(US and Canada) France Grenot, Director, IT Data Enterprise & Customer & Commercial, Southwest Airlines, speaks with Ravi Shankar, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer, Denodo, about the airlines’ cloud strategy and ways to reduce business disruptions during technological changes.

The airline’s cloud strategy began before the pandemic. The team continued investing in the cloud journey — which is now well advanced —  but the pandemic is what accelerated it. 

Grenot says the strategy has always been to “move what makes sense first” and affirms that the organization’s approach is definitively multi-cloud. In-house, however, the effort is to balance the AWS cloud with the company’s data center and build a good AWS cloud platform that is easier for developers to use when entering and retrieving data. 

Asked if there is a more strategic method in modern data architecture to enable or minimize business disruption, she replies that it is a continuous pursuit.

Grenot explains that while IT teams collaborate with the business side to minimize impact, they are still unable to take a no-impact approach. In her view, the ideal way to reduce the effect is to collaborate with the business teams and make decisions together actively.

She explains that embracing technology changes quickly while still serving the business community with minimal disruption requires taking care of customers and being aware of their needs while considering and implementing new technologies.  Organizations must bring their customers along in the transformation journey, Grenot states.