Top 10 Data Management Challenges: Data Accuracy Without Disruption

Businesses across the globe are increasingly leaning on their data to power their everyday operations. This makes better data management a top directive for leading enterprises. In the second entry of this three-part blog series, we look at four more leading data management challenges: cloud deployment, integrating multiple data sources while maintaining data accuracy, accessing data without disrupting analytics and managing data without impacting performance.

Data is often called “the new oil,” and for good reason—it’s the fuel that powers the most successful businesses in today’s digital landscape. However, as we discussed in the first part of this blog series, managing all of this data is no easy task. Issues such as data availability and security plague enterprises of all sizes across all verticals.

More Data, More Value—But Your Data Has to Be Accurate

Data availability and security are critically important, but the accuracy of the data, as well as how easily it can be assessed and consumed, play as much if not more of a role in maintaining a data-driven enterprise. Data that isn’t accurate provides little value to businesses, but at the same time, ensuring this accuracy can’t come at the expense of operations—even as operating environments and architectures continue to evolve and become more complex. Data management challenges inevitably arise in terms of:

• Shifting to a cloud-only environment that is capable of running groups of applications on the same cloud
• Integrating and connecting data sources to increase productivity and improve data quality and accuracy
• Accessing and managing tremendous amounts of data without negatively impacting database and application performance

How can you keep up? Let’s take a look at how OpenEdge can help you overcome four more leading data management challenges (remember, we covered numbers 1-3 in the last post).

4. Challenge: Cloud Deployment and Accelerated Cloud Adoption

There is an ever-growing contingent moving to cloud deployment. A study by Gartner, “Cloud Computing's Drive to Digital Business Creates Opportunities for Providers,” reports that by 2019, “30% of the 100 largest vendors’ new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only.”

Solution: OpenEdge Multi-Tenancy

OpenEdge Multi-Tenancy allows for separation of data between groups running applications in the same cloud. The SaaS application provider will be able to support multiple tenants, with separate logins for separate domains within a single database, and the multi-tenancy option ensures that the tenants’ data never crosses the partition between them. Operational costs are greatly reduced due to the increased efficiency of shared resources and the ability to update once for an entire set of tenants. See OpenEdge Multi-Tenancy for details.

5. Challenge: Synchronizing Data from Multiple Data Sources and Ensuring Accuracy

When moving from one home to another, there are certain things that usually change, like an address and utility providers. Whereas an individual can easily keep up with changes that affect only them, the vast amounts of data changes in an enterprise database that happen in only a small amount of time can be challenging to synchronize between servers. How does an enterprise keep track of the most accurate customer data?

Solution: OpenEdge Change Data Capture (CDC)

Identify, track and save the changes with OpenEdge Change Data Capture (CDC). OpenEdge Change Data Capture provides guaranteed accurate tracking of all data changes no matter where they occur, and serves as a single point of configuration regardless of ABL or SQL. See OpenEdge Change Data Capture (CDC) for details or view this webinar.

6. Challenge: Access Data without Disruption for Real-time Reports or Analytics

Getting up-to-date reports and analytics can be problematic if you need to disrupt operations to move the data. The need for access to key business performance indicators at any given time is crucial to sound decision making. How do you get real-time reports and analytics without disrupting the database?

Solution: OpenEdge Pro2

OpenEdge Pro2 captures changed data and writes it to a separate queue to identify the updated record. The transaction is carried out in real-time. OpenEdge Pro2 is a high-performing solution that gives you quick and easy access to mission-critical data for up-to-date reporting purposes, without disrupting business operations. See OpenEdge Pro2 for details.

7. Challenge: Managing vast amounts of accumulated data without affecting performance

When it rains, we count on our sewer systems and the connected infrastructure to whisk away water from roadways and pathways. What happens when huge amounts of water pummel an area for hours on end and the sewer systems can’t keep pace with the deluge of water? Floods ensue, which wreak havoc on a massive scale.

Your database is a system that (unless preventive measures are in place) can be overwhelmed with a deluge of accumulated data, which can negatively affect its performance. Are you prepared for the data deluge and resulting drag on performance? Perhaps you should consider reorganizing a bit.

Solution: OpenEdge Table Partitioning

The OpenEdge Table Partitioning solution re-allocates tables into multiple locations, which increases data access speed, availability and manageability of data. This divide and strengthen approach provides for easy data roll-in and roll-out, easier administration of large tables and quicker query processing.

By spreading things around a bit, Progress can help your database work more effectively which can help extend the lifespan of your hardware. Watch this webinar or see OpenEdge Table Partitioning for more details.

In the final entry of this three-blog series, we’ll take a look three more big data management challenges: proactively and strategically managing data, connecting to a variety of enterprise systems and data sources and finding the database administration talent you need to succeed. In the meantime, feel free to check out our latest infographic, which also covers many of these data management challenges.

If you want to find out how these Progress solutions and services can help you tackle your data management challenges, speak to your Progress account manager today.

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