Data is a competitive edge, only if we can harness knowledge from it. Successful businesses will drive decision-making based on the trends, anomalies, variances they see in the data. Unfortunately, many companies may not even know the underlying currents and hidden trends in data, which may be critical to their businesses. This results in missed opportunities or expensive mistakes.
According to the Harvard Business Review, in 1958, corporations listed in the S&P 500 had an average stay of 61 years. By 1980, numbers had declined sharply to 25 years. In 2011, the average tenure dropped to 18 years. Failure to understand and act on hidden signals regarding the business can be catastrophic. Data is at the heart of digital disruption, and it is only accelerating at an unprecedented pace.
Businesses of all sizes need to measure the "as is" (the current state of affairs) before making future changes. There needs to be an agile approach to data harmonization and analysis at speed to understand data signals. Existing cloud data infrastructure makes it easy to start experimenting with data at a low start-up cost. Agile data operations integrated into continuous integration and continuous delivery DevOps methodology facilitate businesses adapting to changing external factors in real-time without expensive rework.
Thus, investments into cloud data infrastructure such as Microsoft Azure is key to uncovering the "known unknowns" and discovering the "unknown unknowns" in the data. Net net, Investments into the cloud data infrastructure increases chances of success in a highly competitive and dynamic business climate of the new digital world.