Trend-Setting Products in Data and Information Management for 2015

Data is increasingly being recognized as a rich resource flowing through organizations from a continually growing range of data sources. But to realize its full potential, this data must be accessed by an array of users to support both real-time decision making and historical analysis, integrated with data from other sources, and still kept locked away from hackers and others with malicious intent.

Recent Unisphere Research reports show that more and more, it is up to data management departments to lead the charge to help their organizations gain the necessary competitive advantage from data. However, managing the integration of networks, data systems, and applications to provide reliable information is becoming a bigger challenge than ever before. For example, according to a Unisphere Research report based on a survey of 285 data managers and professionals who are members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), the activities taking the greatest bite out of staff time include performance-tuning and diagnosis, maintaining uptime and availability, and applying upgrades, fixes and patches. IT and data managers must make innovation a larger part of their jobs. In order to tighten up budgets and allow for more innovation, enterprises are turning to standardized technologies, automation, and virtualization efforts (“Efficiency Isn’t Enough: Data Centers Lead the Drive to Innovation,” sponsored by EMC).

As organizations place more emphasis on competing on analytics, issues are coming to light regarding the time it takes to locate the right data for analysis, the trustworthiness of the data—especially when it comes from social media and public cloud applications, and whether the necessary safeguards are in place to keep sensitive data private and secure. According to another Unisphere Research report (“Governance Moves Big Data from Hype to Confidence,” sponsored by IBM), both IT and business personnel admit they devote more time to just finding data and putting it into an appropriate form to analyze than they do actually analyzing it. Locating data, validating data, and then defending data actually takes the majority of their time, according to the survey of 304 managers responsible for data management.

Data security issues—and the potential risk if a data breach were to occur—are also never far from the minds of data managers. A Unisphere Research study of 353 IOUG data managers and professionals, finds that close to one half of respondents’ organizations still release production data to outside parties and more than one-fifth believe sensitive data is vulnerable to breaches. Data security is not something respondents take lightly, but it is an ongoing challenge to safeguard the expanding volumes of data on which enterprises rely. The report points out that now is the time for database administrators, who have the necessary knowledge, education, and access privileges, to step forward to work with security professionals to ensure data privacy and protect against threats (“DBA—Security Superhero: 2014 IOUG Enterprise Data Security Survey,” sponsored by Oracle).

Data professionals appreciate the emerging opportunities to expand their roles and work with new technologies, according to another Unisphere Research report. In this survey of 281 data managers and professionals, respondents reveal that while traditional database caretaking tasks are still a considerable part of their jobs, they are also taking on new responsibilities in the area of data science and as advisors to management. The report points to the need for organizations to provide ongoing staff training on the latest technologies and techniques; embrace cloud as a way to leverage large data assets while also offloading at least some work to a third party; and automate rote processes associ- ated with data management in order to free up data professionals for higher value activities (“The Vanishing Database Administrator—Survey of Data Professionals’ Career Aspirations,” sponsored by Ntirety, a division of HOSTING).

In total, these as well as other studies conducted by Unisphere Research over the past year draw a clear picture. More than ever, the spotlight is on data and IT management teams to help their organizations gain maximum value from their data while also mitigating risk. Fortunately, leading vendors are developing products and services to do just that. On the following pages, DBTA presents the list of Trend-Setting Products for 2015.