A slow car has never won a Formula One race. The Olympics doesn’t reward slow times in swimming, track or any other clock-timed sport. Likewise, slow data speeds don’t win over customers or colleagues in the real-time business world.
Microsoft’s own research once reported that a person visiting a website on a connected device is likely to wait no more than 10 seconds to see it before moving to a competitor’s site. Actually, that metric has dropped to three seconds since that study was conducted a decade ago. We’re an impatient culture, and the continued evolution of IT to become even faster and more responsive has fed that impatience.
Consider that mixture of speed and data is the life flow of IT. Slowing or blocking either is both a system and business killer, especially with “do it now” business expectations.
When Data Accelerates
Researcher McKinsey noted in a 2020 report that “the need for speed (in IT) has never been greater. When the coronavirus pandemic erupted, companies had to change. Many business-as-usual approaches to serving customers, working with suppliers, and collaborating with colleagues—or just getting anything done—would have failed. They had to increase the speed of decision-making while improving productivity, using technology and data in new ways, and accelerating the scope and scale of innovation. And it worked.”
An organization designed for speed is more likely to see powerful outcomes, including greater customer responsiveness, enhanced capabilities and better performance in terms of cost-efficiency, revenues and return on capital, McKinsey reported.
“A speedy company might also find it has a higher sense of purpose and improved organizational health,” the McKinsey report said. “These outcomes are possible, but not inevitable. Organizational successes forged during the crisis need to be hardwired into the new operating model; leaders must ensure their organizations do not revert to old behaviors and processes. That requires making permanent structural changes that can sustain speed in ways that will inspire and engage employees.”
This is all about IT systems inside enterprises, which is where the data rubber meets the digital road. No question about it: The faster the system, the higher the likelihood of selling customers products—and winning in the marketplace. Slowpokes need not apply.
How to Manage Fast Data
Streaming data from edge devices enables real-time insight and autonomous decision-making, which can revolutionize industries. But driving data into the enterprise from the edge requires fast and effective data management. That’s where a real-time, scalable and reliable data management system comes into play.
Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) was designed and built with optimal data speeds in mind, whether the data emanates from a mobile device, a cloud service, or a faraway remote location. The platform’s approach translates equally well for both your IT team and your company’s line-of-business users. It connects dots on-premises and in the public cloud; is multi-cloud and multi-function; simple to use and secure by design; manual and automated; open and extensible; and usable by data engineers and data scientists.
CDP provides “an opportunity to make better business decisions, faster,” PUND-IT analyst Charles King reported in eWEEK. “This is achieved via the Cloudera Data Platform’s ability to leverage virtually unlimited quantities and varieties of data from any point in the data lifecycle. The result is what the company calls ‘data lifecycle integration.’”
What exactly is this? We define it as the ability to access and work on the same data securely and efficiently, no matter where that data may reside or where the analytics run. Cutting out the distances between data and processing is the key to speed. CDP is designed to effectively manage and secure data collection, enrichment and analysis—and move the data from Point A to points unknown faster than other systems. As a result, data is processed faster for your customers, leading to improved sales.
This sophisticated system has one bottom line: speedy data processing and movement. That’s the result for which all successful businesses strive.
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