How about some Data-as-a-Service for your enterprise?

Data as a Service (DaaS) – not to be confused with Desktop as a Service – has been called the “cousin” of software as a service. Like all members of the “as a Service” (aaS) family, DaaS is a cloud strategy used to facilitate the accessibility of business-critical data in a well-timed, protected and affordable manner. DaaS is based on the concept that specific, useful data can be supplied to users on demand, regardless of any organizational or geographical separation between consumers and providers.

Basically, you can think of the DaaS model as new methods for accessing data within existing data centers. It often provides new architecture designs, like private clouds inside a public cloud. Data is usually located in relational databases inside corporate data centers, and the most common business applications include customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), e-commerce and supply chain systems.

The DaaS solutions provide the following benefits:

• Agility – Because data is easily accessible, customers can move quickly and they don’t need extensive knowledge of the underlying data.

• Affordability – Providers can build the base with the data experts and outsource the presentation layer, which helps build highly affordable user interfaces and allows more feasible presentation layer change requests.

• Data quality – Data accessibility is controlled through data services, which improves data quality, as there is a single update point.

Why is DaaS gaining so much ground?

Databases in the cloud offer very compelling advantages like elastic scalability, universal network accessibility, integration with mobile platforms, pay-per-use efficiencies, avoidance of capital costs, and the ability to work with widely dispersed structured and unstructured data. This is why there has been a massive migration to cloud-based databases.

At the same time, the promise of the IoT is that businesses can make better decisions and improve products, processes and customer service. But this can be done only if businesses can access all that data easily, effectively and securely, while turning it into useful information that can be shared, and ultimately use it to create value. What better to do that than DaaS?

With DaaS, enterprises can become more agile and can speed time to market because the data users would be able to utilize the information without having to go through the hoops typically required to get data collected, cleansed, secured, managed and distributed.

DaaS is here to stay, so my question is: How about some DaaS for your enterprise?

Photo credit: www.arnnet.com.au