A Successful Cloud Data Warehouse Project – Part 2
In part 1 of implementing a successful cloud data warehouse we looked at:
- evaluating your organisation’s appetite for change
- aligning data warehouse needs with strategic business goals, and
- determining the project scope.
In part 2, we will explore the importance of future proofing your project and developing the security and data protocols to manage compliance and mitigate risk.
Future Proof your cloud data project
It is important that you build a cloud data warehouse that can grow with your business and will be able to withstand new use cases. Business requirements (as well as the environment in which you operate) are constantly evolving and your cloud data warehouse needs to keep up with the pace of change.
A future-ready cloud data warehouse requires leading-edge technology. As such, you want to make sure that the provider you choose offers the following:
Scalability – one thing that is certain about the future is that data volumes are going to increase. You need to choose a cloud data warehouse that can easily, and affordably scale to meet growing demands and that can support future data analytic workloads.
Cloud-first – There is no argument, cloud offers greater agility for your business. It allows for constant development without disruptive or expensive upgrades. With a cloud data warehouse you can effectively meet quickly changing business requirements and technology challenges.
Low maintenance – you want to select a cloud data warehouse that has little to no maintenance. Choose a provider that is going to manage ongoing maintenance, management, upgrades and tuning on your behalf.
Additionally, aside from the technology, your data architecture and infrastructure need to be built with tomorrow’s speed and flexibility in mind. Apply agile thinking, and consider how your company may want to use data and analytics in the coming years. Lastly, consider building an architecture that can cater to future AI, machine learning workloads and predictive analytics – variables to help you stay competitive.
How can you keep up with the constant evolution of technology?
Select the right cloud data warehouse from the outset and be considerate of future use cases. In doing so, you increase the likelihood of your business successfully managing the (rapid) delivery of new capabilities when required.
Develop security and data protocols and mitigate regulatory risk
Your data governance strategy is an important aspect of your cloud data warehouse project. It should regulate, processes, roles, standards, and metrics to ensure the effective and safe use of business information.
Data governance
Apply a level of governance that is suitable for your industry by taking a “needs-based” approach to data security. When dealing with select datasets, you can determine the level of regulation required based on the type of data. This will ensure that data remains valuable and usable across the enterprise.
Security and privacy
With the ever-present threat of data breaches, having role-based access controls is important to stakeholders, shareholders, and customers alike. Moreover, it is important you know, where your data is stored, who can update it, access it, and for what purpose. Having these controls in place will empower people to perform better at their job. Also, it will stop people from creating copies of data, which can lead to data hygiene issues down the line. Security and privacy need to be a priority from the outset, regardless of the data warehouse solution you choose.
Data integrity & data quality
When it comes to extracting, transforming, and loading data in to your cloud data warehouse, enforce high-standards. A robust data governance strategy should outline a consistent process for collecting data. Also, it will make it easier for you to ensure that compliance and regulatory risk is being managed.
In conclusion, implementing or transitioning to a modern cloud data warehouse requires clever planning to ensure project success. If you are in the process and need help, contact us at Minerva Partners. We work with leading cloud data warehouse provider, Snowflake.
Minerva Partners focus on accelerating business transformation. We help CFOs, CIOs, and transformation specialists to improve their data management, budgeting, forecasting, and planning. With our help we give you back more time to focus on business growth and strategy.
