One of the purposes of the cloud is to enable agility, easy access, centralisation and understanding of data. Yet in many enterprises data is still siloed – perhaps even more so than it was a decade ago when the journey to the public cloud began.

This has led to unintended consequences, including not having the necessary understanding to gain meaningful insights from data.

“If cloud is to deliver on the promise of agility, we need to appropriately address the structuring of data,” says Kyle Stanton, go-to-market executive: Intelligent Infrastructure, Dimension Data.

Stanton was speaking at the virtual ITWeb Cloud, Data Centre and DevOps Summit 2021 yesterday about managing data in the cloud and delivering insights to business. 

He said cloud provides infinite opportunities to enable business and solve problems at a level of scale that wasn't previously possible. “While most organisations have invasive technologies or data strategies to address this need, we still have significant challenges.”

The question, Stanton said, is how to extract value from existing data sources that might reside in legacy infrastructure, or be fragmented and siloed within the ecosystem and very hard to access.

Secondly, with the explosion of data and the adoption of new technologies and associated data production soaring, how do we sustainably extract value from our data going forward with the increasing complexity and scope?

“It all comes down to two things: data management architectures, and an agile, data-driven business culture.”

Businesses need to gain actionable insights to increase competitiveness, he added. "There are traditional analytics methods and metrics, but we need to understand and acknowledge the fact that these practices and methodologies are not enough on their own.

“Too often, I sit across the table from clients who are worried about the short term financial gain or enabling digital transformation with a technology purchase.”

Many organisations start to lean on more channels to drive demand in customer segments, and rely on data fabric analysis and storage of almost any amount of data from a multitude of siloed sources. This can include a number of traditional data management mechanisms, with customers and consumers to engage with the data through multiple channels.

We are now in an age where customers expect personalisation. Staying competitive means understanding your customer, providing excellent engagement experience, while becoming operationally efficient. This requires a shift from A to Z and an agile mindset, he explained. 

A digital world requires real-time, high speed access to data. 

“Be firm in your vision. Keep what is good. Understand your existing value. Don't destroy it because data management is more than just a technology perspective.”