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The “Dirty Work” of Data, Courtesy of The Rolling Stones

Big data is a big deal

Data management ensures the right people get the right data, yet there is so much data we've had to invent the word "infoglut."

• By Jill Dyché
• 04/21/09

When The Rolling Stones last played the Hollywood Bowl, Mick Jagger paused between songs to comment when the band had previously played the Bowl it was 1969, and tickets were $4 apiece. Many of the people in the boxes -- the Bowl’s best seats, where a group of four or six can have dinner and drinks while they watch the show -- had paid upwards of $400 apiece for the privilege of seeing the Stones play the Bowl. If you looked around right after Mick’s remark, you could see a few of these big spenders twitch.

Back in the days when we had megabytes of data instead of terabytes, when getting information was as easy as yesterday’s sales report, when business involved three time zones and not 15, and when we just called a programmer when we needed data, we couldn’t have predicted what a big deal data would become. These days we have “infoglut.”

Wouldn’t it have been nice had we agreed on terminology back then so we’d have an institutionalized vocabulary now? We’d have a framework and categorization methods to simplify access to complex and disparate data. We’d have built metadata into our implementation processes. We’d be more educated about when to apply data management, and be ready to take on new needs such as unstructured data. Our data quality solutions would have transcended our data warehouses and be enterprisewide.

Master data management (MDM) relies on a “loosely coupled” approach, removing data from the purview of the applications and defining it on behalf of the enterprise. The whole premise of putting data management in place is to ensure that people who need the information can access and use it effectively and quickly. If you look at the proliferation of the sources and volumes of data, infoglut is here to stay.

Nowadays, many managers are using chaos as an excuse for not beginning the hard work of formal MDM and data governance efforts, but it’s only going to get worse. The longer we put off formalized rigor in managing our data, the more difficult it gets and the more expensive it becomes. If companies really think that data is a corporate asset, they need to start managing it now.

In the case of our corporate data, the Stones might actually be right: Time Waits for No One. Start pitching management for funding to formalize data management processes, acquire the enabling technologies, and hire or train for the skills, then, Ride On, Baby!