- Cloud data management involves the processes, tools, and strategies used to control, protect, and make use of data stored in the cloud.
- Cloud data management offers several benefits that can significantly impact an organisation’s operations and strategic growth, including scalability, accessibility, etc.
- Cloud data management can unlock the full potential of cloud computing, empowering businesses to innovate and thrive in a data-driven world.
Cloud data management is a way to manage data across cloud platforms, either with or instead of on-premises storage. The cloud is useful as a data storage tier for disaster recovery, backup and long-term archiving.
With cloud data management, organisations can purchase resources as needed. They can also share data across private and public clouds, as well as in on-premises storage. A cloud-based data management system takes on the function of a traditional data management system tailored to the needs of the cloud. In this blog post, we will explore the key capabilities of cloud data management as well as its benefits.
5 key capabilities for data management in the cloud
As organisations plan out or rework their data architectures in response to changing business requirements and processes, cloud data management should be a top consideration. Here are six important capabilities to consider when creating your cloud data strategy:
1. Cloud integration
The cloud can drive innovation, uncover efficiencies, and help redefine business processes. But you can only achieve these benefits when your cloud infrastructure allows you to integrate, synchronise, and relate all data, applications, and processes—on-premises or in any part of your multi-cloud environment.
2. Cloud data quality and governance
As companies put data at the heart of their business processes, the most successful organisations recognise the role of high-quality, trusted data in their digital transformation initiatives. As this recent survey by McKinsey & Company notes, “Companies that empower employees to consistently use data as a basis for their decision making are nearly twice as likely as others to report reaching their data and analytics objectives.” In addition, data regulations have become increasingly complex and dynamic.
Also read: Google Cloud and NetApp introduce enhanced data storage
3. Cloud data privacy and security
With the rise of the cloud, data is becoming more exposed to the possibility of abuse and attacks beyond the traditional firewall. Protecting your data, managing safe access, and enforcing compliance and appropriate use policies to reduce the risk of security breaches and corporate abuse is not just business-critical—it’s now the law.
Privacy assurance helps you democratise safe data use, accelerate and unblock cloud workload migration, and deliver innovative products and services that build on customer trust. Integrated cloud data privacy and protection tools can help you to automate the discovery and classification of sensitive data, map identities for clear ownership and support data access rules, operationalise privacy policies, model and analyse data risk exposure across data stores and locations, and orchestrate data protection.
4. Cloud master data management
With all the data being generated across business lines, you need a complete, 360-degree view of any domain and any relationship in the cloud. Furthermore, there is a push for intelligent data stewardship and improved search and visualisation of data, as well as improved verification and enrichment. Cloud master data management (MDM) capabilities synchronise the most critical data across various systems in your organisation into a single, validated record, enabling AI and analytics teams to derive deep insights from that data to power your business. Read about best practices for cloud MDM.
5. Cloud metadata management and data cataloguing
All business transformations depend on good, trusted data. But as the data landscape grows more complex, diverse, and distributed, across many different departments, applications, data warehouses, and data lakes (some on-premises, others in the cloud), it becomes difficult to know exactly what data you have, where it resides, and how best to manage it.
What are the benefits of cloud data management?
The numerous benefits of cloud data management often mimic those of cloud services in general. Some of the benefits commonly associated with cloud data management include the following:
Pay-as-you-go pricing: Cloud service providers generally bill subscribers on a per gigabyte, per month basis. This means that organisations don’t have to purchase storage hardware. Instead, they pay only for the cloud storage they consume.
Scalability: One of the challenges associated with on-premises storage is that storage consumption must be closely monitored to avoid running out of space. When the available storage is depleted, the organisation must purchase additional storage hardware that meets its anticipated future needs. In contrast, cloud storage providers have a nearly unlimited amount of storage that’s readily available at any time. Organisations never have to worry about running out of storage or engaging in complex capacity planning tasks.
Anywhere access: The very nature of the cloud means that data is accessible from anywhere.
Zero maintenance: Public cloud providers handle all required maintenance, meaning that organisations never have to worry about replacing failed hard disks, performing hardware refreshes or installing firmware updates.
Security: Cloud providers invest tremendous financial resources in data security and keeping their platforms secure. The result is that cloud storage is likely to be more secure than an organisation’s on-premises storage. However, the security of data that’s stored in the cloud comes down to the security policies the organisation puts in place.
Also read: What is hybrid cloud architecture?
Automated backups: Some — but not all — cloud providers automatically back up data stored in the cloud. Some cloud backup services even provide immutable point-in-time data backup capabilities, which can help keep data protected against ransomware.
Improved data quality. Many cloud data management platforms are designed to centralise data, thereby letting a single data set be used throughout the organisation. This approach helps eliminate duplicate data, driving down storage costs while also eliminating the inconsistencies that often exist across data sets.
Disaster recovery: Cloud storage offers a dependable data backup option. Data saved in the cloud can be swiftly restored in the event of hardware failure, natural catastrophes or other emergencies, minimising downtime and ensuring business continuity.
Effective cloud data management is essential for organisations to fully leverage the benefits of cloud computing while mitigating risks. By focusing on storage management, security, analytics, and compliance, and by adopting best practices, businesses can ensure that their cloud data is well-managed, and secure, and provides valuable insights to drive growth and innovation.
