In this new data-driven economy, successful companies are effectively using analytics to create new revenue opportunities. Data infrastructure and tools are essential to remain competitive and grow the business. However, older technologies can introduce frictions and bottlenecks that limit the usage of data. Enterprises need modern, real-time data solutions that enable the analysis of the right data at the right time and in the right place.
Do you think your Data Architecture is Modern?
August 28, 2020 | Article
What is modern data architecture?
A modern data architecture (MDA) can help you upgrade your technology stack to the what is now considered table stakes – Fast responses, real-time data, secure and offer infinite scalability at a fraction of your legacy infrastructure cost. Also, it fulfills the data and technology needs of all stakeholders ranging from casual information consumers to data analysts and scientists.
Why do you need it?
Legacy data architectures, in general, struggle while handling the massive workloads, connecting to new data sources, or addressing the needs of data scientists. The amount of speed, volume, and agility that data-driven companies need is beyond the limits of legacy data architectures. Users expect all their dashboards and terabyte-sized queries to run in a few seconds. Modern data architecture can help overcome the traditional performance vs. cost trade-offs, and offer many more benefits, enabling organizations to scale faster.
Is your data infrastructure in shape?
Ask yourself the following questions about your existing architecture to see if you should be happy with it, or its time to reconsider it.
1. Is it cloud-native?
Cloud-native tools allow you to have on-demand scalability at a lower cost. It enables high availability, elastic scaling, and end-to-end security. It also works well with an evergrowing ecosystem of SaaS and cloud business applications.
2. Is it centered around my data consumers?
MDA focuses on data users and their needs, and constantly evolves to meet the changing business and information needs. It also helps prevent vendor lock-ins and addition to technology debt. A user-centric architecture delivers relevant data to cater to the needs of the stakeholders, which can change every 12-18 months.
3. Are my data pipelines scalable and resilient?
MDA has interconnected and bidirectional data pipelines that manage real-time data streaming from source systems to business users. The data objects used for constructing the pipelines should be robust enough to ensure a steady flow of relevant, high-integrity data to the users. Effective pipelines are at the core of efficient business processes.
4. Is it secure?
Security is critical when it comes to anything data related. MDA allows fast data access to authorized users only and restricts others without compromising control. It also complies with privacy regulations, by encrypting data, masking personally identifiable information, and tracking all data elements in a data catalog.
5. Is it flexible?
Business needs are diverse, and MDA needs to be flexible enough to account for it. It should have the ability to support various types of data users and different workloads. It needs to allow for flexibility of the data it ingests and the ways it delivers information to each individual. In short, it should play different roles for different people.
6. Is it governed?
MDA defines and allocates data access points for each type of user, customized to their individual requirements. Governance is essential to achieve self-service analytics.
7. Does it cater to self-service data analytics?
In today’s data-driven world, it is vital to empower business analysts, and citizen data scientists to perform their own self-service data analytics. Your infrastructure should not limit your users from accessing information.
If you answered yes to all the questions above then worry not, you already have a modern data architecture in place. If not, then its time for you to put on your thinking hats and figure out how you can create a modern and more relevant data architecture for your business to help you stay ahead of the competition.
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