Last week at Dell EMC World I spent a significant amount of my time discussing the value of data with Dell EMC World attendees. I am in my third year researching the topic on behalf of Dell EMC’s Office of the CTO.
To my knowledge, this was the first time the topic made it onto the agenda at the conference. My research colleague (Dr. Jim Short of the San Diego Supercomputer Center) and I have been evangelizing our work in a number of different forms.
Two months ago our research was published for the first time in MIT Sloan Management Review.
In addition to this paper, I submitted an article on Data Value as part of the Dell EMC World Knowledge Sharing competition. The KS competition allows certified Dell EMC Proven Professionals (I became certified over seven years ago) to submit papers sharing their knowledge on any industry topic.
I was fortunate enough to be selected as a finalist for a paper called Data Value: The Dirty Secret of Digital Transformation. This paper is publicly available for download.
It was a great honor to be selected as a finalist with other authors. Below is a picture of all of us during the recognition ceremony.
In addition to these papers, I hosted a session called Data Value: When Will Data Appear on Corporate Balance Sheets? For this session I invited Dean of Big Data Bill Schmarzo up on stage. Bill and I approach the topic of Data Value from two different perspectives.
My approach is to explore Data’s Value from the bottom-up: how can we build an IT infrastructure that supports valuation?
Bill looks at data valuation from the top-down: how do we tie the value of top-level business decisions to data assets? Bill is partnering with the University of San Francisco on this topic. Below is a photo of Bill and I stimulating dialogue on the topic during our session.
I was able to condense this session down during a 20 minute virtual brown bag session. I’ve embedded this video below.
Both the top-down and bottom-up approaches can help an organization.
As more and more business initiatives rely on data, the value of that data must be understood more clearly. Bill’s top-down approach helps zero in on this value.
Similarly, as corporate data proliferates, the infrastructure team will need to make choices about how to best manage that data, and “management by value” will emerge as a helpful process.
Steve
Fellow, Dell Technologies
This is very informative