4. The data management ecosystem

 4. The data management ecosystem

There are only a few components to the modern data management ecosystem, which is displayed in the diagram below. We’ve plotted these systems on two axes, one showing the latency of the data managed by the system and the other showing the complexity, expressed in terms of the number of sources a particular kind of system organizes. These systems each organize data in a way that’s particularly suited to a class of tasks or workflows. Most of these systems don’t create data, which generally happens in the bottom left hand corner in the Services/Applications space. Instead, they rearrange and organize data. Application and service databases serve as the supplier of raw materials for the information supply chain, and they’re usually designated in this work as the “source systems.” Some systems manufacture data as a byproduct of their basic operation, such as Master Data Management systems that function as curation tools for a small percentage of the data they manage. But for the most part the job of the data management system, when it isn’t a source system, is synthesis and organization.

3.6 Patterns of Organization

3.6 Patterns of organization

There are a couple of simple patterns you should consider when organizing your data management efforts for maximum impact. In this section we’ll discuss some of those patterns of organization. We’ll look at a couple of different organizational models, and point to some fundamental properties of those models that help make teams effective.