Data Management

Proper Data Management includes all of the best practices needed to treat your data as a valuable business asset: from data governance, to data sharing, architecture, capture, integration, quality, intelligence, security – the list goes on; the purpose of data management is to improve your day-to day operations, ensure compliance with data regulations, provide access to anyone who needs accurate and timely data to perform their functions, and other tactical objectives.

Of far greater importance, however, is for an enterprise to be able to use its data asset for long-term strategic objectives, such as disrupting an industry, creating innovative competitive advantage, and extracting the utmost value of the data you already have. This latter goal is also called “monetizing” your data.

The greatest single obstacle organizations face to proper data management is the data silo: isolated, hard to access, giving only a small snapshot of what the organization does with a particular application. To have a complete view of the data asset a company has, it requires a unified platform that contains all of the data from all of the silos, analyze it, extract value, and use it “cohesitively” not just for short-term tactical projects but also for long-term strategic positioning.

A necessary first step is to load your data onto a data management platform. SMS recommends a product called Cohesity, which is available from SMS as a service, fully supported, on a subscription basis, with no capital expenditure, cloud-based, offering access anywhere, anytime, as well as disaster recovery capability.