Shakti Mohapatra, Data & Analytics lead at Coeus Consulting, shares his advice on how to get the most from Data using the cloud.
What are the first steps an organisation should take when embarking on using cloud to help them understand their data better – how do they work out what they want to know when suddenly there is a whole new world of ‘insights’ opened up to them?
Data is data, no matter whether it exists in the cloud or more traditional data centres or even devices. Whilst cloud data platforms can provide horizontal as well as vertical scaling, flexibility and speed, organisations should not confuse flexibility and scale with the quality of insights they are able to get from their data. In other words, a cloud platform alone cannot solve core data management issues.
We have always advised clients to start their journey from the point of having a robust data strategy and data operating model that is relevant to their scale, and more importantly, think about all the insights they wish to glean from their data. We strongly believe, it is not so much about the quantity of insights an organisation enables access to; it is more about being able to access the few that make the most impact on top and bottom lines and the experience of customers. Everything else is not much more than good-to-know management information.
Is it important to look at how data is currently structured and consider whether structuring it differently is useful?
Definitely. This is in fact one element of the bigger data governance puzzle albeit an important one. Ensuring that data is correctly stored and structured can significantly reduce quality concerns especially for organisations that derive insights by mixing their own internal data with external data streams. If the internal data schema and model matches the external stream plumbed into data stores, it makes life much easier for data stewards and significantly reduces time to insight.
Read more on their website.