There has been a popular notion that data is the ‘new oil’ due to its ever-increasing value. In fact, data has surpassed oil in value, and might now be likened to water – priceless, and essential for everything we do.
Data, whether in verbal, analogue or digital form, has informed human progress since the beginning of time. As it proliferates and our collective knowledge grows as a result, humans could use it to drive unprecedented progress, solve the world’s most pressing problems, and – of course – profit from it.
Data’s value is beyond monetary. It enables everything we do in life – communicate, transact, engage and explore.
In the world of data, much as we have seen with water, those who own it or control access to it have the upper hand. The challenge facing the world now is that unless it is carefully managed and governed, it could end up not delivering on its potential, or worse – being controlled by a handful of profiteers.
Cyber crime and cyber wars already occur over control of data. It is not inconceivable that even bigger wars could be fought over who controls the data domain.
Handing over control
With pools of data being stored and consumed all over the world in various quantities and types, modern data giants, such as Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, are increasingly enjoying a monopoly in services for data storage and management. This is especially true within the larger distributed data “oceans”, which in size and complexity far overshadow local on-site data reservoirs and lakes of business organisations.
Even little data pools within the private domains of organisations are moving to the cloud to simplify data management, and businesses are now exchanging their server capacity for data lakes and oceans.
Data’s value is beyond monetary. It enables everything we do in life – communicate, transact, engage and explore.
To date, these developments have been largely beneficial. However, they do raise questions about what could happen when all the world’s data resides under the control of a handful of organisations. When the world depends on data as one of its most critical resources, those controlling it need to be regulated.
Anti-trust regulators are now starting to raise their heads with a view to controlling how data giants do business in future. Indeed, whether they are giants or a plethora of smaller players, whoever controls and manages data should be carefully governed, given data’s growing value and the impacts should it be corrupted, stolen or withheld.
Water engineers and plumbers
If data is akin to water, then the authorities become the water regulators and engineers of the digital world, specifying certain standards for water provisioning and treatment.
Data disciplinarians − data creators, acquirers, engineers, managers, analysts, scientists and users – become the water treatment plant experts and plumbers. These ‘plumbers’ are key custodians of data, who design, implement and maintain systems of storage, pipelines, pumps, reservoirs, taps and controls.
As with water, the protection, distribution and utilisation of this valuable data resource needs to be actively managed, to prevent blockage and/or spillage that could possibly result in risk and loss of value. The tools and plumbing required to provision and maintain the lakes and oceans of data in the cloud are complex, and require careful planning and expertise to deploy and manage.
Those controlling the data lakes and oceans must ensure the data does not stagnate, become contaminated, or flood uncontrollably. Crucially, they must also enable fair access to this life-sustaining resource.
These plumbers need to have the foresight and data management skills to ensure the most economical and assured flows to consumers. It is commonplace to have both onsite and cloud data (or hybrid) experts within the data management and governance teams in most organisations.
When access and scaling of capacity is unregulated, it becomes necessary for anti-trust regulators to step in to restrain or unbundle those who control data flows to and from the giants.
This situation has presented a capacity unbundling opportunity to those organisations that have invested in server and storage capacity through offering their data capacity on the grids of the giants, thus restraining the data monopoly while also benefiting from the cloud.
Whether a handful of giants control the world’s data resources, or control is decentralised into pockets around the globe, those controlling the precious data resources, including the plumbers, must do so ethically, assuring access to all who need it.
And to support this, the toolsets they use must seamlessly support the environments to enable safe, protected and consistent plumbing.
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