Although it is hard to be aware of it in the eye of the storm, we are currently undergoing a fourth industrial revolution, centred around data. The last industrial revolution from the 1970’s brought us many of the things that we are familiar with today. Efficiency improvements in the storage, access and analysis of data is what is fuelling the fourth industrial revolution and includes industry changing technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IOT).
Cloud Governance
If Data is the new oil then metadata is the refiner
Data, data everywhere….and then……what ?
That is the issue with digital data. As digital data doubles very year it leads to vast quantities of unstructured data as employees create office documents, PDF’s, videos etc. Searching and classifying this data however presents a challenge particularly as the data within companies is spread across a multitude of on-cloud and on-premises systems and is simply not joined up.
Data Privacy, Data Trust and the Internet of Things
I attended an interesting conference yesterday, the Hypercat Summit in London. The conference was primarily about how new technology and smart systems will affect all aspect of life and business.
If I say Information Governance you ignore it – if I say Cloud Data Governance you listen
An interesting chat with David Horrigan from the 451 Research Group confirmed what I had suspected for a while, that for most companies, large and small, Information Governance, as an IT initiative it still does not feature very highly on their agenda.
Although information governance is a pre-requisite for certain industry vertical such as legal and medical, companies tend to try and solve specific point issues rather than implementing an information governance framework. Examples of these are Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Mobile Device Management (MDM) policies that whilst in some cases needed, is only one example of the disciplines around information that is required.
What to consider when building a Hybrid Cloud Governance Strategy
There is no doubt Enterprise IT has changed forever over the last two to three years. Even companies who had a “not on cloud” strategy are being forced to re-assess given the economics / ROI that public cloud brings.
Enterprise IT finds itself in a position whereby they have to deal with information silos that can not only be on public cloud services such as Google Drive and Office 365, but also on services such as BaseCamp, SalesForce, and the many other SaaS services that stores content.
Coupled with this is ‘Shadow IT’ and ‘Bring your Own Cloud’, in which company content can easily find its way onto personal users devices and consumer clouds.