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.

##

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.