfiguring your operations, which could produce significant vulnerabilities. Similarly, you can use its automated threat detection to look for cyber risks without overburdening IT staff.
Since AWS is so popular, several third-party AWS security tools exist, too. Their security scans can identify and prioritise risks in your AWS infrastructure, showing where to improve.
3. Manage Data for Analytics
The vast potential of data analytics is one of the strongest arguments for digital transformation. Amazon is famous for its extensive use of big data, so it should come as no surprise that AWS features many analytics tools. You can use these to help manage your information more effectively.
AWS has a tool called Athena that you can use to run analytics. One of the most important parts of Athena for companies beginning their digital transformation journey is its data cleaning features. The service will scan your information for errors and duplicates to ensure any resulting insights are accurate.
AWS also features several visibility tools to give you more insight into your data before feeding it into any other processes. If your company is embracing digital transformation for analytics, this is an ideal place to apply AWS.
4. Make Machine Learning More Accessible
The next step in data analytics is machine learning (ML), which AWS can also help with. Many ML tools, especially proprietary models, are complex and expensive. As a result, they’re often inaccessible for companies in the early stages of digital transformation, but AWS can change that.
If you have any workers with SQL skills, you can create ML models in Athena with little more than writing a query. The serverless, user-friendly interface makes it easy to create these otherwise complex algorithms. While they may not offer the same results as more advanced models, you can use them to gain ML experience.
Another option is to use AWS’s specific ML tools like Amazon Kinesis. These have a more limited scope but can apply ML to some data streams to help you capitalise on your digitisation.
5. Maintain Regulatory Compliance
As you go throughout your digital transformation journey, you’ll have to keep many regulations in mind. Laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) dictate how you can store and manage your information. Since fines can reach up to 20 million euros, staying compliant is essential.
As such, one of the most helpful ways to use AWS is to ensure regulatory compliance. AWS meets GDPR and similar regulations in other nations, so you can be sure your AWS-hosted data and processes are legal.
One specific AWS feature that can help compliance is its Availability Zones. These let you choose where you store data among Amazon’s many global data centres, providing more insight and control into your operations. As a result, you can comply with any storage location regulations more easily.
AWS Is an Excellent Digital Transformation Tool
Digital transformation can be complicated, but tools like AWS can smooth the process. These five options are just a sampling of how you can apply AWS to your digital transformation strategy. With features and possibilities like this, you can make this journey as efficiently and affordably as possible.