THE NEED FOR SPEED | 10
"The issue frequently starts at the top, with a C-suite that doesn't recognize the
value-creation potential in data governance. As a result, it becomes a set of policies
and guidance relegated to a support function executed by IT and not widely followed
— rendering the initiatives that data powers equally ineffective. In other cases,
organizations try to use technology to solve the problem."
Distributed hybrid and multi-cloud is creating new data integration challenges.
AI technology is driving the next level of data integration solutions.
Real-time data integration has become critical to support modern business requirements.
Customer demand is shifting to use-case-driven data integration solutions.
The answer? One of the first steps is to create a data governance council that includes senior
management which helps link the governance strategy with the needs of the business.
Data Indexing/Understanding
If data is to be viewed as an important organizational asset, the company needs to manage
and understand its data as it does other organizational assets. Organizations know who their
staff is, they know the number of buildings and equipment they possess and they know what
investments they possess. But few organizations know what data they have.
To use data properly and wisely, organizations need to inventory and index the data they have
and in what quality/quantity it is.
Data Integration
The ability to bring together the multitude of disparate sources of data today into one unified
enterprise view is becoming critical to businesses today.
"The most important reason for data integration, and one of the main reasons people
struggle with their data analysis initiatives, is because they don't properly integrate their
data," warns Ehtisham Zaidi, an analyst covering data management at Gartner.
Forrester research concurs. In its report, The Forrester Tech Tide: Enterprise Data Integration,
Q4, 2021, it reported that a modern data integration strategy was critical to support the new
generation of data and analytics requirements, including support for real-time customer 360,
data intelligence, and modern edge applications.
The report also found that:
Research has shown that poor data migration and integration invariably leads to unsuccessful
system and project implementations.
