Corporate executives concerned about managing data and promoting high-quality service have adopted cloud computing in business operations. Every day, more businesses are moving their infrastructure to the cloud.
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Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) is at the core of this implementation. This article explores everything you need to know about the service while providing answers to your questions.
But first things first:
What is Data management?
Data management is simply a series of activities or methodologies designed to collect, organize, protect, manage, and control data throughout a lifecycle.
It comprises various tasks to develop, regulate, and secure data successfully. Thus, effective data management should be deployed to eliminate the risks of data breaches, loss, and other concerns.
What Is Data Management As A Service (DMaaS)?
Data management as a service (DMaaS) is a cloud-based storage solution that allows businesses and organizations to manage their data efficiently, quickly, and securely.
One of the most vital points of this service is that businesses can collate data from multiple data sources into a centralized location. It is perhaps why most business executives are deploying this solution for their data security infrastructure.
DMaaS comprehensively covers the entire data lifecycle, including data collection, storage, protection, migration, analysis, and analytics.
DMaaS also monitors and visualizes data from mobile devices, virtual machines, and database servers in real-time, providing security alerts and other notifications as needed. This makes for swift compliance with global and industry security standards.
Unsurprisingly, 60% of IT Decision Makers agree that cloud computing has helped their business achieve sustainable growth.
How Does Data Management As A Service work?
DMaaS solutions are pretty different from traditional data management. In the latter, data is generated, collected, and stored in data silos according to organizational size and needs. The information processed from the silos is then monitored in a data center.
One of the drawbacks to this approach is that it takes a lot of manual input, making it a time-exhausting and physically-exhausting exercise. As corporate operations evolve, structured and unstructured data are generated at an increasing rate, piling the workload of an already stressed system.
This increases the risks of error-laden processes, which might cripple business operations altogether.
DMaaS brings something new to the table. It migrates data infrastructure into the cloud, creating a centralized framework to efficiently view, monitor, visualize, store, and protect data. Cloud computing ensures that tasks can be automated and managed with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
What’s more? Organizations are offered an ‘as a service’ infrastructure on the DMaaS platform, allowing them to only pay for the service they use, reducing capital expenses in the long run.
The risks associated with data loss are also eliminated when you adopt data management as a service.
Benefits of DMaaS to Organizations
There are several benefits to incorporating DMaaS for your business operations. They include:
Costs Saving
Incorporating this framework eliminates the need to maintain your own data centers, which is expensive. You don’t need to fork out vast finances to manage your data.
Instead, you leave that responsibility to third-party providers and improve your business bottom line with the spare resources. IT experts report an average of 20% cost savings for opting for cloud computing for their data management.
Data security
Beyond its cost-effectiveness, DMaaS provides a secure space for your infrastructure with advanced features such as backups, access control, and encryption.
This ensures you get value for your subscription, as the framework is designed to protect data from unauthorized access, breaches, theft, and other risks.
Accessibility
A bonus point for this service is that it can be accessed from anywhere worldwide. You will not need to keep your information in a data center.
As long as you’ve got a stable internet connection, you can seamlessly visualize and interact with big data. This is particularly beneficial for remote and hybrid IT teams.
Lower IT workload
Another benefit to this service is that it gives your IT department a lower workload. This allows them to discover, analyze, and mitigate risks accordingly.
The entire process is manual and complex with traditional systems, increasing the likelihood of risks occurring.
Scalability
DMaaS also allows organizations to identify and scale their data management sizes up or down accordingly to their needs.
Thus, you only pay for the amount of data management needed.
How Does Data Center Management-as-a-Service (DMaaS) Differ from Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)?
One of the significant differences between Data Management As A Service (DMaaS) and Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) is in the way they function.
The latter is usually on premises, allowing IT teams to manage and make informed decisions from their data centers. On the other hand, the former is launched on the cloud, removing the need for such premises place.
Another noticeable difference between them is that while DCIM utilizes data centers, servers, and IT peripherals to gain insights, DMaaS takes advantage of virtual machines, AI, and disparate data sources to gain and interpret information.
The Advantages of DMaaS Compared to Traditional DCIM Software
The advantages of DMaaS compared to traditional DCIM software includes the following:
- It allows your data management team to manage all forms of data efficiently.
- Data can also be managed whether on site or in the cloud.
- It also provides a single platform where your data is stored and heavily encrypted against external breaches.
- DMaaS features pre-installed analytics, allowing you to collate, visualize and make sense of organization data.
- It is a flexible and cost-efficient solution for das you can lower costs.
- DMaaS can also enable compliance with regulatory guidelines that governing agencies have established.
What Is Unified Data Management?
Unified data management (UDM) is a process where data from different sources across an organization is consolidated into a single platform.
UDM showcases a centralized view of the data assets, improving accuracy and form across the board. Some of the features of UDM include data governance, master data management, data quality management, and data integration to move services into a single system.
Some of the benefits of deploying UDM include the following:
- Promoting better collaboration between the different departments of companies.
- Improving decision-making amongst heads of departments.
- Reducing data duplication.
- Driving better outcomes for businesses and customers.
Use Cases for DMaas
DMaaS is beneficial in the following use cases:
- Data integration. You can generate data from multiple sources into a unified platform. This allows businesses to collate and manage their data in real time.
- Data governance. You can sufficiently make use of DMaaS to adopt policies like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to enhance data privacy and security. Businesses can comply with regulations and prevent unauthorized access with data management as a service.
- Data warehousing. DMaaS also provides a centralized system where all your data assets are stored. This allows companies to analyze different data under one framework instead of spending time sourcing for them between different silos.
- Data quality. DMaaS can also analyze and identify data inconsistencies while increasing data quality.
- Data analytics. DMaaS can also be used for comprehensive analytics on huge chunks of data to gain insights and take decisive actions.
Potential Drawbacks of DMaaS
Beyond its benefits, data management as a service has a couple of drawbacks. They include:
- Dependency on a third-party provider. Your data management will be completely outsourced to third-party providers. If such providers face downtime, it could negatively impact operations.
- Data security concerns. Security is another major concern. You must ensure that your provider has a comprehensive and foolproof security measure.
- Data integration concern. Some providers may not have tools in place for holistic integration. Thus, you must ensure your provider has compatible tools and features to enable seamless integration.
Data backup and disaster recovery
Data management as a service can be utilized to ensure data backup and disaster recovery. Human errors, cyberattacks, natural disasters, and hardware failures can cripple your data architecture.
With DMaaS, you can lower the impact of such risks, as your data is always backed up in the cloud and can be retrieved and restored when necessary.
Who are the main DMaaS providers?
While DMaaS solutions are relatively new in the IT ecosystem, there are major providers in the industry. They include:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Microsoft Azure
- IBM Cloud
- Alibaba Cloud
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Oracle Cloud
- Tencent Cloud
- DigitalOcean
- Linode
- OVHcloud
Conclusion
Data management as a service (DMaaS) ensures all your company data is managed, controlled, analyzed, visualized, and stored securely on a centralized platform in the cloud.
From this article, you can see why many companies are adopting this approach to safeguard their data.
So, what are you waiting for?