‘Rethink Data’ Report Reveals That 68% Of Data Available To Businesses Goes Unleveraged

I first started hearing seriously about data ops last year at a couple of IT conferences. Then a group of former Kepware executives founded High Byte to point data ops specifically to the manufacturing industry. I told them I thought they had something there.

A representative of Seagate Technology sent me information about a study done with IDC about data in organizations. I haven’t had a relationship with Seagate for many years, but this is a timely report about enterprise data pointing out that 68% of data available goes unleveraged and that manufacturing is a laggard in this arena.

As enterprise data proliferates at an unprecedented pace – set to grow at a 42.2.% annual rate over the next two years – a new report from Seagate and IDC has revealed that the majority (68%) of data available to enterprises goes unleveraged, meaning data management has become more important than ever. 

Furthermore and somewhat surprisingly, the manufacturing sector shows the lowest level of task automation in data management, lowest rate for full integration of data management functions as well as low adoption of both multicloud and hybrid cloud infrastructures. 

The report also identifies the missing link of data management—DataOps—which can help organizations harness more of their data’s value and lead to better business outcomes.

The report, Rethink Data: Put More of Your Data to Work—From Edge to Cloud is based on a survey of 1500 global enterprise leaders commissioned by Seagate and conducted by the research firm IDC.

“The report and the survey make clear that winning businesses must have strong mass data operations,” says Seagate CEO Dave Mosley. “The value that a company derives from data directly affects its success.”

Some additional findings include:

  • The top five barriers to putting data to work are: 1) making collected data usable, 2) managing the storage of collected data, 3) ensuring that needed data is collected, 4) ensuring the security of collected data, and 5) making the different silos of collected data available.
  • Managing data in the multicloud and hybrid cloud are top data management challenges expected by businesses over the next two years.
  • Two thirds of survey respondents report insufficient data security, making data security an essential element of any discussion of efficient data management.

The missing link of data management is reported to be data operations, or DataOps. IDC defines DataOps as “the discipline connecting data creators with data consumers.” While the majority of respondents say that DataOps is “very” or “extremely” important, only 10% of organizations report having implemented DataOps fully. The survey demonstrated that, along with other data management solutions, DataOps leads to measurably better business outcomes. It boosts customer loyalty, revenue, profit, cost savings, plus results in other benefits.

“The findings of this study illustrating that more than two-thirds of available data lies fallow in organizations may seem like disturbing news,” said Phil Goodwin, research director, IDC and principal analyst on the study. “But in truth, it shows how much opportunity and potential organizations already have at their fingertips. Organizations that can harness the value of their data wherever it resides—core, cloud or edge—can generate significant competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

HPE Solidifies New Direction With As-a-Service and Software Direction

Antonio Neri, a scant two years into the position of President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), laid out a vision and roadmap last year to make the company “the global edge-to-cloud platform as-a-service company” which develops and delivers “enterprise technology solutions and services that help organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere.”

This year he unveiled new executive leadership–one heading GreenLake, the as-a-Service portion of the vision, and the other heading Ezmeral, the newly defined software portfolio and direction–and showed how far the vision has come in a year.

I am impressed with the speed and consistency of this pivot.

HPE Discover, the annual conference usually held in Las Vegas, went totally online this year. This was my sixth or seventh of these within four weeks, and by far the best. Kudos to the communications team for pulling this all together. I attended as an Influencer, and the global leader assembled an outstanding group (except for me) and a good program for us to meet as much of the leadership as possible.

I will write indepth specifically about GreenLake and Ezmeral and sustainability and helping restart work following COVID-19–and perhaps most important for you, my industrial audience–Aruba Edge Orchestrator.

Why do I take all the time and effort to attend these enterprise and IT events?

Let me share one example. I sat in two sessions specifically talking industrial applications.

In the first, an engineering leader from Stanley Black & Decker spoke of his IoT project using HPE’s Edgeline compute platform at almost every level of the manufacturing stack. Edgeline is an industrialized version of HPE’s high performance compute platform. I have seen examples in previous Discover events from off-shore oil platforms and a refinery in Texas. This is one of the points where the reality of “IT/OT Convergence” hits home.

