Data is everywhere today. Data is even more valuable than oil. Think about the phone you have in your hand right now. There are hundreds of applications running on your phone with built-in backup settings to preserve, learn, and monitor your data. You don't even have to think about your personalized data being available to you on every other device you use after you sync everything. You might have even come to expect your data to regularly be available to you no matter where you are or what data format it is in. Many people utilize (and hoard) their stored data for sharing and work purposes every day. However, keeping data persistent, accessible, and most importantly secure, is not a trivial task.
The new business model is based around IT and the cloud. Regardless of the industry, enterprises end up owning a great number of systems: either built internally or acquired from third parties; cloud-based or on-premise. When asked to rank their top challenges, IT decision-makers put customer behavior in their top three; followed by legacy infrastructure and new systems integration, and security. Furthermore, there are concerns about expectations, redundancy, and budget constraints. Even from the top, the challenges ring familiar to anyone when it comes to integration.
