How to Shift to Data @ the Center 

You may have noticed we’ve been sharing our thoughts on “Data @ the Center” for a few months. From a blog post in July to talking about Data @ the Center to everyone at VMworld®, we believe the data center, as we know it, falls short on its mission to deliver business value. Until organizations shift to a mindset centered on the data, they will continue to put themselves at risk for extinction. Have no fear, though, we have several resources to help you move beyond supporting – and storing – data to actually realizing the power within all of that information.

First, Why?

Before we dive into the how, let’s start with a quick refresher on “why” there needs to be a shift to Data @ the Center. As Clay Ryder wrote in an earlier blog“A business’ data is one of its most unique, differentiated, and competitive resources. But to fully unleash this treasure trove of advantage, IT needs to move beyond supporting data centers to instead realizing data is at the center for the business.” If you’re trying to further understand or trying to help others understand “why,” you may want to:

• Read…
  • Clay’s blog, as mentioned above, “The Next-Gen Data Center is Data @ the Center”
  • Our blogs about The Demise of the Centralized Data Center and Not All Data is Created Equal – Best Practices for Building a Data Strategy
• Watch a replay of the Data Interaction is Driving the Next Generation Data Center webinar

Looking to the Future

Our own global leader of Enterprise Data Management, JuneAn Lanigan, often talks about the power of futureproofing your infrastructure – building an infrastructure that not only meets the needs of your business today, but will evolve as needs change. To effectively do this, she also mentions the importance of leading with a data strategy – understanding the data and how you may want to use it to drive business value. In order to ensure your organization continues to look to the future as it considers infrastructure changes, consider these great resources:

• Learn from JuneAn in a series of blogs and videos about…
  • Not All Data is Created Equal
  • Building a Data Analytics Platform? Start by Futureproofing
  • 6 Ways to Optimize the Cost of Your Big Data Platform
  • 3 Things We Learned (the Hard Way) About Data Quality
• Hear what Mark Peters, principal analyst, ESG Global, has to say about data strategy and managing data as an asset
• Check out the replay of our webinars on
  • How to Create a Data Strategy for Virtualization
  • Delivering an Infrastructure Fit for the Future

How to Make the Move

Why organizations need to shift may be obvious, and the importance of a solidified data strategy makes sense, but it can feel “easier said than done” at times. So, let’s crawl before we run and really understand how to treat data like the asset that it is today. We recently hosted a webinar where we dove into the move to a Data @ the Center architecture. If you didn’t get a chance to watch it, you can check out the replay here. In this webinar, you’ll learn more about data siloes, sources and locations of data, distributed systems, technologies that are changing the relationship between compute and data, and how to treat data like an asset to get the full value from the currency of the 21^st century: data.

Got Questions?

As always, if you have questions or comments about how to move to a Data @ the Center architecture, we invite you to share those below or via Twitter @WesternDigiDC. We’ll use your questions and comments to inform future blogs and webinars.

The post How to Shift to Data @ the Center appeared first on Western Digital Corporate Blog.