The World Economic Forum has estimated that by 2025, we will be producing 463 exabytes of data every day. An exabyte is 1,000 bytes to the sixth power and to give context, all the words ever spoken in human history can fit into just 5 exabytes. Data has become one of the world’s most valuable resources, not least of all because it is data that is powering disruptive new business models that account for sizable portions of our modern economies.
Data as we know it has gone through a number of transformations since the computer era began. Between 1969 and 2000, an era known as Data 1.0, data was largely confined to the realm of specific applications such as online booking systems and payroll automation. The era of Data 2.0 arrived when business leaders realized that by sharing information across the organization, they were empowering their workers to make more informed and better decisions. This also sparked the advancement of analytics, data warehousing, and the rise of technologies such as Master Data Management.
The advent of social media, cloud computing, and the explosion of mobile has given rise to Data 3.0, with more data being produced than ever before. And it is this data that is powering digital transformation and creating the businesses of the future.
With 4.8 billion internet users, people are generating data every minute of every day. But it’s not just us who are creating all this new information, the rapid rise of IoT (Internet of Things) technologies (devices that are now able to connect to the cloud and share data amongst themselves) will mean connected humans will be massively outnumbered by connected machines, with some predicting 75 billion connected devices by 2025.
Disruptive businesses like Airbnb, Amazon, Lyft and others harness data that we produce and use it as the very architecture of the services they provide. If traditional sectors like insurance and banking hope to keep up they must find ways to leverage the available data in order to deliver a better experience, a better product, or even a whole new way of doing business, if they hope to survive.
The growing reliance on data has taken the conversation about its access and management out of the tech department and placed it firmly in the boardroom. CEOs now realize that data management is as critical to their future success as finance and talent management. Most importantly, leaders now understand that effective decision making relies on accurate data.
Unfortunately, many organizations face a real challenge as their data is trapped in separate systems and silos, both internally and off-site, and in a variety of forms. A company may be generating terabytes of useful information, but how can they analyze it, if they don’t know where to find it? Data fragmentation has become one of the biggest operational challenges facing companies looking to accelerate their digital transformation.
More than just missing out on good internal decision making, fragmented or poorly managed data can impact how a business interacts with its partners and within ecosystems. In a recent survey, Gartner found that 65% of decisions made are now more complex than they were two years ago and involve more stakeholders. The company goes on to point out that decisions need to ‘...become more connected and that sharing of data and insights across organizational boundaries is critical.'
In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that promote data sharing will outperform their peers on most business value metrics. However, this compelling opportunity seems out of reach for most companies, with Gartner also predicting that through 2022, less than 5% of data-sharing programs will correctly identify trusted data and locate trusted data sources.
When it comes to operationalizing the many benefits of Data 3.0, leaders need to first look at how they can regain control of their data. This will allow them to optimize their decision-making processes, as well as maximize the many benefits of working more closely with their ecosystem partners.
Findings of the Dresner Advisory Associates’ 2020 Data Pipelines Market Study published in Forbes show that over 80% of enterprise business operations leaders say data integration is critical to ongoing operations. What’s more, 65% of organizations prefer to deploy data integration solutions from cloud platforms or hybrid cloud.
At Synatic, we believe the real solution lies in a beyond-iPaaS solution. Synatic understands that Hybrid Integration Platforms are the next step in evolution from iPaaS, offering complex data processing with simplified usage.
There is no doubt that managing data will become one of the most important jobs in every business in years to come. And, with every human producing an average of 1.7MB of data every second in 2020, not having the right data solutions in place could be the most expensive mistake a business can make. Find the best partner to help you get it right, get in touch with Synatic today.
