Cloud Data Management – It’s All About the Application

Cloud Data Management is a trending term these days – the incredible promise of the cloud and the accompanying technologies like streaming, in-memory databases, and multi-tenant databases have made everyone realize that we need new solutions for data management.

So, What Is Cloud Data Management?

Simply put, cloud data management is emerging as an alternative to data management using traditional on-premises software.  Put differently, the cloud changes everything and requires a complete reinvention of data management tools.

With that as a foundation, here are a few core tenets of cloud data management:

• Hybrid, Multi-Cloud – Cloud data management is not on-premises or in the cloud –it needs to be both. Cloud data management is all about cloud flexibility.
• Application-Centric – Cloud data management should eliminate any reliance upon underlying infrastructure. Instead, it focuses on unlocking the value of your data residing in all your enterprise applications.
• Elastic and On-Demand Scaling – Cloud data management should be able to handle elastic scaling of compute and storage tiers.
• Automatic Management – Cloud data management needs to allow for automatic management of your storage tier, compute tier, and your data.

Let’s call these features “table stakes” in the cloud data management solution world.  In order to achieve true digital transformation of your businesses and embrace the cloud with confidence, we need to look further at additional facets of cloud data management:

• Flexibility for Record-Level Manipulation and Transparency – Cloud data management should allow you to peek “inside the record,” a.k.a. provide semantic visibility, and also allow for making decisions based on this semantic visibility. Traditional data management solutions have focused on LUN or VM-centric constructs and do not allow for this application-centric insight.
• Search Capability for Cloud Data – Customers now wish to search for everything across the web – their own data on their laptops, and their own activity on their mobile apps. A true cloud data management solution is incomplete unless it allows you to search your records.  Searching provides businesses the ability to monetize their data by allowing for personalization and to better serve their customers by customizing the business processes.
• Allow for Application Data Mobility at Record-Level Granularity Between Geographic Regions To, From, and Within the Cloud – Most enterprises are running global applications and need the flexibility to move data around different geographies.  Enterprises want to manage application data stored in multiple clouds, and hybrid environments with data being stored in the cloud, and on-premises. A cloud data management solution should allow for cloud data sets, and for the accompanying applications to be truly “mobile” across geographies and multiple clouds. This type of solution allows for maximum flexibility as well as maximum customization to follow industry specific or country specific laws and standards.

What are your cloud data management challenges? We welcome your comments and feedback.