Its hard to predict the future, but when it comes to data it’s a bit more feasible. That is, if every organization could extract maximum value from its data. We are not there yet, but every year the business use of data evolves considerably. Where will the focus be in 2023? Three Databricks experts look ahead.
Data management is simplified and centralized
“In conversations with other CIOs, I’ve noticed that companies grow exponentially without a plan to organize their data. When a company focuses on scaling at all costs, but doesn’t invest in the right technology to support that growth, it will eventually run into trouble,” said Naveen Zutshi, CIO at Databricks.
Part of the problem he points out is that CIOs today have too many systems to manage. Too much disjointed data storage leads to duplicate, siled data that is not only time-consuming and expensive to manage and analyze, but also comes with security issues. For a company to really make progress with digital transformation, data storage, data management and all workloads must be centralized.
Zutshi: “We will see more CIOs cut back on vendor spending to simplify their data architecture. Companies that implement an architecture that combines historical and predictable analytics to deliver efficient and intelligent solutions will ultimately be more competitive.”
Data security becomes chefsache
The need for the unification and simplification of data management will drive more enterprises towards a data lakehouse architecture, says Databricks CSO Fermín Serna. “Unifying silos provides tremendous business value for companies. However, it also requires organizations to evolve their teams and processes towards a centralized governance model to keep data and workloads secure.”
“In 2023, we will see an increase in secure sharing – the ability to share data internally and externally while access is controlled centrally and data is not duplicated,” continues Serna. Because of the value and importance of business data, it is often kept under lock and key. But this has also limited the speed of innovation. After all, it means that companies do not have the means to share data confidentially, both internally within the organization and externally with other organizations. Serna provides a solution to the increasing use of secure standards for data sharing based on open source code. “Open source standards provide a way for enterprises to securely share their data while maintaining a high degree of transparency.”
Multi-cloud plays a leading role
The rise of multi-cloud is actually no longer a prediction, but a fait accompli. Many companies are already multi-cloud – knowingly or unknowingly – and this will only increase. The challenge for data-driven organizations is how to unify the data across their clouds and services.
“As enterprises consolidate all of their data use cases, such as on a data lakehouse, they will tailor cloud vendor decisions to specific data work needs, including ease of use, performance, regulatory compliance, and unified management across cloud environments,” said David Meyer, SVP of Product Management at Databricks.