One of the hottest business IT topics for 2023 is data decoupling and the adoption of data fabrics. If you're not familiar with the terms, I shall attempt to unbundle them for you in this short article.
The business problem of reusing data
"All I want to know is..."
This is the start of most business intelligence conversations. Most businesses struggle to reuse data that's bundled into their software applications and systems. Decision-makers and digital workers can't answer the questions they have on their minds because they need to forage for data, crunch it for a few hours, then shape it into some form of report, visualization, chart or dashboard before they attempt an answer.
The adoption of cloud computing systems, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps, and the wider use of platforms like Amazon, Facebook, Office365, etc. means that business data isn't in one place. Neither is it organized in a neat structure to make it accessible.
The solution is to decouple data from system
When business people want to answer questions, in almost every instance, they need someone to jump on a spreadsheet and get to work. This is highly costly and there's no guarantee of a result until data can be gathered, organized, presented, etc.
The alternative is to pre-process and pre-organize data into a useful format. Creating this data fabric of useful 'clean' data means anyone can ask anything of it and they can get an answer.
Benefits of investing in data before trying to compose it into answers
The reason why businesses are looking to develop this composability architecture
Organizations that adopt a data fabric and decoupled architecture will focus on the following priorities, to:
• Liberate data from old, inflexible legacy core systems
• Transfer the ownership of data from IT to the business
• Bring data transparency to create a curious, learn fast/fail fast, data-driven decisioning culture
• Speed time to value of new projects and digital services
Want to learn more? Read my full article on Data Decoupling here.
