Five Layers for Data Dominated Businesses

Our economy is undergoing a radical change. It becomes data dominated.

Data products are everywhere and with big data, machine learning, all cloud playarts the companies operate independently from the location and globally without borders. In extreme cases even office spaces are unnecessary, where datacenters are cloudified, just a PO box remains.

Data products found their way also into our daily lifes and enabled more nomadic lifestyles than before.

The pandemic accelerated this development and emancipated us from office spaces, a high-speed internet connection is the most important.

One of the biggest differences between classic businesses and tech companies is the understanding of data.

Data is information, not just bits and bytes, not a cost factor for datacenters or cloud space.

Classic companies are grown companies with a historical anchor, sometimes more a burden than an opportunity. They are bound on their physical product. With such focus on one area only, they miss so many opportunities and ideas from other domains. 

Solutions from healthcare that would have solved a problem in the vehicle, will never be discovered.

So companies have to unlearn what they think to know about data, and relearn a different approach, more holistic. Otherwise they will continue to review data as historical confirmation instead using it to shape and predict the possibilities.

Let’s imagine data related business as a cake with layers.

Five layers.

The first layer is about “Data Visualization”. Humans tend to be overwhelmed by complexities. As visual oriented beings we don’t have a “sense” for numbers. We need to see things in a more synaesthetical way. XR is a very powerful tool to visualise, to explain complexities.

Second layer is the “Data Prediction“. Mostly “AI“ algorithms, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, in future even Quantum Compute ML or just a simple pivot in an Excel to adjust the numbers.

Third layer is the “Data Management“. Big Data, Small Data, maybe also Excel. Again… 🤓

Here happens all the choreography, indexing, de-biasing, enriching (synthetic data) etc.

Fourth layer is the “Data Connectivity“. Quite important and mostly forgotten. Do we need real time data? Or is it replicated data from another source? What technology has to be used, what latencies are acceptable etc.

Fifth layer is the “Data Immutability“. How can I be sure my data is consistent, not compromised. Do others need to check and verify? Blockchain, cryptography, DLP, IDS and other data security related mechanisms are embedded in this layer.

Cool, and now? Well NOW comes the magic:

Every domain I am interested into becomes just a vertical.

Mobility?

Healthcare?

Cut the cake.

Like a piece of cake I see all the layers, the nice pattern. But I see as well the neighboring pieces. But instead checking if the other pieces have more chocolate, I can see how my data is processed AND what else is around.

Maybe I see a solution that might be cheaper, faster, classy or simply better.

Synergies from other layers and other verticals.