What Data Management Pros Expect to See in 2023

No question about it: Experienced data management professionals will continue to be in high demand in 2023 as organizations increasingly rely on data to inform their decision-making.

In 2023, industry leaders believe that security teams will revamp protocols to take better care of data exfiltration prevention. Data management platform makers will release features designed to spot data theft and make it difficult for people to exfiltrate data.

Key Trends

Here are key trends and predictions for data management professionals in 2023:

1. The role of the data management professional will continue to evolve and expand. As data becomes increasingly central to business operations, data management professionals will be responsible for not only managing and storing data, but also for analyzing and interpreting it to provide valuable insights and support data-driven decision-making.
2. There will be a greater emphasis on data governance and security. With data breaches and cyberattacks on the rise, organizations will place a greater emphasis on protecting sensitive data and ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2018 and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) of 2020. Data management professionals will play a crucial role in implementing and enforcing data governance and security protocols.
3. The use of AI and ML in data management will continue to grow. Data management professionals will need to be familiar with these technologies and how to use them to extract insights from large datasets, automate data-driven processes, and support predictive analytics.
4. The demand for skilled data management professionals will remain strong. With the increasing importance of data to business operations, organizations will continue to seek out professionals with strong data management skills to support their data-driven initiatives. This will create opportunities for professionals with the right skills and expertise to advance their careers and take on leadership roles in data management.
5. The need for data literacy will increase. As data becomes more integral to business operations, it will be important for all employees to have a basic understanding of data and how to use it effectively. Data management professionals will play a key role in helping to educate and train non-technical staff on data literacy and best practices for working with data.

What the Experts Believe

Akhilesh Tripathi, CEO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based enterprise software company Digitate — a fast-growing subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services — sees the sector as “pushing to derive more value from data in terms of optimizing operations, driving cost efficiencies and improving predictive intelligence” in 2023.

“Data management has traditionally focused on efficient and secure ways to collect, store and analyze data. But as organizations increase their reliance on data-driven decision-making, the future of data management is going to focus on collecting the ‘right’ data,” Tripathi told The New Stack. “AI/ML solutions provide effective levers to assess data quality regarding the ‘four Vs’ of volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. The focus of data observability will also shift toward intelligent solutions for detecting and resolving data quality issues automatically. Adaptive monitoring is another promising direction to collect the right data at the right time.

Using AIOps and combining intelligent automation, AI and ML, enterprises can more readily scale and improve resiliency, important elements during uncertain economic times, Tripathi said. “Businesses will continue to automate some of the most essential and elemental IT operations tasks, not only making their IT systems stronger, but freeing up skilled IT staff to focus on higher value projects.

“Innovations such as adaptive observability, which integrates two new and active areas of research — adaptive monitoring and adaptive probing — can actively assess IT operations and intelligently route and re-route monitoring levels and data gathering depth and frequency to areas where there are issues, streamlining decision-making, problem-solving, and optimizing IT resources.

Here are other cogent perspectives from data management professionals as told to The New Stack:

Sam Gillespie, OneTrust DataGovernance Offering Manager:

“Looking ahead, privacy-focused data management will be key. PI makes up a significant portion of an organization’s data footprint; however, too often this personal information is locked down. Just because it is personal information does not mean that organizations can’t leverage it to do amazing things.

“Regulations have requirements that need to be followed. The key to data management operations is to embed these requirements into data operations so that they do not become a blocker to utilizing the data you have. Often by default organizations limit the use of personal data; however, a robust data management program rooted in privacy can open up the use of PI while maintaining your privacy obligations.”

Justin Beck, Director, Global Principal at Equinix:

“Emerging technologies, such as new edge solutions and AI use cases, depend on distributed IT — whether that comes in the form of hybrid multicloud solutions, core and edge infrastructure, colocation facilities or multiple data centers. Data management innovations in 2023 will focus on assessing and reducing the risk and complexity of these distributed IT environments.

“Businesses are realizing the value of monitoring and observability solutions, including application performance and security tools, in helping them manage the complexity of a distributed environment. Many of the latest data management innovations take advantage of infrastructure automation to accelerate IT operations while driving efficiency and reducing costs. Many SaaS and cloud providers are already reaping the benefits of automation solutions. In 2023, we expect enterprises will increasingly leverage infrastructure as code (IaC) solutions rather than rely on manual processes to speed up provisioning, monitor infrastructure and cut costs.”

Paul Repice, VP of Datadobi:

“Gone are the days where enterprises rely on one single storage vendor for their data. Today, 92% of organizations either have a multicloud strategy in place or are moving in that direction and over 80% of large enterprises have already adopted a hybrid cloud infrastructure. These trends make sense because the pandemic encouraged global enterprise companies to adopt effective, proven cloud technologies offered by market-leading brands due to the lack of need for sudden infrastructure spend. The availability of cloud-based file storage offered a cost-effective quick fix and an apparent win-win for businesses under pressure to adapt on the fly.”