It’s time for a data strategy – Matt Watts – Ep 126

Data, data everywhere, that seems to be the standard refrain in most businesses, we are collecting more data from more sources than ever, yet in many cases we don’t have a clear and bespoke strategy for dealing with it, how we use, store and secure data tends to be embedded in other strategies and policies. Many enterprises talk about the importance of their data and how they see it as a crucial asset, so is now the time to have a bespoke and specific data strategy?

If it is, why is it? What should it include? How do we go about building one? Data strategies in my opinion are crucial to the modern enterprise and should be a core part of their business and technology strategy and it was a chance conversation with this weeks guest, that lead to this week’s Tech Interviews as I’m joined by returning guest to the show Matt Watts, CTO EMEA at NetApp. Matt has been at NetApp for 15 years and during that time, as well as his wider time in the technology industry, he has always had a great enthusiasm for understanding technology trends and that is exactly the same here as we discuss the importance of a data strategy and why now is the time for enterprises to develop theirs.

In this episode we discuss.

• Are we still too fixated on “boxes”?
• Before we talk tech, what is the strategy?
• What is driving the change in how we view data and its use?
• Closing the void between business decision makers and IT
• DataOPS
• Stop having our data strategy dictated by the storage we have bought!
• Data platforms not storage
• The importance of communication
• Tips for building a plan
• If you are going to disrupt anyway take a step back and think

As always Matt provides some fascinating insight into the development of a data strategy, why in his view it is important and why its crucial that we are taking all angles of our enterprise needs into consideration when making decisions around our data platform. If you want to find out more from Matt you can find him on LinkedIn on his excellent blog watts-innovating.com and well as on twitter @mtjwatts and you can find out what NetApp are doing in this space on netapp.com.

I am with Matt 100% on the importance of data strategies and thinking about data platforms, not just storage hardware and locations, so I hope you found our conversation useful. If you have any comments then please email me at podcast@techstringy.com and of course you can find me on twitter @techstringy.

Next time we look more at strategies as we discuss building a data analytics strategy, to make sure you catch that show then why not subscribe.

If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest then contact me at podcast@techstringy.com Until next time, thanks for listening.