The Significance of Data to the Value of a Business

To drive my point home coming straight out of the starting blocks, I want you to think back to the last time you put your hands up in resignation upon the realisation that the data you have lost is indeed gone and there’s no way of getting it back. That’s perhaps something which happens less often in this day and age, with data storage and back-up solutions such as those which operate in the cloud, but just because it hasn’t happened in a while that doesn’t mean it won’t happen at all.

Now in that personal case of having lost data such as your digitally-captured memories or in fact some work documents, it’s still a huge hit to take, but just try to imagine what the same mishap could mean for a small business which otherwise appears to be just hitting its stride, or indeed a well-established business which seeks to consolidate on its growing success. It would be no less than catastrophic, wouldn’t it, especially if you consider that the value of a business actually resides in the data it has?

This data could include important customer details which are significant to the profitable operation of the business, such as how much each of those customers has spent with the business over a certain period of time, etc. This data and information could also encompass financial records and growth and expansion strategies which have been built-up and refined over the years. Some businesses exist and operate solely on the big data they store and manipulate, such as many membership-based websites. The likes of Facebook come to mind as such an example.

So since there is no question about how important data is to any business operating in the 21st century, perhaps the pressing issue is that of how best to store that data and keep it safe from any one of the many threats which exist.

Every suggestion which falls in line with the best practices of data storage in this day and age points to implementing data storage and handling infrastructure which is extensible, in other words it needs to be future-proof. This falls directly in line with the #NurturingData best practices as innovated and upheld by the likes of IDBS, a cloud-based research and development (R&D) platform which offers more than just a means through which to store data over media such as the cloud.

This is the future of data handling and storage and dare I say, the future is now, with the key take-away from this data handling and storage model being that of effectively having one solution that caters to a wide array of associated functions and features of data handling and storage.

Sometimes you want to be able to modify and update some of your business-related data without first having to download everything and manipulate it locally, so real-time integration should definitely be a key consideration.

Unless you are indeed a data storage and handling company which specialises solely in this field, you don’t want to take on the specialised task of designing and maintaining the data storage infrastructure yourself, which brings to light the issue of security, something else which needs to be considered. You’d naturally want to rest-easy knowing your data is safe from damage, but you also want it to be safe from the prying eyes of competitors and anyone who might gain an advantage through taking a peek into your operations.