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Why DMaaS Is the Future of Data Management

Using DMaaS for effective data management, security, and better decision making.

• By Artem Berehovyi
• February 24, 2020

Each age is defined by what drives our civilization forward. Just as bronze and iron influenced ancient history, big data is shaping the information age today. However, big data comes with big responsibility. The amount of information is so overwhelming that we need to tame its flow.

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Currently, data management's best hope may be data center management-as-a-service (DMaaS). In this article, we'll examine the events that predated the popularity of DMaaS, its place today, and what the near-term future of data management holds for us.

The Past: Data Safety, RDBMS, and the Cloud

The previous decade was infamous for data breaches: 10 out of the 15 largest data thefts occurred in the 2010s. The three largest breaches together exposed data of almost two billion users. Key driving factors include ineffective security measures and mistreatment of collected data.

Governance regulations became the reaction to data safety threats. GDPR and CCPA are no doubt the most disruptive, but more are coming. An act similar to CCPA is on its way in Virginia. Also, data protection regulations are soon to be adopted in Brazil (with a maximum fine of $12.3 million), India (a fine of 2 to 4 percent of a company's global turnover), and Thailand (in addition to financial penalties, violators may face criminal charges).

Businesses found themselves unable to manage their enormous data volumes efficiently and securely with available solutions. In the past, database needs were filled using a relational database management system (RDBMS), a system that struggled to manage and categorize the ever-increasing amount of data. Also, an RDBMS was built for gradual data growth and it failed to cope with rapid data generation. Furthermore, implementing an RDBMS was pricey.

This drove demand for an alternative data management approach. As a result, cloud solutions offering practical tools emerged on the market; DMaaS was one of them. To protect data from theft or breaches, cloud platforms provide four types of controls: deterrent (to decrease the number of attacks), preventive (to enhance the system resistance to incidents), detective (to detect incidents as they occur), and corrective (to correct the damage caused by incidents).

Encryption can also protect data stored in the cloud. It is the process of modifying and encoding data before it is stored. Of the solutions currently on the market, encryption is the best approach to data protection. It's required at every data access point, which guarantees that even if some data is stolen, it cannot be read or abused. Data can be decrypted only with a key, without which intruders can't use the data. Moreover, encryption provides fitting means for data depending on whether it's at rest or in transit. However, clouds are not only about security; they also assure the quality of data using:

• Exception analysis to check for potential problems caused by insufficient or duplicate data
• Corporate action analysis, including match key analysis, de-duping, or establishing vendor quality
• Completeness and exception dashboards to analyze data for the these properties

The Present: DCIM versus DMaaS

Data center infrastructure management (DCIM), the solution available for several years, is still popular. However, experts claim that DCIM is not totally fit for the industry's needs. For example, DCIM fails to gain insights from colossal volumes of data. In contrast, DMaaS performs such operations almost instantly.

Rhonda Ascierto, VP of research at Uptime Institute, says that "DMaaS enables metrics and views that aren't possible with DCIM alone." She argues that a company using DCIM will never be able to receive insights from data that can match "what it can get with the DMaaS approach." Along with physical data center infrastructure management, DMaaS also provides services such as workload and energy management, connectivity, and business costing.

Cost-efficiency is another advantage of DMaaS. The solutions are usually offered at a comparatively low cost or even for free. In many cases, a user account is all that's needed to start using the service, and organizations are charged only for additional features such as an increased number of users, additional cloud storage, unlimited workspaces, and more detailed insights about the stored data.

Jeff Klaus, general manager of Intel Data Center Management Solutions, believes DMaaS is set to dominate the market. "IT teams looking to meet goals around power, performance, and efficiency will increasingly turn to DMaaS as their go-to platform," he said in his article for Data Center Frontier.

The Future: Augmented Analytics and Data Management

DMaaS is developing rapidly and security, low cost of adoption, and effective data management with robust insights are not the only benefits that will help it conquer the data management market. The killer features that will impress enterprises in the near-term are augmented analytics and augmented data management.

Augmented analytics (AA) is already offered by some DMaaS service providers. AA helps discover valuable insights and changes so users can make optimal business decisions. As opposed to traditional analytical approaches, AA carries out such insights immediately. AA's ample opportunities for in-depth data analysis for better decision making will drive companies to invest in business intelligence, data science, and machine learning platforms this year.

Augmented data management (ADM) compensates for the lack of technical skills among employees by making data management automatic. Using AI and machine learning capabilities, data management processes become self-configuring. ADM will address all aspects of data management, including data quality assurance, metadata management, data integration, and database management. This allows more technically savvy specialists to spend their time solving more complex issues.

Conclusion

With the skyrocketing amount of data as well as the security threats, traditional data management solutions are no longer sufficient. DMaaS has emerged to address these challenges with data encryption, data management features, and lower cost of adoption. DMaaS tools make this technology even more cost-effective for businesses.