Outsourcing their data management service needs is becoming an increasingly attractive option for many companies. The data management services definition usually includes references to all the infrastructure and expertise needed to store, move, transform, and otherwise take care of the data sets that an organization owns. Letting others take care of all that really takes a load off many companies. One of the most important technological solutions that enable it is cloud computing which allows such data-storing infrastructure as a cloud-based data lake. Let us take a closer look at what made cloud-based data management rise to the prominence it enjoys today.
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Data management challenges
The reason why managing their own data on-site is not something most firms would choose is that there are many difficulties associated with it. And the more data you have, the bigger these difficulties may grow to be.
Firstly, costs must be considered. Storing data requires not only software but hardware infrastructure as well. Servers have to support the data lakes and data warehouses that hold all the information owned by the organization. Turning these data storage units into cloud-based data lakes help to solve this issue.
Secondly, data management requires a skilled workforce. Hiring your own in-house professionals is not always the best option as it means additional costs. And such data management experts are not always readily available in the labor market, thus positions might be left open for extended periods of time. This in turn hinders the quality and efficiency of the in-house data management services.
Furthermore, data management services also require technological tools. Such tools work to ensure the quality and efficiency of the procedures. With the growing volume of data that companies have to deal with on a constant basis, working without these AI tools makes it extremely difficult to get everything right.
Finally, there are always some unexpected issues when dealing with data management. Nobody is protected from human errors and server downtimes which risk the loss of important data and further hindrance of time-sensitive procedures. Moving all the data to a cloud-based data lake helps to avoid such loss of information as downtime of the company’s servers will not affect the data in the cloud.
These difficulties in data management created the perfect circumstances for something like a cloud-based data infrastructure to emerge. Something was needed to answer these challenges and cloud computing offered some important solutions.
The solutions of the cloud-based data lake
Moving the data to the cloud and outsourcing the data management services have some obvious advantages that allow solving some of the abovementioned issues. And there are of course more use cases for cloud computing in business data management. All of them led to the rise and growing importance of cloud-based solutions in modern business.
Here are some of the key benefits that cloud-based data infrastructure has created and the ways in which they answer the data management challenges.
- The cloud will fit all your data and you will not have to worry about the energy costs of the in-house server. A cloud-based data lake is not likely to run out of storing capacity even if you constantly add new data sets to it. This scalability of the cloud also means that even if you have received more data than expected, it can quite quickly be arranged for it to move to the cloud.
- Cloud-based data architecture also offers increased agility. This means that the data can be accessed from various locations as well as on the move. Thus, multiple company representatives are able to work on the data at the same time from various locations. Such enhanced accessibility of data especially fits the current tendencies of increased work from home or other locations outside the office.
- Using the cloud is also cost-effective. When one does not need to pay for the infrastructure and additional labor related to data management, the financial resources can be invested elsewhere. Additionally, the in-house data experts can turn their attention to data analysis, having more time to bring out the insights that might prove profitable in the future.
- Finally, data management as a service allows outsourcing all your data-related tasks. One can choose not to collect data at all and just get it on-demand from a cloud-based data lake. Additionally, a good cloud service provider would also provide the company with the necessary data-filtering and analysis tools to make surfing the cloud for the relevant data even easier. This removes all the headaches related to data management and collection from the firm’s management, allowing to concentrate on its direct objectives.
Thus, it is easy to see that the rise of the cloud-based data management was caused by its ability to adequately answer the most pressing needs of contemporary businesses. With the technology getting better and better, the popularity of cloud-based solutions was more or less inevitable.
What’s next for the cloud?
To end the success story of cloud usage in business it is interesting to briefly glimpse into the future. What is to be expected from the cloud in the years to come?
In short, it should get bigger and even more capable of taking care of the data-related tasks. Researchers are looking into the possibilities of utilizing the cloud for machine learning and other high-level AI procedures. Additionally, improved cloud infrastructure should be able to answer all the data security concerns.
This makes for exciting years to come. Whatever is ahead of us, we can be sure that cloud computing has not reached the limit of its powers yet.
