The digital infrastructure of most organisations is a complex network of platforms and solutions. Siloed workstreams and a lack of integration make it difficult to extract value from the investments made. How do you join the dots and create an infrastructure for the future? Here, we look at data as the connecting force that will help you solve the puzzle.
On the face of it, Tetris is an easy enough game. You only have to deal with seven shapes, and those shapes are always the same. Your simple task is to make sure they line up without leaving any gaps.
But as anyone who’s played it knows, Tetris is a much more tricky game than that. A single misplaced shape means quickly reviewing your strategy, affecting the placement of every shape that follows. Soon, even the smallest misalignment can create such an unruly puzzle that it’s no longer possible to tackle it by applying a coherent strategy. Firefighting becomes the only option.
Your infrastructure is exactly the same. It’s a network of different elements, the overall success of which depends on how well they align. If they line up, it can unlock huge efficiency and security gains for any organisation. But if they don’t, it can lead to an unruly mess that saps your resources as you fight to keep it under control.
So, how can you connect all the pieces of your infrastructure and start to extract real value from the network you’ve invested so much in?
It’s no secret that data is the currency that can truly unlock business intelligence today. But research suggests many organisations aren’t using it to its full potential.
Although 97.2% of organisations are investing in big data and AI according to New Vantage [1], Forrester reports that 60-73% of all data within an enterprise goes unused [2]. Which means there’s huge untapped potential within our grasp.
The trouble is, grasping that potential becomes more challenging as the quantities of data running through an organisation grow and grow.
“For our customers, the rate of data growth is increasing hand-over-fist every year,” says Scott Cowling, our Director of Infrastructure Solutions. “The largescale adoption of multiple public and private cloud services, edge compute services, IoT, 5G, remote devices – it’s all led to this massive expansion in the network of data flows.”
And while theoretically this means there’s even more potential within your grasp, it also means that managing that data flow across your organisation is becoming as challenging as it is fundamental to a successful digital transformation strategy.
