Evolution of Data Management
In today's world, every company has to deal with data: from the smallest store in your neighborhood, run by a family, to the largest multinational company made up of millions of people. Data is everywhere, and in order for it to become a powerful tool, it must be managed properly. The discipline that deals with data management and administration is called Data Management and can be defined as a set of architectures that keep information organised, clean, usable, and secure. With proper management, you can avoid the operational burdens and costs of maintaining duplicate, erroneous, or unnecessary copies, and save a lot of time and storage. In addition, Data Management lays the foundations for its subsequent analysis, which is what will allow correct decisions to be made. Therefore, without good information management, insightful analysis would be impossible.
Here lies the challenge
The data management implementations used until now are less and less efficient and die shortly after being implemented because they become obsolete, outdated, or require too much effort to configure and maintain. Why? Due to the enormous amount of data that is produced, the technological infrastructures change more and more and the users' response times are very demanding.
The solution is Data Fabric
This new technology comes to give life to Data Management 3.0 in an efficient and lasting way, where all the data grows exponentially.
What is Data Fabric?
Data Fabric is the next evolution stage of the data management disciplines that we have had so far and, therefore, a great technological opportunity. Data Fabric is an architecture of a set of very specific technological services that is responsible for managing an organization's data comprehensively and in real-time, connecting all information silos and guaranteeing its quality, privacy, and availability for all users who need it, in a safe and comfortable environment. This platform provides technological training to users, which facilitates, simplifies, and unifies Data Management processes to make them much more efficient through resources and tools that generate value and profitability for companies.
Advantages of Data Fabric
We are still in the initial phase and much remains to be learned. But it is necessary to start deciding, unifying criteria, and defining the objectives of data management because its implementation brings great benefits:
Universal access to data in the company
Data Fabric enables the integration of virtually any type of data from any data source to any data destination, on-premises or in the cloud. That is, it is responsible for the virtualisation of information so that there is a single source of truth.
Data Integrity and Governance
Why do we want data if it is not good, clean and accessible? That is why data integrity and data governance are two essential elements of the Data Fabric. The platform offers the ability to find, consume, and exchange trusted data with simple and intuitive self-service tools to automate data processes, empower teams, and ensure data quality. In this way, the barriers between IT and the business are removed and everyone can access the data and use it in their daily work.
Metadata as power to activate the Data Fabric
It is critical that companies not only use data to generate valuable insights but also use metadata to improve their own data and consumption. This is a part that, until now, is not being explored much and must be valued. This is another of the features of the Data Fabric: the empowerment of this metadata.
Process automation through Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Data Fabric offers the ability to automate most areas of data management, such as data integration, data preparation, data quality, and master data management. These automations, powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, enable recommendations to resolve data quality issues, uncover hidden patterns, and detect anomalies using summary statistics and graphical representations.
Important technological structure: API integration
Trusted services and data can be shared between internal departments and external groups with easy-to-use APIs. Thus, there is a single, unified platform to develop and integrate these applications and data quality, helping to increase staff efficiency and deliver solutions faster.
Cost efficiency
When you can modularise the functionality, standardise and unify the processes and speak the same language, you can optimise the investment of resources and focused efforts. From this point of view, there is a great evolution, because the technical capacity is reduced and the effort is redirected to the integration of business areas that also need to start managing data and speaking the language of data.
Are there barriers to this new technology?
Despite the great advantages of Data Fabric, its implementation is not as easy as it seems. The challenge presents itself in the absence of data culture. Today, for companies to focus on data and to be able to implement and use these platforms in their daily activities, it is necessary to change the traditional business culture for a data culture. Organisations need to accept the change, adopt a new data-driven mentality and get out of their comfort zone, otherwise, it will be impossible to succeed. The next step is to continuously and persistently train employees in the world of data through tools that allow them to use it in their daily work, that is, to make them data-oriented employees. Data must become the new language of companies that want to make a difference.
Conclusion
Companies produce ever-increasing and unfathomable volumes of data that require more evolved and efficient architectures than those that existed until now. For this reason, Data Management takes a step forward with the Data Fabric that arises to respond to these needs. Data Fabric is a platform that allows universal access to all company data, breaks down the silos between departments by providing technical and commercial self-service, explores metadata, automates processes through the use of modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning/Automatic Learning, and integrates APIs in a single environment. All this to take advantage of the great value that data provides and, with it, make better decisions on the day to day bases. To make data matter.
How Keyrus can help
Keyrus is your trusted partner for building sustainable, high-performing data architectures. Using our extensive and deep expertise in designing and creating data repositories, we can partner with you and your business to ensure that you receive a platform capable of meeting your data demands and delivering unique value to your stakeholders, employees, and customers.
We leverage insights and knowledge extracted from raw data to discover patterns and relationships; then identify ways to improve your business in the areas you have chosen for review and analysis.
Keyrus is ready to help you design an actionable data strategy that will deliver your business objectives and drive commercial success. Contact us at sales@keyrus.co.za