New TDWI Research Report Explores the Challenges and Benefits of Cloud Data Management

Report Helps Enterprises Navigate the Complexity of Cloud and Hybrid Data Environments to Maximize the Success of Their Cloud Data Management Efforts.

TDWI Research has released its newest Best Practices Report,Cloud Data Management: Integrating and Processing Data in Modern Cloud and Hybrid Environments.This original, survey-based report looks at the many dimensions of cloud data management (CDM) so data professionals and their business counterparts can understand the benefits of CDM and how they can organize a successful program.

The author of the report, Philip Russom, Ph.D., is senior director of TDWI Research for data management. He explains that technical users are lured to the cloud because of its speed, scale, elasticity, and low level of maintenance; business people are drawn to its agility, low cost, and ability to support new data-driven business practices. Cloud data management is about managing old and new data in hybrid data architectures that span on-premises and cloud systems so enterprises have data they can trust, govern, and leverage for business value with the latest in business analytics and data-driven operational innovations.

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CDM involves working with database management systems, data integration tools, related platforms, and the numerous best practices users perform with them. Modernizing this complex environment especially consolidating traditional enterprise data and modern big data using on-premises and cloud-based tools and platforms is challenging in part because clouds are making data more heavily distributed than it has ever been. For example, the report identifies key barriers to successful CDM, including issues in governance, data migration, data quality, and tool maturity.

The report examines the many dimensions of CDM (which is also known as cloud data warehousing, data-as-a-service, and hybrid data management), explores who owns and maintains CDM projects, and looks at how enterprises are currently addressing CDM issues.

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This comprehensive report reveals:

• CDM provides valuable support for a wide range of business functions, including analytics (64%), data warehousing (52%), and reporting (47%)
• Respondents see top CDM benefits in scalability for data storage and integration workloads (51%), automatic and elastic resource management (44%), and enabling advanced analytics at scale but inexpensively (35%)
• Barriers to successful CDM include data privacy concerns (40%), modern data governance issues, (38%), and replatforming tasks (38%)
• More than 3 in 4 respondents say implementing CDM is important to the success of their organization’s data strategy
• Absolute “must haves” for CDM include core data management functions for data integration (70%), data prep (57%), and data quality (55%)
• Respondents see CDM as allowing them to get more business value from their data, capture and leverage emerging data types and sources, and embrace new systems architectures

Russom includes real-world use cases and comments from survey respondents about best practices for success and what mistakes they made. The author also discusses how to design and implement CDM solutions, and how to address the worker skills gap.

The report offers ideas for developing a reader’s own multiphase plan for migrating data to the cloud and encourages the reader to examine all aspects of CDM, from platforms and tools to user features, performance issues, and interfaces as well as the role of data virtualization and the complexities of hybrid data architectures. Russom includes specific, actionable steps so readers can be successful in their own environments including a Top Ten list of priorities for cloud data management.

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