Regardless of the size and type of your business, ensuring you have a reliable and secure data management underpinning all the essential processes is a crucial requirement today. However, it could be more challenging than you think to get all the process of managing and measuring data right.
While most businesses secretly desire for data-driven operations only, this ambition is usually lost when the strategies are planned and implied. As a result, the data management usually gets driven and fragmented by multiple stakeholders.
Thus, the first step is to identify the real definition of data management to realize the number of challenges a business can face maintaining it.
The Real Essence of Data Management
Data is undoubtedly the most critical asset for any business. But when it comes to data management, it does not only cover the data-driven insights. It is about a group of activities associated with development, planning, strategizing, implementation, and administration of systems for the security, acquisition, retrieval, storage, archiving, dissemination, and disposal of data.
Generally, such systems are digitally operated, but the term also covers the manual, paper-based systems too.
It's now easier to see why business operations and core functions are totally dependent on their data. Imagine a day at work without having access to the most important data systems such as ERP systems, email, or CRM.
For every business to operate successfully, it is crucial to understand the nature of data specific to each organization: where it is generated, how it is stored and managed, and what are the retrieval plans in case of theft, disaster, or loss.
Identifying Data Management Risks and Its Potential Solutions
To further add into the complexity, data needs to be managed in accordance with the local law as well as specific business goals. This is where a good data management strategy steps in.
It has become crucial for businesses to identify data management risks to be able to de-risk the system with the best possible solutions. Indeed, NetApp training plays a vital role.
Excessive Data
According to research, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created on a daily basis. This makes it difficult for the organizations to manage, aggregate, store, and make value out of data. The sheer volume is created and gathered through multiple channels, which leaves organizations with no choice but to plan and implement good data management strategy.
Providing individuals within the organization with NetApp Training and Certification provides them industry recognition for their amazing expertise and knowledge with content delivery and content storage technologies.
Trained individuals can take care of crucial data such as return on investments, support costs, operating costs, mission-critical skills, and superior technical and support-related information.
Lack of Flexibility
Individuals responsible for storing data have always been keen about keeping their procurement and management options open. This helps them to keep up with their agility level without increasing the cost. However, the cloud tends to lock-in limits flexibility.
In case you have always relied on multi-cloud options - whether for features or cost - this may not be possible as certain applications and data may not work across the cloud boundaries.
Moreover, creating the perfect compatibility between on-premise data centers and the cloud isn't the option either. Different storage environment uses different tools, APIs, and protocols for data management. Most applications and data you run on-premise data centers may not be directly accessed from the cloud and vice versa.
The obvious lack of flexibility can have major implications. You are not able to move data from different cloud platforms, neither you are able to manage it from cloud to on-premise data centers. This makes it quite challenging for an organization to view all of the data at a single platform and with a single access.
Trained team members can decide about keeping non-interchangeable data on different platforms to avoid this problem. They will ensure that all the applications and data systems available on the cloud are able to work in isolation without creating any link-back to on-premise data.
Data Management Complexity
Management complexity is another trouble associated with cloud storage. The complexity here refers to the variety of separate storage environments or devices that an organization must manage to keep everything on the cloud secure and under control.
Multiple environments mean less efficiency for asset management and more work. Naturally, it also indicates towards more risk. Lack of management efficiency increases the likelihood of both data breach and data loss.
A well-equipped team with the required NetApp training can help run rigorous management and treat all storage environments and public cloud as a separate entity. A single cloud will be used to manage and maintain hundreds of different storage environments.
Align Investment and Resources
Trained individuals ensure that the organization gets a clear view of all the data and information present in the system. You can transform, customize, and cleanse the data as per your organization's demands. This calls for bringing IT and business users together for better efficiency.
Experts also document important policies and defined practices for data management to make sure they are relevant and repeatable across the organization.
Data Management in the Cloud
The way data is organized today is evolving. Businesses are learning the importance of building a secure and strong data foundation to confidently operate the business without losing its value.
When an organization puts up its data that's separate from its own infrastructure (like a public cloud), it opens up a new level of security and data management concerns. While an organization may not be able to change the data protection principles, it can work on building a cohesive business strategy that has a positive impact on both data management and data security.
With professionals of NetApp, it is possible to discover a solid data management solution, which can guard your data and its management strategy from any unforeseen failure.
A business success lies with its data and how efficiently it is able to access and protect it. Without a well-constructed and robust data management strategy, you can put your most important business asset at risk.