The Future is Bright, The Future is Data – Matt Watts – Ep 21

The idea that our data is critical to the future of our organisation isn’t a new one, the focus around managing it, protecting and securing it underlines its importance to any modern organisation.

But protecting our data and ensuring we maintain its privacy and security is not the only important focus we should have.

You don’t need to look around the technology industry too much to hear phrases such as “data is the new gold” or “data is the new oil”, but like any good marketing phrase, it is based on a degree of fact.

As marketing-y as those phrases are, it would be wrong to dismiss them. The image I chose for this blog post suggests, “if the future is digital, the guy with the most data wins”, However, I think that phrase is only partly correct.

It is certain that the modern organisation is becoming increasingly digital, transforming into one that is relying on data and digital workflows for its success, however when it comes to data, it’s not how much data you have, it’s what you do with it and learn from it that will determine who really wins.

That’s the focus of this week’s podcast as I’m joined by NetApp’s Director, Technology and Strategy, Matt Watts.

Matt is in an interesting position, working for one of the world’s largest “traditional” storage vendors and charged with helping them to develop a strategy for dealing with challenges faced by organisations in a world where “traditional” storage is seen as something less valuable.

Maybe to the surprise of many, Matt agrees, while NetApp have great products, they fully accept that the future isn’t about IOPS, Capacities and flashing lights. All that really matters is the data.

In this episode, Matt provides fascinating insights into the modern data world, how extracting valuable information from data is a significant advantage to an organisation, how 3^rd party companies working with storage vendors is critical to the future of data management and how companies like Microsoft, Amazon and IBM with Watson are commoditising machine learning and artificial intelligence to a point where, organisations of all sizes, can take advantage of these very smart tools to give them insights and understanding that just a few years ago was out of the reach for all but the very wealthiest of companies.

We also look at how building an appropriate data management strategy is crucial in enabling organisations to access tools that can allow them to take full advantage of their data asset.

Have a listen, Matt provides some great information to help you to get the maximum from your data and be the person not with “the most data” but the one with “the most information from their data” that wins.

Enjoy the show.

To find out more from Matt you can find him on twitter @mtjwatts or follow his blog at watts-innovating.com (check out the article “Your Supermarket knows more about you than your Doctor) and to find out more about NetApp’s own data management strategies check out the “Data Fabric” section of their website.

If you enjoyed the show, why not subscribe to the Tech Interviews podcast;