It’s been more than a decade since we first heard the phrase “data is the new oil.” But while this idea may well define the next generation of business, there’s important context surrounding it that often gets overlooked.
Since making this statement, many others have echoed these same words. What we now have come to realise is that data is a commodity, a raw material, and it’s only valuable when it can be turned into intelligence. Without the right tools to refine it, it’s just a bunch of ones and zeros. Study after study shows that while most enterprises understand the importance of data, they continue to struggle to draw real value from it, says Matt Mills, CEO and Board Member at MapR Technologies.
Amongst the most powerful and largest tech titans in the world, the idea of data turned into intelligence is gospel. It’s why companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft dominate the charts these days. They not only know the value of data, but also how to transform it from raw insight into a competitive advantage.
Unlike these companies, many organisations today are using 30-year old technologies to “refine” their data and are frustrated with the little progress they are making. The simple fact is that older technologies are often too fragile and simply aren’t built for the diversity or the sheer volume of data today. The fact of the matter is this is just the beginning. Many believe that from now on, data and the digital universe will double in size every two years.
Successful data-driven companies in the early stages of their digital transformation journeys are choosing a modern data platform that is both optimised for performance today and provides the speed, scale and reliability that are required for next-generation intelligent solutions.
The modern data platform has 10 key characteristics:
- A single platform that performs analytics and applications at once
- Manages all data from big to small, structured and unstructured, tables, streams, or files – all data types from any source
- A database that runs rich data-intensive applications and in-place analytics
- Global cloud data fabric that brings together all data from across every cloud to ingest, store, manage, process, apply, and analyse data as it happens
- Diverse compute engines to take advantage of analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence
- Delivers cloud economics by operating on any and every cloud of your choice, public or private
- No lock-in, supporting open APIs
- DataOps ready to champion the new process to create and deploy new, intelligent modern applications, products and services
- Trusted with security built from the ground up
- Streaming and edge first for all data-in-motion from any data source as data happens and enabling microservices natively
Many software products today can handle some aspects of modern day data platforms, but few if any can actually deliver on all of these requirements. This is where most companies get into trouble. They try to extend the software to do things it was never intended to do. These limitations are a key reason why many companies never reach their goals and objectives with data.
Here at MapR we have built the premier data platform for today — and tomorrow’s — leading enterprises. The MapR Converged Data Platform is the only data platform that supports the requirements of a global enterprise, all data, one platform, across every cloud! We work and partner with leading-edge companies for the tools and additional capabilities that enhance our platform. We are a true data platform for enterprises that want to “win with data.”
2018 is poised to be the biggest year for data yet – make sure your end-of-year wish list includes a modern data platform that gets you real business value from your data.
The author of this blog is Matt Mills, CEO and Board Member at MapR Technologies
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