While the notion of “data currency” and a "data economy" dominates technology trends and headlines, the prevailing question is one of value: what is data worth? As enterprises look to monetize the data they produce and consume, it is clear that information has emerged as a valuable corporate asset.
Like any form of currency, data is exchanged, measured and invested. When it is invested soundly, data can drive profitable returns and business transformation. When managed haphazardly, data loses its value immediately. For this reason, harnessing data and translating it into meaningful insights in real-time is key to businesses moving faster and ahead of the competition. Paramount to mobilizing information is a cloud infrastructure that not only stores but wholly supports an enterprise’s initiatives.
Enterprises can play three principal roles in the data economy:
Producing Data
From healthcare to financial services to the public sector, organizations collect massive troves of data over the course of doing business. Top-performing enterprises understand the value of new sources of data and the importance of making sure data has a home.
Managing Data
Enterprises should consider these factors in relation to their cloud provider to get the most value out of their data:
1. Power – Sophisticated data analytics require a powerful network, and an analytics solution is only as powerful as the network it runs on.
2. Accessibility – Data should be stored and processed in one place; moving data from separate locations into a central location for analysis slows down the process.
3. Flexibility – Performance should be configurable for each customer and cloud providers must be able to quickly scale or alter service levels.
4. Reliability – Timeliness is key when analyzing data, so it's important to know your cloud provider has measures in place to avoid service disruptions and provide reliable service.
Consuming Data
When managed effectively, stored securely and aptly analyzed, data currency value:
- Enables companies to listen and anticipate future needs
- Removes obstacles and accelerates innovation
- Facilitates understanding of enterprise and industry trends
- Helps reshape business development and solutions
- Drives business to create valuable products and services
The emerging data economy brings the interdependency of cloud on network and security sharply into focus. Valuable data is giving way to analytics-driven enterprises, but harnessing that data on a powerful and secure platform is critical to allowing it to reach its full potential.