The other session featured HPE Fellow and VP of HPE Labs Dr. Tom Bradicich detailing the vision of data–from analog data (which he has been discussing with me since his days at NI several years ago) to the edge to the cloud.

You can visit HPE.com and register for the event for a while, yet. Click sessions and search for keywords such as IoT, edge, and so forth to watch the on-demand videos. Yet another benefit of the “virtual experience.”

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People and Data—the Most Important Assets

This week I attended the AVEVA World customer conference sitting on my patio with a bank of computers on the table. It’s always nice to catch up with the latest from technology suppliers, even if we couldn’t meet in person and have all those informative hallway conversations.

Next week I’ll be attending three conferences, something that would have been a physical impossibility only a few months ago. Looks like all of my anticipated conference trips have been cancelled until November.

I must begin with a note regarding the AVEVA/Schneider Electric relationship. If you go back a few years, Schneider Electric made a rather large and significant acquisition. It kept the Foxboro and Triconex (and a few other) brands and used the software parts—Wonderware and Avantis and some others—as an investment into an engineering software company called AVEVA. As a result, Schneider Electric owns just over a majority of the shares in the publicly traded software company. And, therefore, Schneider Electric played a significant minor role in this conference.

Schneider’s chairman and CEO, Jean-Pascal Tricoire, said, “AVEVA should be agnostic. Our customers don’t have just one system but have the problem of integrating the complexity of having more than one system. AVEVA is completely open. We are independent companies working closely with each other.”

Craig Hayman, CEO of AVEVA, noted during his keynote address, “We’ve pivoted to emphasize digital. We recognize that people and data are the two most important assets. We do this technology in order to make people successful. Businesses have the great responsibility to protect employees and customers. We’re seeing the power of data and analytics helping companies respond to incidents as they occur and operate assets as efficiently as possible.” Indeed, digital, data, and people were the keywords of the event.

In further remarks, Tricoire emphasized “Digital Trust and Sustainability”. He shared how COVID-19 has accelerated existing digital trends, encouraging more efficiency, “remote everything,” greater resilience, and for sustainability to mitigate and adapt to primary threats of both the pandemic and climate change. He said, “Faced with a very volatile environment, companies need superior agility, and increased efficiency. This means they need increased capacity on one side, resiliency on the other side. The overall winner is digitalization. And the need for digitalization has been further reinforced by companies new need to operate remotely, for higher efficiency, and ultimately, for much better sustainability.”

Guest customer keynoter, Saad Bashir, CTO of the City of Seattle, speaking on “Digital Agility in the Age of COVID-19” shared his thoughts on what happened in Seattle when the pandemic hit. “Although we had planned for digital resiliency for some time, we didn’t really know how it would go until one morning all 30,000 people in our team decided to stay home and log on.” Although the team’s resiliency plans have held up well, Saad adds, “We’ve already seen opportunities from the lessons learned and one that’s worth highlighting is digital resiliency…with a unified view of our infrastructure with systems that are seamlessly connected so that they can inform decisions.”

Much discussion involved both Cloud and Edge—you must develop both, can’t have one without the other.

Ravi Gopinath, AVEVA Chief Cloud Officer and COO discussed cloud and AI. He noted four areas of investment—new way of engineering; new way of visualization; reliability and safe operations; drive agility. Develop cloud on one side and AI on the other. The cloud strengths—deploy applications easily, low TCO, enable flexible consumption, and enhance collaboration. AI provides—analysis, prediction, guidance, learning. Leading to Digital Twin, Big Data, and Industrial IoT and Edge.

The press release coming from the event focused on Schneider Electric, who announced expanded partnerships with AVEVA, Lenovo and Stratus to address the convergence of IT and OT. This partnership is bringing together system integrators with IT solution providers to build integrated industrial edge computing solutions resulting in the immediate release of three programs to empower system integrators to expand their value to end users, enabling their customers’ industrial digital transformations.

