2023 Informed: Big Data predictions

1: Businesses will outsource data cleaning to reduce costs

“In 2023, organisations and senior leaders will be looking at outsourcing data cleaning and curation in order to move swiftly, especially in high-value and high-risk areas. They will also become more focused on those metrics which constitute good data so that they can continue building the foundations of data science.

“The shift in attitude towards data science will also result in a change in personnel over the next year. In the past, data teams were dominated by data scientists and normally only included one or two data engineers. However, in 2023, businesses will be hiring more data engineers, whilst also looking to reduce the number of analysts and scientists they have. Organisations are always looking for the most cost-effective system and, ultimately, data engineers paired with data scientists are more powerful together than too many of one or the other.

“Overall, with 2023 right around the corner, businesses across every sector are looking at how they can reduce costs and grow revenue and will start looking towards data. They will be looking for ways to improve the quality and completeness of their data, taking a risk-based approach on the most important data first. Those who don’t, will soon understand that bad data can become an enormous drain on their budget.”

Jackie Zuker, director of data science at Radiant Logic 

2: A Zero Trust model will be adopted

“Organisations are looking into how they gain visibility into their identity data, and how it can offer long-term benefits when it comes to scale, cost and timeframe. We are starting to see a shift in the mindset and attitude towards Identity Access Management. In 2023, we are going to see more and more businesses “slow down to speed up” – they’ll recognise they need to put in an identity data foundation before they can justify building new, revenue-oriented projects that demand access to identity.

“This will also be forced as more organisations implement Zero Trust. Essentially, Zero Trust is attribution access, but an idea which is now mature. As we move into 2023, senior decision-makers and security teams are discussing how they can achieve a granular-approach in real-time, and ultimately, they will come back to the issue of identity data management.

“Therefore, an increasing number of organisations will start looking to Identity and Access Management systems which can streamline and unify all their identity data. Proper Identity and Access Management will add security, granularity, and composability into the access control process, but without increasing the complexity of their systems.”

Wade Ellery, field chief technology officer at Radiant Logic 

3: New data sovereignty laws will spur businesses to make data more visible  

“We expect to see businesses take a more proactive role in creating their own data governance policies amid the current wave of regulatory action. The current global patchwork of data sovereignty and privacy laws has made it more complicated than ever for businesses to create consistent policies on data sharing, integration and compliance. This will continue to have a significant impact on organisations’ ability to maximise the use of data across their IT infrastructure, unless they put together clear plans for data integration and governance.

“In 2023, the passing of more data sovereignty and sharing laws will spur businesses to invest in getting visibility into their data and creating clear plans for sharing and integration across their IT landscape.”

Danny Sandwell, senior solutions strategist , Quest

4: Data sharing and collaboration

“Companies will increasingly look to harness technologies and platforms that allow data to be shared within their organisation and across their ecosystem in both a seamless and secure way. By developing broader datasets, businesses in 2023 will use process intelligence to reveal which best practices should be adopted internally, drive innovation, and create better business outcomes. As data sharing and benchmarking increases, it will also create healthy competition across internal departments and teams.”

Sam Attias, director of product marketing at Celonis

“What’s going to take off in 2023? That’s easy… the trend in data fusion. By integrating multiple data sources, you can produce more consistent, accurate, and useful information when compared with an individual data source. But equally, data needs to be machine readable as well as interpretable by humans. As machine learning advances and becomes more complex, interpretable and validated machine learning is important because humans should be able to understand at some level the decisions being made by algorithms which in turn builds trust and validity for the data source.

“Increasingly we will see machine to machine technology becoming more pervasive, influencing methods of access, data formats and stimulating demands for new data. For example, to support our national journey to net zero there will be increased focus on solar panels, driving a requirement to understand building and land potential for solar panels and tracking the growth of these at a local, regional and national scale.”

