Does your company have a real-time connected data warehouse where you can aggregate data flowing in from all of your IT systems together with streaming data from IoT, mobile, and SaaS services? Can you easily connect your on-premises, cloud, and multi-cloud systems to enable centralized analytics? If so, that’s awesome! Now for the big question, what are you doing with those capabilities? A real-time connected data warehouse is a powerful platform, but the value to your company doesn’t come from having a connected data warehouse; it comes from connecting and using the data (at rest and in motion) captured in the siloed systems.

This article is the second in a series to discover where in your company, you can leverage Actian’s real-time connected data warehouse solution to generate business value. The first article looked at manufacturing operations and integrating data across your supply chain. This installment discusses the use of a real-time connected data warehouse within your IT organization to bring together data from your ITSM, Operations Management (OM), and cloud management platforms to give you a 360-degree view of your IT systems. Then how to leverage this connectivity to enable informed decision-making about your IT portfolio and investment decisions.

Do You Need Better IT Management Capabilities?

Companies spend large sums of money on IT systems. But do they know where that money is going, what value they are getting for it, and how to optimize resource spending for maximum benefit? Most don’t. What about your company? You’ve invested in 360-degree views of your customers, your products, and your operations, what about your IT environment? A somewhat prophetic IT thought leader made the statement a few years ago, “IT organizations tend to put their business first and often neglect their own needs. It’s like the cobbler’s children walking around with no shoes.” With digital transformation creating inextricable links between business processes and IT systems, the time is right to invest in a greater understanding of your IT assets so that you can leverage them for maximum results.

Data About Your IT Systems are All Over the Place

Most IT organizations have multiple systems that they use to manage their IT environments.

• An ITSM system for defining configuration items, managing incidents, and orchestrating change.
• Engineering and agile requirements management systems for executing IT projects.
• Enterprise architecture systems for mapping out the connective tissue of the enterprise.
• Operations management systems for managing physical infrastructure and data centers.
• Cloud management systems for orchestrating the deployment and management of cloud resources and subscriptions.

No wonder you are having problems optimizing your IT investments, data is fragmented across a bunch of disconnected IT management systems.

Bringing the Big Picture of IT Together in One Place

Developing a 360-degree view of your IT environment requires bringing data from each of these IT management systems together and assembling the “big picture” of your IT ecosystem.  Including things like technology components, data flows, policy and governance compliance, security controls, and IT spend. A real-time connected data warehouse enables you to aggregate all your IT management data in one place and apply the same types of analytics that you use to optimize your business operations to your IT environment.

It Would Help if You Had a Real-Time Connected Data Warehouse

The real-time connected data warehouse solution from Actian has two main components. Actian Data Platform is the cloud data warehouse solution designed to handle enterprise-scale data, whether streaming or batch and process analytics insights in near-real-time to drive informed decision-making. Actian DataConnnect is the Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS) solution that enables you to manage all of the data connections in your company in a centralized location to ensure security, compliance and ensure controlled access to sensitive information.

DataConnect and Actian Data Platform from Actian are the tools your company needs to integrate your disparate IT management systems. Together they can bring in streaming data sources from things like network devices, door sensors, and access control systems to compile a holistic 360-degree view of your IT environment. It’s great to know what systems you have, but understanding how they are used, what they cost you, and how they are supporting your business is powerful information that modern IT organizations and decision-makers need to be successful.

To learn more about connected data warehouse solutions from Actian and how to leverage them to create value for your company, visit www.actian.com.

About Traci Curran

Traci Curran is Director of Product Marketing at Actian, focusing on the Actian Data Platform. With 20+ years in tech marketing, Traci has led launches at startups and established enterprises like CloudBolt Software. She specializes in communicating how digital transformation and cloud technologies drive competitive advantage. Traci's articles on the Actian blog demonstrate how to leverage the Data Platform for agile innovation. Explore her posts to accelerate your data initiatives.