These programs include:

      Industrial edge reference designs: Co-developed with AVEVA, including solutions from Lenovo and Stratus, these reference designs reduce risk and time to market with fully customizable, pre-integrated EcoStruxure Micro Data Center solutions for any edge environment. With secure solutions designed to meet IT standards, system integrators can free up time from the IT architecture to focus on the software and solutions. These reference designs are available in Schneider Electric’s Local Edge Configurator and can be customized to specifications.
      A digital training program for system integrators: Edge computing continues to prove itself as a space for opportunity for system integrators to extend business models and establish their roles as consultants. This learning program includes a comprehensive digital training series for system integrators on Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Micro Data Center and EcoStruxure IT solutions to help address common challenges at the edge.
      The Industrial Edge Exchange Community: Built within Schneider Electric Exchange, the Industrial Edge Community allows system integrators to easily identify and engage with edge-certified IT solution providers. It is designed to facilitate new business and address IT/OT projects, and features a tool that pairs Alliance System Integrators with Schneider Electric’s Edge-certified IT Channel Partners.

    “The smart factory is becoming smarter. Our expanded partnerships and new industrial edge programs empower system integrators to leverage their domain expertise and become IT/OT convergence specialists and meet these needs for their customers,” said Philippe Rambach, Senior Vice President, Industrial Automation, Schneider Electric. “We know that smart manufacturing is driving an unprecedented wave of IT technologies into industrial spaces. As companies leverage AI, robotic processing automation, and more, they will require edge computing solutions to reduce latency and enable resiliency, while ensuring privacy and security, and addressing important data and bandwidth requirements.”

    What is the Industrial Edge?

    For industrial operators to capture the benefits of increased automation, they cannot rely on cloud-technology alone to bring the resiliency and speed demanded by AI, HD cameras, and other Industry 4.0 technologies. Local edge data centers are IT infrastructure enclosures/spaces/facilities distributed geographically to enable endpoints on the network. When in industrial environments such as a manufacturing plant or distribution center, this application is referred to as “industrial edge.”

    Digital Infrastructure and Solutions Company Expands and Focuses

    Digital Infrastructure and Solutions Company Expands and Focuses

    In brief: During its brief history as a collection of Hitachi Ltd. data properties, Hitachi Vantara continues to grow and remake itself. It has now added Hitachi Consulting and Intelligent Data Cataloging company Waterline Data. The new company combines IT Infrastructure, Data Management and Analytics.

    The first news is the combination of Hitachi Vantara with Hitachi Consulting as one company to create a new digital infrastructure and solutions company.

    The new Hitachi Vantara aims to become the world’s preferred digital innovation partner by unlocking the “good” in data that benefits customers, raises the quality of people’s lives and builds a sustainable society. Hitachi Vantara will specifically bring a competitive edge to the digital domains that matter most – the data center, data operations, and enterprise digital transformation.

    The new Hitachi Vantara combines the best consulting-led digital solutions and vertical industry expertise of Hitachi Consulting with Hitachi Vantara’s IT domain expertise. Going forward, the integrated company will help customers develop practical, scalable digital strategies and solutions that transform operational processes, improve customer experiences and create new business models to drive innovation and growth.

    For example, the new company will offer a holistic manufacturing industry practice as one of several vertical industry practices. The manufacturing practice will integrate consulting methodologies for addressing quality, customization, sustainability and new business models with data-driven solutions such as Lumada Manufacturing Insights from Hitachi Vantara, which integrates silos of manufacturing data and applies AI and machine learning to evaluate and enhance overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

    “A barrage of data and technology is disrupting enterprises and industries the world over,” said Toshiaki Tokunaga, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, Hitachi Vantara. “Through the integration of Hitachi Consulting, the new Hitachi Vantara will be uniquely equipped with the capabilities our customers need to guide them on their digital journeys. We’re going to be the company that helps customers navigate from what’s now to what’s next.”

    The Hitachi Vantara portfolio is built upon a foundation of world-class edge-to-core-to-cloud infrastructure offerings, including the recently introduced Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) 5000 series, the world’s fastest data storage array. The portfolio further features AI and analytics solutions, cloud services for application modernization, systems integration and change management services for SaaS-based ERP implementations and migrations, and Lumada-based digital industrial solutions. Hitachi Vantara’s offerings are all backed by world-class business consulting, deep experience in improving organization effectiveness, co-development capabilities and global delivery services.

    With its expanded capabilities, the new Hitachi Vantara will play a key role in advancing Hitachi’s 2021 Mid-term Management Plan, which aims to make the company a global leader through “Social Innovation Business.” The Social Innovation Business strategy centers on combining Hitachi’s industrial and IT expertise and products to create new value and resolve social issues.