Donna Lyndsay, strategic market lead environment and sustainability, OS 

5: Companies will need data to counter economic uncertainty

“In 2023, companies will recognise the power of data in the bad times. Finding, understanding, and using reliable data will serve as a significant competitive advantage as companies navigate the challenging economic landscape. Those who ignore their data will struggle to thrive. Even startups will be held to a different standard amid challenging times. As the adoption of collaborative technology rapidly accelerates and organisations, regardless of size, recognize their data’s immense value, startups and large-scale organisations alike will need to upskill data literacy to become truly data-driven.”

6: Enabling the non-technical end-user with data will become critical to survival

“In 2023, companies will need to enable end-users to disseminate knowledge across teams, departments, and employees. More employees need to use data in their day-to-day jobs. Platforms will need to be built for the non-technical data user, breaking down silos by connecting everything and being easily adoptable and engaging so all users, regardless of role, can find, understand, and use data collaboratively. The platforms that do not execute this level of cross-organisational data governance and data democratisation will become obsolete.”

Satyen Sangani, CEO and co-founder, Alation

7: Organisations will use data intelligence platforms to retain institutional knowledge

“Over the past few years, many organisations have experienced a higher rate of turnover as employees took advantage of the WFH world to seek out new opportunities. Dubbed “The Great Resignation,” this higher rate of turnover put added strain on already tapped businesses as they lost talented employees and the crucial institutional knowledge that often went with them. For organisations that didn’t have strong data retention systems in place, the information lost with employees can be hard if not impossible to replace. As businesses look to avoid such losses in the future, more will turn to data intelligence platforms that can store, organise and surface key knowledge to mitigate the impact an employee loss can have on a business.”

8: Chief data officers will turn their focus to building a data culture 

“The main challenges faced by Chief Data Officers in years past have included budgetary constraints and a poor definition of what their role actually entails. While those challenges will remain in 2023, the biggest challenge Chief Data Officers will be tackling is trying to build and institute a data culture within their organisation. Improving data literacy is already an important part of the chief data officer’s role, but 2023 will be the year when improving every employee’s understanding of the importance of data becomes the number one priority. Instituting a data culture at every level will help to overcome some of the foundational causes of other data challenges, while also ensuring that the data innovations of the past few years can be properly leveraged by business users.”

“In 2023, the organisations that will win the war for data talent will be those who elevate the importance of data to signal to data professionals that their work will be at the core of the business. This means that in addition to a greater focus on data literacy, next year will be the year of data bootcamps, where organisations increasingly turn to external data training services to upskill employees, helping both to improve the overall quality of data talent whilst also elevating the importance of data and creating an attractive data culture.”

John Wills, field CTO, Alation

9: PETs for third party data usage

“In 2023, data-driven organisations will increasingly turn to Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) to enable secure and private data sharing and collaboration, opening the door to third-party data usage while protecting business interests. Organisations can securely collaborate and use data across boundaries, such as jurisdictions and data silos, in ways that were not possible before. The timing, market conditions, and breadth of market-ready solutions have positioned PETs to have a breakout year.”

Dr. Ellison Anne Williams, CEO and founder, Enveil 

10: Businesses will continue to struggle with the growing challenge of unstructured data

“Unstructured data management will increasingly become a bigger challenge for businesses in 2023. To quantify the problem; the global data sphere is expected to more than double in size from 2022 to 2026, and unstructured data now makes up 80% – 90% of new enterprise data. This significant growth is linked to digital transformation, which accelerated vastly over the last two years as hybrid working drove a need to collaborate across locations, resulting in additional file-sharing needs. The demand for actionable insights has also grown – increased data analytics to enable efficiencies and innovation – which has added to the problem.

“Unstructured data is very difficult to find and access from multiple locations and is growing on a daily basis. In addition, with organisations required to meet specific compliance regulations protecting electronic files across different locations, finding a solution to manage chaotic unstructured data is a necessity. In the New Year, businesses will look to implement technologies that can help them secure, search, store and manage their data while enabling them to access and use it for things like deep learning AI.”

Jim Liddle, VP access anywhere product at Nasuni