Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
How Businesses will Rethink Data in 2024
By Matt Watts, Chief Technology
Evangelist at NetApp
As businesses carve out
competitive advantages and differentiation in their respective markets, they
are collecting and analyzing massive amounts of data and metadata from every
business application, customer touchpoint, and device they can to generate
actionable insights.
Continuing innovation in areas
like AI and analytics has given these businesses new ways to apply their data,
but they need to ensure their underlying IT and business infrastructures can
process and analyze all that data, no matter where it's stored or when it's
needed. Those that can make their data work for them will operate more
efficiently and drive business value.
In fact, a study from the Boston
Consulting Group shows that 30 percent of data-driven
businesses are expected to increase revenue by more than 10 percent by the end
of 2024 compared to only 13 percent of laggards. Below, I outline four ways I
predict that organizations will reimagine their data-driven businesses in 2024
and transform their operations.
Models Will Give Way to Data in
AI Innovation
Over the last year, we've seen
organizations rush to find ways to use generative AI as it becomes more
ubiquitous, with seemingly endless potential uses. Recent developments in large
language models and multimodal AI have created new opportunities to process
text and images and respond to prompts, allowing them to handle customer
service interactions, create human-like avatars, and even generate code.
As organizations start to use AI
to help unlock new insights and automate certain parts of their business
operations, they may realize their models are a good start, but not as
adaptable as they want them to be. AI models by their nature are limited by their
pre-set parameters. Instead, organizations will start to focus on creating
steady data pipelines to power AI applications so that they can learn from the
latest information and update accordingly. This will enable businesses to use
AI to put their data to work and operate with greater agility.
Breaking Down Data Silos
Organizations are going to break
down silos between different data types with unified data storage-which
combines all of a company's data types across on-premises and cloud
environments-to fuel the new era of AI and analytics innovations.
As companies dig deeper into
analytics to generate business insights, they will find that their existing
data storage architectures have separate streams for each type of data, such as
customer, product, supplier, and employee data. They may feel limited by
out-of-date analytics platforms, computing models, and data storage systems
that don't give them the flexibility to adapt beyond their original assumptions
about data and insights.
As a result, we are going to see
more organizations rethink their data architectures to consolidate data streams
and treat them as a single source. Unified data storage will help make
enterprise data more easily accessible and unlock hidden connections between
different types of data. As a result, organizations will be better equipped to
use their data to respond to changes in their operating environment and develop
new insights to grow their business.
Focus on IT that "Just Works"
Organizations that look to the
cloud as a panacea for all of their IT infrastructure challenges will continue
to be disappointed. As these companies find their cloud migrations stretch both
timelines and budgets, they will increasingly look for ways to optimize IT
operations in hybrid and multicloud IT architectures-not just during the
transition to the cloud but on an ongoing basis.
About three out of every four
global tech executives that are migrating to the cloud report that they still
have a considerable amount of their workloads stored on-premises-between 30 and
80 percent-according to NetApp's
2023 Data Complexity Report. For most companies, IT
infrastructure maintenance will remain a challenge with ongoing cost pressures
and demands for ever-greater innovation. Achieving innovation goals requires a
strong IT infrastructure to unlock insights, ensure efficient operations, and
automate more mundane tasks.
Businesses will shift their focus
from finding the perfect cloud environment to finding an underlying intelligent
data infrastructure. This infrastructure combines unified data storage with
integrated data management capabilities for security and observability within a
single platform to help store, control, and use data more easily no matter what
cloud services, applications, and databases are in use.
As companies adopt a more
intelligent data infrastructure, they'll find they have increased agility to
adapt to changing market conditions quickly. With this environment, IT can empower
the business to focus on learning, building, and innovating without worrying
about their cloud infrastructure.
Assume Your Data was Already
Hacked
In the face of persistent
cybersecurity threats from bad actors that run the gamut from insiders to
cybercriminal gangs and nation-states, organizations need renewed focus on how
they recover from cyberattacks as preventing them becomes rarer.
It is an ongoing challenge to
prevent bad actors from accessing, stealing, or tampering with IT environments
and critical assets like customer data and intellectual property. In fact, experts
predict that by 2031 there will be a ransomware attack every 2 seconds,
costing victims $265 billion annually. Because of this, 87 percent of C-suite
and board-level executives view ransomware protection as a high, or top,
priority in their organization according to NetApp's
2023 Data Complexity Report.
The biggest threat to a business
in the wake of a cyberattack is not the theft of data, but the time and
resources spent repairing systems and restoring data to resume normal
operations. To protect their most critical assets and ensure business continuity,
we'll see increased investment in IT security to ensure IT systems are secure
by design and reduce business disruption in the face of a cyberattack. IT
systems that have features like immutable data backups will help mitigate
disruption while cyber incidents are investigated.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As Chief Technology Evangelist,
Matt Watts provides guidance on NetApp's overall strategy and technology
solutions to a wide base of customers and the global partner community. Matt is
also part of the portfolio leadership team, providing advice and guidance on
technology and transformation. Matt is increasingly in demand as a keynote
speaker, combining his knowledge of the IT industry with anecdotes and stories
that bring technology to life with witty, easily understandable examples. Prior
to this role, Matt project managed a number of significant IT projects; managed
System Engineers responsible for providing installation and onsite support; as
well as overseeing IT outsourcing contracts. This experience has given him
contact with all levels of leadership, enabling him to understand, communicate
with and support clients with their IT and transformation strategies.