
Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by THOMAS LA ROCK, Head Geek, SolarWinds
The Year of DataOps and the Rise of Data-Driven, Data-First Organizations
2018 was one for the books, and 2019 is bound to bring
its own slate of successes and setbacks. It seems like every year we're
promised flying cars and life on Mars, so I'll give you something we can rely
on: data. As we learned in 2018
(sometimes in good cases, sometimes in bad), harnessing data is powerful. The
actionable insights gathered from data can even make or break a business,
depending on the quality of service it's delivering to end users.
Before we dive into data, let's take a
step back to where it all began: DevOps. All DevOps strategies have universal
goals: agility, faster deployment, increased end-user experience, and "smart"
operational decision-making. With DevOps transitioning from a hype to a
standard practice in agile IT departments, technology and operations
professionals striving to add value to their businesses should consider the
next step in enhancing their departments: DataOps.
In
today's increasingly digital world, data cannot be excluded from the agile
decision-making process. In fact, we predict that 2019 will be the year that data is recognized
as a key business driver. "Data Culture" will become increasingly implemented
into tech environments, and organizations will become data-driven and
data-first. This shift will also give rise to DataOps as traditional admins
start to understand that their days of tuning indexes are ending, one page at a
time. Operations teams must adopt a "data mindset" to discern the type of data
that exceeds their department and can be polished into something that adds
value to the business overall. With
DataOps, organizations can begin to transition their IT team into a data
science team, as they adopt a data-first frame of mind.
DataOps can help the C-suite operate
their businesses more effectively by extracting and analyzing the most
pertinent pieces of data and distilling and crafting them into a compelling and
"business-digestible" narrative that can be easily understood across the
organization. In 2019, companies will begin to actuate on this data, not just
report and track in Excel-they will start using valuable data to make more
informed decisions.
The ability to share
this actionable, business-digestible narrative may even earn tech pros a seat
at the strategy table-and maybe a
flying car. After all, this is 2019.
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About the Author
THOMAS LA ROCK, Head Geek
LaRock has over 20 years of IT experience holding roles such
as programmer, developer, analyst, and database administrator. He is a
Microsoft Certified Master, VMware vExpert, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and a
ten-time Microsoft Data Platform MVP.
LaRock has spent much of his career focused on
data and database administration, which led to his election as a Technical
Evangelist for Confio Software in 2010, where his research and experience
helped create the initial versions of the software now known as SolarWinds
Database Performance Analyzer (DPA).