Here’s a concise, technically sound description you can use when speaking as a Modeling CoE Lead to explain how AWS Cloud services can be aligned with data modeling and analytics demands, particularly to assess fitment for enterprise data and AI use cases:
AWS Cloud Services for Data Demands – Modeling CoE Perspective
1. Data Ingestion & Integration
AWS Glue / Glue Studio – For scalable ETL/ELT pipelines, schema discovery, and metadata cataloging. Ideal for modeling semi-structured and structured data sources.
Amazon Kinesis / MSK (Kafka) – For real-time streaming data ingestion and transformation.
AWS DataSync / Snowball – For bulk transfer and migration scenarios from on-prem to cloud.
2. Storage Fitment for Data Models
Amazon S3 – Foundation for data lakes and hierarchical modeling of raw/curated/consumed zones using object metadata tagging and partitioning.
Amazon Redshift – High-performance columnar data warehouse with support for dimensional modeling (star/snowflake schemas), materialized views, and ML integration.
Amazon Aurora / RDS (PostgreSQL, MySQL) – Transactional modeling for operational workloads and OLTP scenarios.
Amazon DynamoDB – NoSQL, key-value modeling suited for high-velocity, low-latency access patterns in modern apps.
3. Semantic & Business Modeling
AWS Lake Formation – Enables curated data lakes with row-/column-level access control and tagging, supporting semantic model design for data access.
Amazon Athena + Glue Data Catalog – Query engine on S3 with schema-on-read, enabling modeling on federated and raw data.
Amazon QuickSight – Visualization layer supporting SPICE in-memory engine, semantic models, ML insights, and embedded dashboards.
4. AI/ML Integration with Data Models
Amazon SageMaker – Integrates seamlessly with Redshift, S3, and feature stores for model training using structured data.
Amazon Bedrock – For GenAI workloads that require vector stores (e.g., Kendra, OpenSearch).
Amazon Redshift ML – Build and deploy ML models using familiar SQL constructs over modeled data.
5. Model Governance, Versioning & Cataloging
AWS Glue Data Catalog – Central metadata management across services, critical for traceability and lineage of data models.
AWS Config / Control Tower / CloudTrail – Support governance of data modeling artifacts, policies, and compliance auditing.
6. Data Modeling Maturity Enablement
dbt Cloud on AWS (via partners) – For declarative SQL-based transformation and modeling workflows.
Amazon EMR + Apache Iceberg / Delta Lake – For large-scale distributed modeling and lakehouse patterns.
Key Considerations We Evaluate for Fitment:
Data volume, variety, and velocity across domains
Normalization vs. denormalization strategy and impact on cost/performance
Modeling for analytics vs. modeling for applications
Interoperability with GenAI, MLOps, and DataOps pipelines
Governance and lineage requirements across lifecycle