Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023.  Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Data and analytics predictions for 2023

By Andy Palmer, co-founder, chairman & CEO, Tamr, Inc.                                                                                  

It is imperative for any modern business to become data-driven. While some companies view data as a strategic asset and have built it into everything they do, others still need to evolve to make data a core part of their company culture. But only true data-driven organizations will survive an increasingly data-centric competitive landscape.

As more organizations commit to becoming fully data-driven in 2023, we can expect to see a shift in four key areas:

Compared to traditional non-digital native companies, data-driven companies think differently about roles and organizational structures. Over the past 40 years, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) struggled to deliver on the remit of using data as a strategic weapon. Chief Data Officers (CDOs) have now emerged and evolved to take responsibility for and realize the value of data in their enterprise. But too often, newly-minted CDOs mistakenly focus solely on the data ecosystem and the technology that supports it. Many CDOs are evolving to realize that they must broaden the role and scope of data teams to embrace the context in which the people at their enterprises consume data and treat frontline business owners as true partners.

When an organization attempts to integrate data from multiple, siloed source systems, continuously cleaning and organizing the data for use by a broad population of consumers in an enterprise is a significant challenge. Legacy tools such as rules-based master data management (MDM), traditional data warehouses and data lakes have attempted to make messy, dirty data usable. But in reality, they have only aggravated the situation because their manual processes and the limited scope created more data silos.

In 2023, data-savvy companies will invest in modern technologies such as human guided machine learning to consolidate messy source data into clean, curated, continuously updated analytics-ready core datasets making it available for data consumers in their organization to unlock the valuable insights needed to achieve a variety of business outcomes

Data governance has been in the spotlight recently, and the interest in data governance will continue to grow. But the focus is shifting away from source-based governance (which mainly focuses on data cataloging and governance workflows) toward consumption-based data governance (which focuses on appropriate use and control of access to data downstream). 

Data privacy has taken center stage, too. Between new regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), data privacy and security have evolved to adhere to the intention of GDPR and CCPA organizations need to focus on consumption-based data governance.

In 2023, as companies look to derive value out of data investments ranging from traditional data lakes and data warehouses to newer strategies such as cloud data platforms, data fabric, and data mesh, they'll realize that their approaches to data governance, privacy, and security must shift.

Companies have more data - and more data sources - than ever before. But as data continues to grow, so, too, does data chaos. Data is messy, data silos proliferate, and data is constantly decaying, making the task of integrating data across an organization extremely difficult. Impossible, in fact, without the help of the machine.

To tackle these challenges, organizations must consider the best way to structure their data architecture. But as new approaches and strategies emerge, they must also assess which trending topics are worth the hype - and which are overhyped.

Take for example, data mesh, which is a trending topic, particularly for large firms. Data mesh is an approach that enables organizations to deliver a decentralized architecture that groups and curates data by a specific business domain with the goal of providing a more consistent view of enterprise data resources. It helps to solve the challenge that organizations face when it comes to standing up a single point of access that can query data wherever it lives.

And while data mesh is receiving a lot of buzz in the industry, debate continues about whether it's hype - or overhyped.

Heading into 2023, new data architecture strategies will gain momentum, with many claiming that they provide the silver bullet that will solve all of an organization's data challenges. But savvy organizations will realize that anything that sounds like a panacea is probably wrong. Instead, these organizations will focus on the most important goal: ensuring their data is clean and curated.

Change is afoot for many companies as we enter 2023. From culture and integration to governance and architecture, organizations must embrace change in each of these areas if they want to reach the ultimate goal of having clean, accurate, integrated data.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Palmer is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Tamr, Inc., which he co-founded with fellow serial entrepreneur and 2014 Turing Award winner Michael Stonebraker (MIT CSAIL).  Previously, Andy was co-founder and founding CEO of Vertica Systems, a pioneering big data analytics company (acquired by HP).  Vertica is used by many of the world's most advanced companies (including Facebook and Uber) to manage many hundreds of petabytes of data.

In 2010, Andy founded Koa Labs, a seed-stage fund focused on first-time entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds from underserved communities. Notable Koa companies include Upstart (NASDAQ : UPST), PillPack (Acquired by Amazon), Carta and Recorded Future. Andy holds a Research Affiliate position at MIT CSAIL.  He has served as a founding investor, board member, and advisor to more than 100 start-up companies in technology, healthcare, and the life sciences.  He also served as Global Head of Software and Data Engineering at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) and as a member of the start-up team and Chief Information and Administrative Officer at Infinity Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INFI).  Andy held positions at innovative technology companies Bowstreet, pcOrder.com, and Trilogy. He holds a Bachelor's degree in English, History and Computer Sciences from Bowdoin College and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.