Table of Contents
- Summary
- Accelerating data growth
- Data silos and the problems they create
- The need for a foundational data layer and the emergence of the CDO
- A data-centric approach
- Key attributes of a data-centric approach
- Key takeaways
- About John Webster
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
Enterprise IT is well-aware of the connection between data storage and information. Yet fragmented data storage continues to hamper the delivery of information to business users. Enterprise IT still manages storage — and therefore information — in disparate silos. Data silos represent barriers to many of the new enterprise initiatives to establish IT as a service, delivery of applications to business users on mobile devices, and analytics applications that leverage all enterprise data — present and past. Reaching an understanding of data value and ownership is also hampered.
The connection between the creation of data silos and the information silos that result has yet to be made at the application level. Application developers and managers are well-aware of information silos but have tried to integrate them with middleware, adding additional expense and complexity to the application environment. Now there is an alternative to middleware that can be implemented at the data layer as opposed to the application layer. Implementing a contiguous, enterprise-wide data storage architecture can be used to break down the barriers and relieve applications of this burden. This data-centric approach is an emerging storage market category. Tarmin has been an early player here, promoting an approach it calls data-defined storage.
A data-centric approach to storage has implications for multiple levels of IT administration, from the CIO to applications managers and storage administrators. It can be used as a powerful tool by a newly emerging executive, the chief data officer (CDO), as well as IT administrators to implement an enterprise-wide data-management strategy based on an understanding of the true value of data, the consistent application of data governance policy, and the ability to leverage all enterprise data for analytics applications. Implement a data-centric approach to:
- Understand the true value of data
- Achieve storage management sustainability in an accelerating data-growth environment
- Consistently enforce data-governance policies and processes
- Search and retrieve data on an enterprise-wide basis
- Harness all enterprise unstructured data for big data analytics
- Position the enterprise to respond quickly to new business opportunities