Prioritizing a Modern Data Strategy over a Cloud Strategy

By CIOReview | Thursday, June 21, 2018

The seismic shift in the arena of technology is evident. Businesses have realized how harboring their applications and data in the cloud is economical. As a part of cloud-embrace, business leaders invest significant time and efforts in devising cloud-strategy. However, delving deeper into the benefits of cloud-migration is another futile activity for numerous reasons. Instead of building cloud-infrastructure, many businesses rely on Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM and other major players for cloud-migration. These services not only save enterprises from undertaking tedious task of building cloud infrastructure but also enable them to be market ready. Considering the benefits of harnessing the cloud services offered by these giants, prudence lies in focusing on the key to every business decision-data.

For today’s enterprise, data is essential for numerous tasks. From formulating business strategies to determining customer intent, organizations harness the power of data and analytics. Though data is available in numerous forms and from various sources, managing and securing it are herculean tasks. If the company operates in financial or healthcare domain, data management morphs into an intricate task, as the business is required to follow a gamut of data related to federal regulations. An enterprise should create internal policies for avoiding nightmares like Trojan Horse. Again, if the business is planning to manage its data on a cloud-based platform, there are more intricacies to tackle.

A simple review of company’s data posture can easily highlight complex questions to be solved. The need of the hour is developing a data strategy that will solve all of the questions and include solutions to address present and future business needs. IT leaders can create a checklist as a part of data strategy and include questions related to security, deployment, ownership, and management of data. As a cloud-service user, the business should seek clear answers from the cloud-providers about the data management and fortify data-posture. A well-thought strategy will help businesses to safeguard the key asset—data.