By Romi Mahajan, CCO TimeXtender and Chaitanya Avasarala, Channels Lead, India, Qlik
Data has become the lifeblood of modern organizations, a fact that is indisputable. Different economic eras have foregrounded different commodities of choice—this age is the age of data.
This assertion has become axiomatic as organizations seek to press on and grow in times of turbulence and uncertainty. Innovation and growth are antidotes to the risk inherent in a fast moving global marketplace in which consumer and business needs change constantly. Technology leads both the innovation and growth but also the business and consumer pivots that define “modernity” in business today.
All of these forces converge on data. With timely, contextual, comprehensive, and well-presented data, business-users can make decisions- micro and macro- that are informed and connected. These decisions, made minute-by-minute, are the motive force that propels both business sustainability and innovation.
Unfortunately too few people in the organization are truly able to discover and utilize the data they need; put differently, data is often sequestered to “experts” who effectively become a bottleneck to agility in the organization.
While democratized data liberates the organization’s people to use their abundant energies to progress and invent, data kept “in a box” is like a diamond stored in a locker with a forgotten combination. The former creates agility, the latter retards agility.
Today’s Data Infrastructure, conceived of and architected in a less data-driven era, does not fully support this agility because it pits the “needs of now” that define the business-user against the backlog and “needs of governance” that define IT and Operations. Structural issues prevent agility, not simply cultural issues.
As organizations get more “Data Mature,” this schism disappears. When Business and IT are in harmony, organizations move forward. This harmony comes about by the simultaneous democratization of access to corporate data and liberation of IT from the constant changes demanded by the business.
Most organizations understand the need to marry the best parts of both- to create agility while respecting governance but few have found the solution to the conundrum. The good news is that for the first time, the right technologies and platforms exist.
The genie is out of the bottle. The world of data will never be the safe. Governed, Agile, and Automated Data Infrastructure with power tools for the business users is the wave of the future. The catch is that the future is here already.
