Digitally Curious

CHAPTER 8CLOUD COMPUTING

In 2018, when I started mentioning the concept of becoming digitally curious, I used the example of a typical board meeting where a cloud migration project costing $10M was being considered. I mused that digitally curious board members would ask questions such as:

• Where is the data being stored?
• Who is the provider?
• What is their disaster recovery strategy?
• What type of encryption is used?
• What level of access will we have to the servers?

A less digitally curious board might just look at the price tag and say: “That looks about right.” One of the reasons that I wrote this book was to ensure that people making large technology decisions are better informed about what they are being asked to approve. I want them to have a raised level of understanding about technology, or at the very least, the hunger to be more curious and ask better questions.

I currently sit on the Board of a Charity in London. In Australia, I was a member of three different boards, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the Rotary Club of Sydney. Due to my experience, I was (and still am) the most technically skilled person on these boards, but it troubled me that everyone left the technical analysis of proposals to me. My view is that you need two or more digitally curious members on any board to demystify new technologies.

What is Cloud Computing and What Does it Mean for My Business?

I don’t blame less digitally curious boards for focusing on the price tag of course. ...