9 Data Management Trends in 2023 & Beyond

Data is omnipresent, it is accessed, consumed, and created by every department of an organization. In order to leverage this data and derive insights, organizations need a strategy to govern and manage data quality. However, while working on their data governance strategy, organizations need to consider new data trends that will impact and disrupt the way they manage and control data.  

At STAEDEAN, we have built Data Management Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management. Our solutions can help organizations with system integration, electronic data interchange, master data management, data security, and analytics and business intelligence. Therefore, it is important for us to track advances in technology and identify what impact current and future data trends have across industries. This also helps us work on a roadmap that can help us upgrade our Data Management solutions.  

Therefore, in this blog, we share top data management trends that are making waves in 2023 and will continue to impact the way organizations manage their data. 

Top data trends to watch out for in 2023 and beyond 

1. Some organizations will adopt a multi-cloud approach   

As the result of the growth of data creation and consumption, we saw a lot of organizations migrate to the cloud in 2022 and this trend will continue in the years to come. According to Statista, the amount of data is growing at an incredible pace and is forecasted to reach 180 zettabytes in 2025. Due to this trend of increasing data, companies will need to look at a multi-cloud approach. Currently, cloud services are available as a pay-as-you-go or a subscription-based model.  

The findings of the Technology Spending Intentions Survey conducted by ESG by Tech Target, interviewing 742 senior IT decision makers from midmarket and enterprise organizations prove that companies are already doing this. 26% of the respondents reported using two unique public clouds for workloads, 23% reported using three public clouds, while 42% reported the use of four or more public clouds.  

2. Hybrid cloud platforms for industries that are regulated 

For organizations that cannot store all their data in public cloud infrastructure due to regulations in certain industries such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals for example, adopting a hybrid cloud system approach seems like the way to go. Handling all the infrastructure for Big Data internally is not sustainable for organizations. So, outsourcing even a partial amount of data storage to cloud infrastructure providers such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, etc. relieves them from managing and maintaining complex infrastructure.  

Since organizations in industries such as healthcare for example, need to adhere to certain data privacy and storage regulations, cloud providers need to find ways to offer solutions that are regulation-friendly. 

3. More organizations will adopt data lakes and lakehouses

According to a study by Strategic Tech Investor, Big Data is going to be worth $229.4 billion by 2025. As the sheer volume of data organizations create, process, and access increases, the need for Big Data storage will have to change too. We have seen the evolution from on-premises storage to the cloud, and now we see a shift from data warehouses to data lakes for Big Data storage and now even data lakehouses. This is because managing data storage in a data warehouse is complex, time-consuming, and limited in terms of the data formats that can be stored. It requires extract, transform, and load processes. Whereas data lakes store different types of data, structured and unstructured data in its native format. A data lakehouse combines the strengths of a data warehouse and data lake and offers you data management architecture at scale with benefits. 

According to a report by Mordor Intelligence, Microsoft is the top player in the data lakes segment and is making heavy investments to enhance and create intelligent data lakes. The data lakehouse is a relatively new segment and has players such as Databricks and Oracle are running the show. 

4. Adoption of cloud-native applications

As a technology company that develops applications for Microsoft-based ERPs, we offer both on-premises and cloud-based solutions for Microsoft Dynamics ERPs. However, we have also seen a preference for our cloud solutions in 2022. According to the same survey by ESG, about 71% of the respondents plan to develop and deploy cloud-native applications in 2023 - an increase of about 11% from 2022. 

There were opposing views in the survey on the increase in spending on cloud applications. Although the majority are planning to increase spending on cloud apps - about 59%, 4% of the respondents said there would be a decrease in public cloud spending on applications. 

5. Focus on data structuring

Although organizations have the ambition to mine meaning from data and make more impactful decisions, none of them are able to succeed in this pursuit without structuring their organization’s data. Unstructured digital data currently accounts for 80-90% of the digital data universe, according to the CIO. 

As organizations find ways to automate or simplify data structuring, certain technologies will gain prominence. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to categorize data, Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand and decipher data, pattern recognition algorithms to catalog data, and Machine Learning to improve existing programs can help organizations with data structuring.  

6. The need for securing data will be enhanced

Security is a serious concern for organizations, as it puts their customers and business partners at risk. Not only do organizations have to make sure to follow regulations and stay compliant, but they also have to ensure that they do not lose customer trust and goodwill. So, spending on security becomes paramount for organizations across the board.  

According to another survey carried out by Statista, in February 2022, 66% of organizations worldwide were victims of a ransomware attack, on average. With the need to organize and store data better, organizations will also be looking for a way to secure their organization’s sensitive data. 

7. Increased adoption of data governance

Covid-19 and the pandemic impacted industries worldwide and created the necessity to transact online for businesses. This resulted in data usage growth and that has only spiraled over the last few years. According to the Data Governance Market Forecast (2023-2028) by Mordor Intelligence, the data governance industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.83% during the forecast period. So, companies that have ambitions of becoming more data-driven and improving their data quality will implement a data governance program and solutions that complement their vision and goals. 

8. Organizations will invest in meta-data management

Metadata can be a great source of information that explains the what, where, and who, questions of data sorting. This piece of information can also answer the questions - how, when and why, when that piece of information is accessed by anybody in the organization. When metadata is managed and actively used, it can help provide great insights, and solution providers that simplify metadata management will be able to provide value to organizations.  

9. Low-code/no-code data integration and analytics tools will be favored 

As data volumes grow, the need for integration will only get stronger and more pronounced. Since there is a shortage of data experts, low-code/no-code tools will be preferred. Based on a 2022 survey by Qlik, the number of business professionals with limited technical knowledge expected to use data integration and analytics tools is about 58%.  

Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 70 percent of new applications developed by enterprises will rely on low-code and no-code platforms. We concur with this since ALL our Data Management Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management ERPs are low-code/no-code solutions, including Data Governance Solution. 

What are your organization’s goals in 2023? 

We currently believe that your biggest challenges in the past should drive your future goals. So, if your biggest challenge for 2022 was a failed data governance project, for example, there could be a myriad of reasons why the project failed. You need to ask your team some tough questions, such as:  

• Was it because you did not have organizational buy-in?  
• Were learnings and guidelines communicated with the larger data governance team?  
• Did you have a cross-functional data governance team? 

So, while the trends for 2023 are a forecast based on surveys, research, and other technological developments, it might be important for you to identify what will work for your organization from this list and then focus on that.  

If data governance is a goal for you to achieve in 2023, and you use Dynamics 365, then we can help you with a resource to start off with. We recommend downloading our e-book that will share best practices, information on a data governance team, and much more.