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The COVID-19 pandemic and the business challenges it caused were a catalyst for many companies to accelerate their migration to the cloud, and that trend is not likely to change anytime soon.

Amazon Web Services Inc. is betting on companies growing interest in building resilience and agility in the cloud beyond pandemic times, according to Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec (pictured), vice president of AWS Storage.

Were going to continue to see that rapid migrationto the cloud, because companies now knowthat in the course of days and months the whole world of your expectationsof where your business is going and where,what your customers are going to do, that can change, she said. And that can change not just for a year,but maybe longer than that.Thats the new normal.

Bukovec spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Medias livestreaming studio, during theAWS Storage Day event.They discussed how cloud is the new reality for enterprises, how AWS storage fits into the data fabric debate, and what AWS thinks about its storage strategy and about business going hybrid.(* Disclosure below.)

While the cloud is seen as the new normal for businesses, the paths enterprises use to get there remain diverse. AWS customers typically fall into one of three patterns, the fastest being where they choose to move their core business mission to the cloud because they can no longer scale on-premises, according to Bukovec.

Its not technology that stops peoplefrom moving to the cloud as quick as they want to; its culture, its people, its processes,its how businesses work, she explained. And when you move the crown jewels into the cloud,you are accelerating that cultural change.

Other companies follow what Bukovec sees as the slower path, which is to take a few applications across the organization and move them to the cloud as a reference implementation. In this model of cloud pilots, the goal is to try to get the people who have done thisto generalize the learning across the company.

Its actually counterproductive to a lot of companiesthat want to move quickly to the cloud, Bukovec said.

The third pattern is what AWS calls new applications or cloud-first, when a company decides that all new technology initiatives will be in the cloud. That allows the business to be able to see cloud ideas and technology in different parts of its structure, generating a decentralized learning process with a faster culture change than in the previous pattern.

While cloud storage is centralized, it fully fits into the emerging trend known as data mesh, according to Bukovec. As first defined by Zhamak Dehghani, a ThoughtWorks consultant,a data meshis a type of data decentralized architecture that embraces the ubiquity of data in the enterprise by leveraging a domain-oriented, self-serve design.

Data mesh presupposes separating the data storageand the characteristics of datafrom the data services that interactand operate on that storage, Bukovec explained. The idea is to ensure that the decentralized business model can work with this data and innovate faster.

Our AWS customers are putting their storagein a centralized place because its easier to track,its easier to view compliance, and its easier to predict growth and control costs, but we started with building blocksand we deliberately built our storage servicesseparate from our data services, Bukovec said. We have a number of these data servicesthat our customers are using to buildthat customized data meshon top of that centralized storage.

Heres the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLEs and theCUBEs coverage of the AWS Storage Day event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Storage Day. Neither AWS, the sponsor of theCUBEs event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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TheCUBEis part of re:Invent, you know,you guys really are a part of the eventand we really appreciate your coming hereand I know people appreciate thecontent you create as well Andy Jassy

We really want to hear from you, and were looking forward to seeing you at the event and in theCUBE Club.

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Cloud is the 'new normal' as businesses boost resiliency and agility beyond COVID - SiliconANGLE News