Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Gilead Sciences’ journey from migration to innovation on AWS (LFS202)

Summary

• Ian Myers introduced the session, highlighting AWS's investments in healthcare and life sciences, and the journey customers like Gilead Sciences take from cloud migration to innovation.
• AWS for Health is a program designed to help healthcare and life sciences organizations innovate and make data-driven decisions.
• AWS announced Amazon Omics for multi-omic data processing.
• AWS provides tools, data, and expertise to help customers in healthcare, biopharma, and genomics.
• The journey to the cloud involves migration, securing systems, unifying data, and innovating with AI and machine learning.
• AWS offers a modern data strategy with comprehensive cataloging and governance mechanisms.
• AWS's foundational services include Amazon S3, AWS Glue Data Catalog, AWS Lake Formation, and Amazon Athena.
• AWS focuses on security, durability, availability, simplicity, price performance, data connectivity, and data governance.
• Mark Burson, CIO of Gilead Sciences, shared their cloud journey, focusing on migration, security, and compliance.
• Gilead Sciences migrated 70% of their data center footprint to AWS in 20 months.
• Gilead chose AWS for its technical capabilities, partner ecosystem, and shared passion for disruptive transformation.
• Gilead's cloud journey enabled greater agility, operational resilience, and financial benefits.
• Murali Vrittachala discussed Gilead's data modernization using a data mesh approach.
• Gilead's data mesh implementation focused on domain ownership, data as a product, self-serve data infrastructure, and federated governance.
• Gilead adopted AWS services and non-AWS services like Colibra and Starburst for their data mesh.
• Data mesh adoption at Gilead is measured by metrics aligned with data mesh principles.
• Organizational model, domain ownership, cloud-native skills, and managing change are critical for data mesh adoption.
• AWS ProServe, ZS, and ThoughtWorks were partners in Gilead's data mesh implementation.
• Amazon Data Zone was announced to facilitate data mesh patterns on AWS.

Insights

• AWS for Health is a significant initiative by AWS to support the healthcare and life sciences sectors, indicating AWS's commitment to these industries.
• The announcement of Amazon Omics shows AWS's focus on specialized services catering to specific industry needs, such as genomics research.
• Gilead Sciences' journey underscores the importance of cloud migration as a foundation for innovation, particularly in data-intensive industries like pharmaceuticals.
• The partnership between AWS and Gilead Sciences is strategic, with both parties sharing a vision for disruptive transformation, which is crucial for long-term success in cloud adoption.
• Gilead's adoption of a data mesh architecture represents a modern approach to data management, emphasizing decentralized ownership and governance, which can lead to increased agility and better data utilization.
• The use of AWS services, combined with third-party tools like Colibra and Starburst, demonstrates the flexibility of AWS's ecosystem to integrate with other technologies.
• The introduction of Amazon Data Zone suggests AWS's responsiveness to customer needs and its efforts to simplify the implementation of complex data architectures like data mesh.
• The session highlighted the importance of measuring the success of data mesh adoption through specific metrics, which can guide organizations in their data strategy.
• The emphasis on organizational model, domain ownership, and cloud-native skills as critical success factors for data mesh adoption provides valuable insights for other organizations considering a similar transformation.