    Hitachi Vantara will help advance the plan by expanding revenues from digital business, by digitally transforming Hitachi’s industrial businesses, by fueling international growth, and by delivering social, environmental and economic value which helps customers contribute to the attainment of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

    As announced in September 2019, Toshiaki Tokunaga, a 30-year Hitachi veteran who has successfully transformed several Hitachi businesses, will serve in the dual role of chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Hitachi Vantara.

    The company’s two business units, Digital Infrastructure and Digital Solutions, will be led by Presidents Brian Householder and Brad Surak, respectively. Hitachi Vantara today also announced details of other appointments to its executive leadership team.

    Hitachi Vantara Will Integrate Advanced Data Cataloging Technology Into Lumada Data Services Portfolio

    In further news, Hitachi Vantara announced acquisition of the business of Waterline Data, which is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. It provides intelligent data cataloging solutions for DataOps that help customers more easily gain actionable insights from large datasets and comply with data regulations such as GDPR.

    Waterline Data delivers catalog technology enabled by machine learning (ML) that automates metadata discovery to solve modern data challenges for analytics and governance across edge-to-core-to-cloud environments. Waterline Data’s technology has been adopted by customers in the financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries to support analytics and data science projects, pinpoint compliance-sensitive data and improve data governance. It can be applied on-premises or in the cloud to large volumes of data in Hadoop, SQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud environments.

    Waterline Data’s patented “fingerprinting” technology is the cornerstone of its solutions, removing one of the biggest obstacles to data lake success. Fingerprinting uses AI- and rule-based systems to automate the discovery, classification and analysis of distributed and diverse data assets to accurately and efficiently tag large volumes of data based on common characteristics.

    Integrating Waterline Data technology with Hitachi Vantara’s Lumada Data Services portfolio will provide a common metadata framework to help customers break down data silos distributed across the cloud, the data center, and the machines and devices at the edges of their networks. By applying DataOps methodologies to the unified datasets, customers can more rapidly gain insights and drive innovation.

    “Our research illustrates that almost half of enterprise data practitioners are spending more than 50% of their time simply trying to find and prepare data for analysis. Data catalog products have emerged in recent years as strategic imperatives for enterprises seeking to address this challenge while also improving data governance,” said Matt Aslett, research vice president, 451 Research. “This acquisition is logical and strategic: Waterline Data’s capabilities are a complementary fit for Hitachi Vantara and its Lumada Data Services portfolio. Adding Waterline Data furthers the company’s ability to address growing demand for products and services that deliver more agile and automated approaches to data management via DataOps: helping enterprise consumers of data ultimately leverage information in a fluid, yet governed way.”

    “Hitachi Vantara provides customers with the digital building blocks, DataOps approaches and industry solutions they need to transform their organizations through data-driven insights,” said Brad Surak, president, Digital Solutions, Hitachi Vantara. “Waterline Data technologies complement Hitachi Vantara’s DataOps expertise and will become key offerings in the Lumada Data Services portfolio, bringing our customers greater visibility, tighter quality control, improved compliance and better management of their data.”

    Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition of Waterline Data is subject to customary closing conditions and it is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Hitachi’s fiscal year 2019 (ending March 31, 2020).

    Upon completion of the acquisition, Hitachi Vantara will make Waterline Data technologies available as standalone solutions as well as integrated components of the Lumada Data Services portfolio.

    Bloomberg Global Economic Index

    Bloomberg Global Economic Index

    Several companies send a variety of economic research data. I appreciate a broad view of what’s happening in the world even though we are in a period where many think nations can survive alone (note: check your history; hard to find a time that didn’t exist without international trade).

    The Bloomberg New Economy Forum launched a first-of-its-kind index, covering 114 economies accounting for 98% of global GDP. The New Economy Drivers and Disrupters Report introduces a new benchmark that for the first time measures competitiveness against the new disruptive forces sweeping the global economy: automation, digitization, climate change, protectionism, and populism.

    “In the New Economy, traditional ways of measuring competitiveness no longer tell the whole story. From protectionism to climate change, new disruptive forces are upending assumptions about how economies grow, and reshuffling the pattern of winners and losers. This report brings transparency to the obstacles economies face, showing who is positioned for success, and who is not,” said Tom Orlik, Chief Economist, Bloomberg Economics.

