Two interlocking trends are defining IT priorities as we enter 2020. First, most organisations are handling greater volumes of data across a wider variety of workloads than ever before. Second, they are overseeing a more complex and sophisticated IT estate, one that goes from edge to core, and from core to multicloud.

Both demand a new approach to data storage, management and oversight.

It was in this context that Computer Business Review convened a Dining Club event, in association with Hitachi Vantara, that brought together senior data professionals to explore modern information storage, management and oversight.

Kicking off the discussion, Hanna Brun, Country Manager, Hitachi Vantara Sweden argued that in order to mitigate risk and realise value from data, organisations should embrace automation. She also made the case for DataOps, defined as enterprise data management for the AI (artificial intelligence) era. Neither a product nor a service, DataOps is a framework to help an organisation deliver the right data, to the right place, at the right time, to the right people.

Picking up the themes, Sean Livingstone, Technical Director, Hitachi Vantara, identified two key barriers to good data management: information siloes and a failure to understand the nature – and consequently, the potential – of the data held. A number of attendees argued that businesses failed to get the most from their data because they failed to ask the ‘why’ question: why are we doing this? Others, building on the theme, argued that all data projects should be in the service of customer experience.

In order to foster a successful environment, said Livingstone, firms need to deploy the right technology, encourage a culture of sharing, and create an organisational structure that allows data use to flourish. He argued that modern agile infrastructure should be built on five principles: rapid processing, managed workloads, a future-proofed architecture, maximisation of existing assets, and automation.

For a wealth of information that Sean Livingstone referred to , you will find this link extremely useful https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/company/dataops.html

‘How to modernise your data centre’, a CBR Dining Club event in association with Hitachi Vantara, took place on Thursday 28 November 2019 at the Nobis Hotel Stockholm, Sweden.