Take IT Operations to the Next Level with DataOps

One of the most apparent consequences of the current Covid-19 pandemic is “the infusion of data-enabled services into ever more aspects of life.” In fact, the coronavirus has widened the performance gap between tech leaders and laggards. 

Contrary to popular belief, the difference between tech behemoths (like Amazon and Netflix) and the rest of the world isn’t the brain power of their data science teams. But it’s their radical data-driven way of building software. When software began to eat the world, leading organizations everywhere also became software companies. Many now understand that to be effective at that they must also become a data company.

They understand that using data as a critical strategic advantage means breaking down silos between people, process, and technology for modern application development, IT operations, and data science initiatives. For example, although generally less nimble than the numerous digital upstarts in that industry, a few leading capital markets players are pressing home a significant data advantage to increase their lead over the chasing fintech pack. 

At one of the world’s oldest and largest global banks, a highly-focused Data Center of Excellence helped address the ongoing deluge and complexity of enterprise data to develop artificial intelligence applications that rely on high-quality data. By automating safe and timely delivery of non-production environments from more than 1 petabyte of new data every month, this venerable institution now leads the way with artificial intelligence innovation.

Authors of a new analyst report analyzed enterprises (that are also users of the Delphix DataOps Platform) to understand the benefit of transforming their data operations. They found that leveraging DataOps translates into significant IT ops benefits and radically more effective support for data stakeholders that drive improved application performance with fewer errors and better business results. 

Organizations saw a 72% total cost reduction improvement that equates to an average of $5.2 million infrastructure savings. Moreover, there was a 76% reduction in business risk from decreasing the number of errors leaking in production. 

“Our security team saves time because they can identify vulnerabilities very quickly,” according to a participant. “They can identify the issues rather than waiting for more than 10 hours. It saves quite a bit of time, about 40%.”

The functional areas showing the highest level of productivity increase included database management (47%), security management (28%) and infrastructure management (22%). In total, IDC found IT staff productivity had a 24% improvement and generated $5.3M in value.

“Our team is saving 70% over their normal time,” another participant added. “The productivity side means that the same number of people are doing something like four to five times the amount of work.” 

The report also indicates compelling benefits when for cloud migration. Results show the time required on average, to move data from on-premises to the cloud, took less than 2 hours from 16 hours. 

Businesses investing in data capabilities need to ask themselves these questions: 

• Are you using a purpose-built data platform that automates seamless data provisioning and grants self-service access to data teams? 
• Can you securely connect and distribute data across multi-generational systems, regardless of location or geography?
• Do you have the ability to safeguard sensitive information in a way that maintains the integrity of the data for development, testing, and real-world simulations?

QA, test, and app dev teams often use slow, poor quality data. This creates data bottlenecks for development workflows, costs more person-hours, and exposes companies to governance and compliance risk. Becoming a digital business means applying data and technology to enable new types of products and services rather than simply hoarding data that begets unwarranted financial burdens, impacts velocity, and puts the company at risk of data breach. 

Ultimately, the absence of data availability and automation creates a silent cost to the business in lost productivity and revenue. While the future is more ambivalent and uncertain than ever, IT operations can become much more efficient. They can move quickly to align with business needs when you’re able to deliver applications faster with compliant, high-quality data.