Modern data-driven organizations are shaping the next wave of business innovation. These companies are focused on using data and information to refine and optimize existing lines of business or create new and disruptive revenue models. Traditionally, enterprises view data as a record of what occurred. They call upon it only as a reflective lens, or a rear-facing view, on the performance of the organization.

 

These organizations are only able to implement innovative approaches because they have access to internal and external data and possess the ability to leverage that data into the disruptive insights. Data-driven organizations stand upon the foundational pillars of modern data management: Enterprise Applications, Analytical Platforms, Big Data Environments and Cloud Deployments.  These pillars provide much of the data that organizations put into their disruptive business models and improved practices, from information about business processes, transactions, and supply chain inventories from their enterprise applications, to historical data and analysis about customers, products, and suppliers in various analytical platforms, to social media and streaming event and granular detail data in big data environments, to third-party data and managed environments in cloud deployments.

  

Yet, the demands of data-driven organizations to do more with the information they have access to puts pressure on these foundational pillars. A solution to increasing pressure on a foundation is to spread out the supporting structure, which distributes the load better across the foundation. However, in the case of data-driven initiatives, the purpose of strengthening the pillars is to bring them closer together and align/converge their strengths to better support information distribution, deployment speed, and strategic management.