Tick this off your pre-holiday list ✅ 😎 | Cloud Core.

You know that wonderful pre-holiday feeling? The one where you’ve ticked off everything on your to-do list and can properly switch off? 

Well, this issue of Cloud Core is designed to help you get that feeling. Even though we’ll start by talking about compliance 🙈. 

The EU AI Act became legally binding last August, with deadlines rolling through summer 2026. And there are immediate actions you need to take to ensure compliance. 

We’re supporting lots of organisations with EU AI Act compliance. Use these lessons to get key elements in place before you switch off, so you can head into your holidays knowing this major task is under control. 

✅ EU AI Act compliance: Pre-holiday checklist 

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 You need a central team 

Create a central team with visibility of the organisation’s AI systems, their usage and purpose, where they run and the information they use. 

📋 Start with an AI inventory 

Document current and planned AI initiatives, along with the data the AI systems are using. 

🔒 Nip data leaks in the bud now 

Make sure no one in the organisation is using personal data or confidential corporate information in public AI solutions (like ChatGPT). 

🎓 Plan AI training 

The AI Act requires a level of AI literacy within the organisation. Plan training to improve awareness around responsible AI use and to ensure data confidentiality. 

Then, you can start classifying when you get back 

The first 4 steps lay the foundation and mitigate immediate compliance risks. Now the fun begins. 

The AI Act requires you to classify AI systems based on risk level (unacceptable risk, high risk, limited risk, minimal risk). The risk level determines what compliance measures you need to take. 

Without an AI strategy, it’s hard to build a compliance roadmap 

There’s a big list of compliance requirements for high-risk AI systems in particular. And you need to be able to showcase how you performed the classification process. But it’s hard to do that if you don’t have an appropriate AI strategy and AI governance model. 

Most organisations need to codify these foundational elements as part of their AI Act compliance process. Get those right, and the rest of the compliance roadmap becomes much easier. 

👉 This article has more EU AI Act compliance advice 

🎉 As a Cloud Core reader, you get a free EU AI Act compliance workshop. Contact me to arrange. 

🤖 Agent(ic) provocateurs.

Automotive, healthcare, telecoms – agentic AI is a hot topic in nearly all customer discussions right now. Ovora – our AI-powered platform that automates IT operations by using intelligent, specialised agents – is playing a major role in our cloud approach. 

Agentic AI is an emerging space with lots of appetite to move beyond fluff and slides. Here are some recent developments:

From infra to middleware

Agents are expanding from infra/cloud into middleware and databases. We’re seeing lots of interest in using agentic to reduce manual toil and improve incident resolution times at that layer.

Security + agentic

We can run agentic solutions to meet any environment security requirements. We’ve been collaborating with RedHat to run Ovora on secure clients in Europe and the US.

Structured workshops

Nordcloud advisers are running agentic workshops with customers, including on the development of new agents.

📰  What we’ve been talking about this month 

🌍 An introduction to AWS European Sovereign Cloud 

🎥 Have you seen the Prompt Theory video? 

🤖 Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the next phase of AI 

🔐 Quantum computers will soon be able to break encryption? 

🗓️ Some dates for your diary 

Events 

• 8 July – AWS Summit Recap, Munich. Register here. 

Cloud training 

• 12-14 Aug – Architecting on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 19-21 Aug – Cloud Operations on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 21 Aug – AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Virtual). Register here. 

• 26-28 Aug – Security Engineering on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 2-4 Sept – Advanced Architecting on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 8 Sept – AWS Technical Essentials (Virtual). Register here. 

• 15 Sept – AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (Virtual). Register here. 

• 16-18 Sept – Machine Learning Ops Engineering on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 16-18 Sept – Architecting on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 18 Sept – Google Cloud Fundamentals: Core Infrastructure (Virtual). Register here. 

• 22-24 Sept – Developing on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 30 Sept - 2 Oct – Cloud Operations on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 1-3 Oct – Advanced Architecting on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 7-9 Oct– Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (Virtual). Register here. 

• 7-9 Oct – Security Engineering on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 14-16 Oct – DevOps Engineering on AWS (Virtual). Register here. 

• 21-22 Oct – FinOps Certified Practitioner (Virtual). Register here. 

🎧 Something to listen to in the home office 

Here’s a happy summer holiday playlist to get you ready for sunny vistas and beachfront breezes. It will get you in the mood as you tick off those remaining to-do's. 

See you next time! 

 

PS – Did you miss the last newsletter? We looked at some fant-AI-stic examples of AI use. Before that, we analysed Elvis Presley’s ability to predict platform engineering.