    Bloomberg defines the New Economy as the shift in global economic power, from the traditional seats of power in Europe and North America to emerging economies spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The New Economy Drivers and Disrupters Report highlights the complex challenges that come with this shift in power, and concludes that the new economies are poorly positioned for the new disruptive forces. The ‘catch up’ process – which has defined the global economy for the last 50 years, with low-income economies narrowing the gap with high-income – isn’t over. It will become more complicated.

    Key findings from the report include:

    ●       The next stage of China’s development will be harder than the last: On the traditional drivers of development, China outperforms most economies. With rapid modernization of infrastructure, advances in education, and investment in research and development, it’s the fourth ranked overall and the highest ranked emerging market. On the disruptive forces reshaping the world economy, from protectionism to climate change, it’s much less well positioned, ranking 50th.

    ●       In terms of economic opportunity, India today looks similar to China at the beginning of its boom: Favorable demographics and a far reaching reform agenda have the potential to super-charge growth. However, there is a barrier to rapid development – the country is even more exposed to disruptive forces than China, as it is ranked 80th. In an age of disruption, late developers will have a more difficult time in catching up.

    ●       Vietnam and Asia’s fourth wave: In Asia, exporting has been the path to prosperity. First Japan, then Korea, then China grew by leveraging their low labor costs to claim global market share. Vietnam has the potential to be part of the fourth wave of development. With a global tilt toward protectionism, however, the export path to prosperity is becoming more difficult to follow. Vietnam ranks 73rd on disrupters.

    ●       Loose BRICS: For more than a decade, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have embodied hopes for emerging market economies. Bloomberg’s Index shows that, with the exception of China, they have yet to deliver on their potential. With work still left to do on optimizing traditional drivers of development, the BRICS will have additional difficulty managing the coming disruptive forces of the new economy.

    ●       Disrupting the Advanced Economies: For major advanced economies, the right policy response to disruptive forces will make the difference between extending prosperity and slumping growth. In the U.K., breaking ties with the world’s biggest trade zone could cost 7% of GDP over the next ten years. In the U.S., an immigrant-enhanced workforce and trade-boosted gains in productivity could support annual GDP growth at 2.7% in the next decade. Without them, growth could slump to 1.4%. Germany and Singapore showcase the capacity of high-income countries to manage disruptive forces. Singapore tops our rankings on the digital economy. Germany’s strong institutions and highly educated workforce provide a bulwark against risk.

    About New Economy Drivers and Disruptors Report

    The New Economy Drivers and Disrupters Report evaluates 114 economies on two sets of metrics. One captures the traditional drivers of development, while the other captures exposure to the disruptive forces creating new risks and opportunities in the new economy. The drivers consist of a composite gauge of productivity, projected growth in the labor force, the scale and quality of investment, and a measure of distance from the development frontier. The disrupters gauge economies’ positions in relation to populism, protectionism, automation, digitization and climate change.

    The indices were developed by Tom Orlik, Scott Johnson, and Alex Tanzi of Bloomberg Economics, drawing on data from official, academic, and market sources. Michael Spence, Nobel laureate in economics, advised on the report.

    The report includes a series of interactive data visualization graphics that show how economies are positioned relative to their peers, along with the rankings based on the drivers and disrupter metrics. Case studies include:

    ·        “A Rare Trade-War Winner, Vietnam Struggles to Keep its Gains”

    ·        “Chinese Micro Loans Open Window for Small Firms – And More Debt”

    ·        “Climate Change Leaves Zambia Struggling to Keep the Lights On”

    ·        “Poland’s Struggle to Find Workers Leaves Businesses in a Bind”

    A series of subsequent case studies will launch weekly leading up to the New Economy Forum.

    The New Economy Drivers and Disrupters Report is a proprietary report created by Bloomberg Economics for the New Economy Forum. The forum, co-hosted by Bloomberg and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges is being held in Beijing on November 20-22, 2019, bringing together the world’s most influential business leaders and government officials from more than 60 countries to drive public-private partnerships and action. New economy leaders will convene in China to address the forces of disruption challenging the new economy and catalyze solutions that impact change.

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