Why DataOps is Critical for Digital Transformation

Data lies at the heart of all digital transformation. In fact, today, as organizations look to further accelerate their ongoing digital transformation initiatives, companies are looking to extract even more value from their data, to better drive corporate decision-making, help grow the business, improve customer satisfaction and gain a competitive advantage. 

Inspired by DevOps, DataOps, which Gartner defines as “a collaborative data management practice focused on improving the communication, integration and automation of data flows between data managers and data consumers across an organization”, has grown in popularity in the past decade as organizations seek to accelerate the delivery of business value from their data. But taken even one step further, enhanced data operations (i.e. more than DataOps) can help organizations maximize the business value of the data they own and also the infrastructure in which the data resides to increase data quality, reliability and availability in a hybrid cloud environment. This enables organizations to further improve business resilience and digitalization through collaborative, data-centric operations in an increasingly complex, interconnected world. Particularly as hybrid and multi-cloud environments proliferate and it becomes harder for teams to understand, analyze and streamline data usage.  

DataOps Enables Digitalization

By 2023, IDC predicts that 52% of worldwide GDP will come from products and services delivered by digitally-transformed enterprises—and according to Gartner, 91% of enterprises are already involved in some sort of digital initiative. This means that organizations already engaged in digitization are paving the way for a new future of business—commerce, production and innovation. But digitization is only half the battle—the other half (i.e., digitalization) comes from investing in understanding those digitally-driven insights and using those learnings to fuel business growth. 

In the face of stifling market competition and evolving customer demands, the key differentiator in market leadership today is data and operationalizing that data. Hence, the difference between the market leaders and followers boils down to this: Data operations. Data operations not only plays a vital role in empowering ongoing digital transformation initiatives (think hybrid cloud operations, DevOps optimization and application modernization; data is at the core of all of these efforts) but also serves as a foundation for faster, better-informed innovation—fueling organizational growth and propelling businesses ahead of their competition.

Who is Driving Digitalization?

To gauge where your organization stands on your digitalization or digital transformation roadmap, you must first identify who within your organization is driving it and who’s involved. The latter is an easy enough guess—because, essentially, it’s everyone. 

Although digital transformation is defined as the transformation of the digital operations of an organization, it reaches far beyond IT to all major functional departments and requires a cultural change to reach its fullest potential. That includes everyone from the chief information officer (CIO) and chief data officer (CDO)—collaborating with key stakeholders to map out and define digital transformation strategies and efforts and communicating goals and objectives—to the technical and professional teams—working closely with business units to design and operationalize new architectures and technologies to advance digital transformation initiatives. At the core of all of these modernization efforts is data; the metric for business success in the digital age. As such, integrating DataOps into your digital transformation efforts from the start is mission-critical. 

As the market becomes increasingly competitive and business leaders look for new ways to grow and expand their business, data will remain a key catalyst in achieving those lofty digital transformation goals. By gaining intelligence from their data, companies can realize the ultimate goal of data empowerment—where all employees have simplified, secure levels of access to the high-quality data they need to do their jobs—enhancing operational efficiency, improving business outcomes and fueling business transformation at scale.