Datanami’s #2 Big Data Trend of 2019: Data Silos Continue Proliferating

Back in January, the big data news portal Datanami put together a list of “10 Big Data Trends to Watch for 2019.” Now that we’re firmly in the back half of the year, we’ve decided to go over each of Datanami’s 10 big data trends to see how they stack up with our own observations. This post covers Big Data Trend #2: Data Silos Continue Proliferating.

 
Many organizations dream of having a “single version of the truth”: a master data repository that stores the enterprise’s most up-to-date information and delivers it in a clear, consistent manner. Unfortunately, nearly all of them fail to reach this lofty goal.

“Data silos” are databases or data files that are maintained by one team or department within an organization, while not being available to the larger organization, including other employees who could benefit from having access to them. Obviously, this creates frustrations and inefficiencies, preventing employees from reaching their full potential.

Data silos can occur for a variety of reasons:

• Technological: Different parts of the organization may use different formats and methods to store information.
• Structural: Larger companies may have complicated hierarchies or many divisions between different parts of the organization, inadvertently creating data silos due to lack of awareness.
• Interpersonal: In the most egregious cases, people on opposite sides simply don’t want to share information—even for the good of the organization as a whole.

 
Without a powerful centralizing force to counter these tendencies, the natural impulse for most businesses is to lock away information in data silos. Shattering these data silos therefore needs to be a top priority for any company that has truly earned the title of “data-driven.”

It’s crucial that data-driven companies have a mature, high-quality, centralized data warehouse that will make information accessible to everyone in your organization who needs it. To learn more about bringing down your data silos, read Datavail’s white paper, “When the Data Doesn’t Match Up: How to Get Business Insights You Can Trust.”

Want more detail on this and the other 9 data trends of 2019? Download “Top 10 Big Data Trends of 2019.”