Customer renewal rates are dropping, and your CEO is on the warpath. You need to find out why and fast. At most large companies, that is a pretty tall task. Information about customers is likely scattered across an assortment of applications and devices ranging from your customer relationship management system to logs from customer-facing applications, […]
Building a Common Data Language: How a Semantic Layer Drives Collaboration and Trust
The self-service analytics revolution was intended to free business users from IT chains. The idea was to break the IT bottleneck by allowing businesses to create their own data products. After all, businesses understand their respective domains better than anyone in IT could, and decentralizing the work of creating data products should theoretically increase the […]
How Changes to Cloud Egress Fees May – or May Not – Help You Save Money
For years, cloud egress fees – the costs incurred when data moves out of a cloud environment – were like death and taxes. They were unavoidable for any organization that used the cloud. But that has changed over the past few months as major cloud providers Google, Amazon and Microsoft have announced the discontinuation of […]
Data Retention Policies Must Evolve to Address Emerging Technologies and Data Growth
The emergence of new technologies, including AI, IoT, and blockchain, in addition to the widespread embrace of digital transformation, has driven a dramatic increase in data. The reliance on data analytics to drive data-driven decision-making also requires large volumes of data for meaningful insights. While AI and generative AI (GenAI) tools and systems contribute to […]
Mitigating Risks and Ensuring Data Integrity Through Legacy Modernization
Legacy systems are the backbone of many businesses, especially those in the industry for decades. These systems ensure a stable and reliable platform for conducting smooth business operations. However, decade-old legacy systems can also pose risks and challenges to data integrity that can affect an organization’s overall growth and success. In response to these challenges, […]
AI Has the Potential to Bring Cloud Sprawl Back Under Control
Enterprises continue to produce an explosive volume of data each year, so much so that companies admit up to 60% of their data goes unused, and one-third of enterprises report feeling overwhelmed with rising data quantities. Cloud-based data storage solutions have made it easier than ever to store this vast amount of data, and for companies who […]
How Not to Put Data Governance into Practice: Four Common Mistakes
There’s a fair amount of high-level advice on the internet about implementing data governance, which means the practices an organization uses to ensure its data is available, usable, complete, and secure. But what you won’t find, at least not in abundance, is guidance about what not to do when establishing a data governance practice. That’s unfortunate, because […]
Enterprise Data World 2024 Takeaways: Trending Topics in Data Management
I was privileged to deliver a workshop at Enterprise Data World 2024. Publishing this review is a way to express my gratitude to the fantastic team at DATAVERSITY and Tony Shaw personally for organizing this prestigious live event. Participating in such events has multiple advantages, including becoming familiar with trending topics in the data management […]
Enhancing Cloud Security in Response to Growing Digital Threats
Organizations increasingly rely on cloud services to improve operations and promote innovation. This spike in use has increased cyberattacks targeting cloud settings, emphasizing the necessity for strong cloud security. Recent incidents demonstrate the issue’s severity. In April, AT&T announced that a data breach impacted 51 million customers after a hacking forum exposed their personal information. Home Depot […]
Mind the Gap: Analytics Architecture Stuck in the 1990s
Welcome to the latest edition of Mind the Gap, a monthly column exploring practical approaches for improving data understanding and data utilization (and whatever else seems interesting enough to share). Last month, we explored the data chasm. This month, we’ll look at analytics architecture. From day one, data warehouses and their offspring – data marts, operational […]