Data Management: The Secret to Data-Driven Business Success

An enterprise's data management strategy encompasses far more than just data backup and recovery. A modern data management strategy defines a corporation's commitment to digital transformation (DX), which drives successful business by supporting automation, resiliency and cloud.

"Digital transformation is quickly becoming the largest driver of new technology investments and projects among businesses," says Craig Simpson, Research Manager, IDC. "It is already clear from our research that the businesses which have invested heavily in DX over the last 2-3 years are already reaping the rewards in terms of faster revenue growth and stronger net profits compared to businesses lagging in DX initiatives and investments."

However, investing in DX technologies without ensuring you've put a modern data management strategy in place can be costly.

Develop a strong strategy and do DX right 

"When the digital transformation is done right, it's like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar."

- George Westerman, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Sloan Initiative on the Digital Economy

It's forecasted that, by 2022, 70 percent of organizations will have a formal cloud strategy in place. That means most companies currently have a cloud mandate but not necessarily a plan concerning how to achieve the directive. 

However, once cloud strategies are appropriately planned and suitably executed, the cloud offers so many more advantages beyond simple storage. By leveraging the cloud as the vehicle for improved digital transformation, a company then has numerous value-add products, tools and services to work with said data. Also, the cloud presents massive opportunities for businesses to be agile and innovative, and to scale up and down as necessary.

The goals of digital transformation don't need to be colossal and earth-shaking. A straightforward place to start your cloud journey is to simply back up your data to the cloud. Once a copy of your data is in the cloud, you can test the impact of cloud economics on your application but more importantly, you can reimagine how dev/ops, DR, application refactoring, etc. can benefit from a mobile, agile and easily scalable architecture.

Additionally, public cloud IaaS workloads suffer at least 60 percent fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centers. And with data growing exponentially, cloud data management is a necessary economic reality for most businesses.

A data management strategy drives business success

Proper use of the cloud and cloud data management can decrease in-house infrastructure and software licensing expenses, and increase IT personnel ROI — it can also mean fewer operational inefficiencies and more data resilience by combatting:

• Data silos.
• Tool sprawl.
• Data vulnerability.
• Data storage limitations.
• Ineffective resource allocation.
• Backup RPOs and RTOs that do not meet current business SLAs.

There are three key enablers to the success of data-driven businesses — cloud, automation and data resiliency. Each pillar addresses a specific challenge that companies face as well as a prospect for growth, operational efficiency and innovation. The great news is that a modern data management solution strengthens all three pillars.

By modernizing your data protection and data management, you are jump-starting, supporting and fortifying the modernization of all aspects of your organization with one decision. To learn more about how data management supports the three enablers to the success of data-driven business, download the eBook, Moving to the Cloud Takes More Than the Right Data Management Solution.