The year of 2011 is most likely to be remembered as a year in which IT organizations rediscover the need to concentrate on fundamental data management issues. If you take a close look at all the major issues that challenge IT organizations today, whether it is cloud computing, storage, security or compliance, they all point back to data management.

IT organizations are being asked to account for how they manage data. Business leaders want to take advantage of the economic benefits of cloud computing that are made possible by sharing IT infrastructure. The only problem is that not only do most IT organizations not have the data management tools they need to manage that process securely, they don’t even know what data has the most business value to the organization. It’s impossible to have an effective data management strategy when your IT organization treats all data as if it has equal value.
In the meantime, IT organizations should be working on getting their IT houses in order to take advantage of all these emerging technologies. The coming year will see a lot of advancement in terms of addressing practical IT issues, but no one will really benefit from them without first concentrating on the fundamentals of IT.