The cloud has been around for over 10 years, transforming our lives with its exponential innovation. Despite this, organizations still struggle with cloud operations and migration, with 1 in 3 migrations failing to deliver any tangible value. This is partly due to the lack of a clear definition of when an organization is "in the cloud," as well as the complexity of data management across multiple clouds. However, companies that successfully migrate and adopt cloud technology are evolving to abstract infrastructure burdens and leveraging managed services to optimize their use of cloud resources. Ultimately, a new approach to the data layer is needed to simplify and accelerate digital transformation.