Blog: Krish Krishnan

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Data Agility

With the ever growing need for data to be available in real time mode for consumption by business and non-business users, we are seeing a new rush for data agility and a need for a new backbone architecture for data integration. YouTube has given a new meaning to information sharing in the media, similarly digital dashboards has become an integral component to the business owners and executives for decision making. Realtime demand forecast engines have started making supply chain more agile then ever and customer feedback in realtime has become a major investment for theme parks (e.g. EuroDisney).

What drives this demand is the need to be agile in your business. Whether it is a meat packaging plant in rural Iowa or the theme park in the world's largest cities, the need to be agile and responsive to the customer has brought a new meaning to data availability and data integration. I do agree that you cannot change production processes or schedules or alter already manufactured goods, but with the right information available in the right time, you can work wonders with managing your product, your offerings or services or better yet your production schedule.

In order to meet this ever growing demand, technology has also been improving consistently. CPU's have become more faster and less expensive overall, memory has just about doubled in performance increase and dropped in pricing. Disk has become incredibly cheap, infact with the world going digital with SDCards and Flash Drives (even in camcorders). disk demand for storage will increase in the future.

In the data warehouse space, the demand for data agility has been consistently met with new and innovative offerings. Data Warehouse Appliances have established a strong footprint in the data centers around the globe in this year. I see this technology being embraced by data centers and data warehouse IT staff in the coming years.

Data integration architectures are being revamped to accommodate the data agility needs. DW 2.0 from Bill Inmon is pathbreaking with UnStructured data integration techniques. We are seeing the ODS being revived considering the Operational BI requirements and the data agility needs thereof.

Retail and Financial services data requirements have just about quadrupled in the last couple of years. I'm seeing the healthcare industry's growing pains with data and see that solutions are getting ready to address the issues.

Whichever way you choose to look, the next phase of this journey for all data practitioners is going to be an interesting and rewarding one.

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