You May Be Drinking Eggnog, But in 2015 The Enterprise Will Be Drinking From Data Ponds

Let me explain, one trend being thrown around in the industry to combat the data storage issue is the idea of “data lakes” — a repository where you can store any and all data in its original source and then figure out what to do with it later. That sounds like basements across the country!

With such an unstructured environment, though, companies are still struggling with the hardware and software needed to process everything and make it possible to work across systems, apps, infrastructures, etc. This means that while we may not quite be living in the age of “data lakes,” we might be testing the waters of “data ponds.” As the challenges of basic integration between disparate stores of data are overcome, we can begin to test the processing power in smaller environments.

From our perspective, 2015 will bring the next step in the evolution of data usage. As an increasing number of data streams feed into "data ponds," the enterprise will take their newfound ability to integrate these data sources and start building business applications that transform the data into actionable insight. This will not only increase the value of that data but it will also incentivize businesses to ensure all of their business critical data is integrated and flowing into the same pond. Now if only we could make sense of other storage problems that way!