The modern data platform drives data-centric organizations
IT leads the modern data platform, functioning as the conduit, efficiently delivering the correct data to the right users, to empower data-driven decision-making in organizations.
Over the last decade, IT vendors have been trying to develop and offer solutions to address the flood of data that companies manage. A modern data platform tries to solve this problem. It's a combination of interoperable, scalable and modular technologies, working together to deliver an enterprise's overall data needs.
The challenge is that data volumes, sources of data and complexity have increased exponentially while organizations drive toward a data-driven culture. Modern data is becoming dynamic and reusable. It flows across various applications and workflows and throughout an organization.
Data is used and reused by more information stakeholders than ever before. The data sources have expanded with 5G-driven data, IoT, e-commerce, geospatial data, social media, enterprise application data, as well as structured and unstructured data.
Information stakeholders continue to expand the use of data as tools like AI, which data scientists once only used, are now more readily available to marketing departments, sales organizations, end users and partners. Greater simplicity and the IT talent gap have paved the way for more "citizen data scientists." The demand for AI and machine learning outweighs the supply of data professionals, and applications have simplified their use in many cases.
The days of focusing on addressing a silo solution are moving away as IT buyers look for vendors that fit into an overall strategy, leveraging APIs and interoperability with other partners to fill in gaps.
These challenges and cultural shifts are having a profound effect on the role and skills needed from IT, requiring developers, DBAs and operators to be more data centric. They should focus less on silos and more on the overall goal of IT as a conduit -- to deliver the correct data to the right users as quickly and cleanly as possible, empowering them to act and drive business objectives.
This architecture design is Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)'s view of the modern data platform. IT vendors are scrambling to find their place in a modern data platform. The days of focusing on addressing a silo solution are moving away as IT buyers look for vendors that fit into an overall strategy, leveraging APIs and interoperability with other partners to fill in gaps. This is all while the number of decision-makers and influencers in a purchase has risen to as high as eight, based on ESG research. Appealing to every decision-maker is another challenge faced by today's vendors.
The process for how organizations collect, manage and analyze data.
