Friday, August 12, 2011

Start-ups excel in data management

It goes without saying that the young are more agile than the old - and this applies to businesses too.

An Oracle roundtable discussing data management concluded that newer companies are able to utilise their data in order to create opportunities, in a way that larger companies cannot.

Diverse and fragmented legacy systems hamper the big businesses – in a nutshell, there’s just too much data hanging around.

"I'd hate to be the CIO of a large bank," said David Rajan. Oracle UK technology director. "How do you go from worrying about data security and management across 5,000 databases, and compete with a service like [short-term lender] Wonga?"

A company such as Wonga can work in real-time – data-mining and accessing information from the web in order to make quick and accurate decisions.

A large enterprise often has as many as 5,000 databases – where do you start looking?

"With so many databases there's the risk of having different versions of the truth, and different levels of data available to different applications.” Said Rajan.

Data security inevitably becomes an issue – when the call comes to secure the company data, the answer is, “Which version?”

No business wants the reputation for not ‘knowing’ their customer, as Rajan explains.

“It's like when you call your utility company and one department knows your address, they transfer you and the next department doesn't even know your name."

The answer is consolidation of data. And also, as suggested by the panel – cut down those databases so the IT management, can, do as intended - manage.

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