To kick off the new year, I decided to spend some time sifting through the various data management in 2011 predictions that surfaced over the past couple of weeks.  One discussion in particular offers some interesting thoughts on what we can expect to see from the data management market this coming year.  In an article titled Six Data Management Predictions for 2011, the following trends are predicted for next year:

1. Data will become more open
2. Business and IT will become blurry
3. Tools will become easier to use
4. Tools will do less heavy lifting
5. CEOs and Government Officials will gain enlightenment
6. We will become more reliant on data

These are all reasonable for the data management market as a whole, but I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at what implications they have on data quality tools in particular.  Let’s look at the role of data quality tools play in addressing each one:

Data will become more open

• As data becomes more open, data quality tools will need to be able to handle data from a greater number of sources used for a broader number of purposes.  Gone are the days of single domain data manipulation.  To excel in this new, open market, you’ll need a data quality tool that can profile, cleanse and monitor data regardless of domain, that is also locale-aware and has pre-built rules and reference data.

Business and IT will become blurry

• The panacea of business and IT alignment is having a tool that helps put both parties in lock step.  It goes without saying, then, that for a business user to become active in managing data quality they must have a tool that is easy for them to use.  Role-based data quality tools enable just that, putting profiling, cleansing and monitoring in the hands of business users so they are less dependent on scarce IT resources.

Tools will become easier to use

• Ease of use means different things to different people/users.  With role-based data quality helping drive collaboration between business and IT, a single interface for managing data quality will no longer suffice.  Making an IT centric tool easy to use for IT is great, but in all likelihood it will still be too difficult to use for the typical business user.  For this reason, multiple tools that share a centralized repository for managing rules are often times required.  With role based tools, ease of use can be driven at all levels, breaking down complexity barriers and ensuring data quality can be deployed pervasively.

Tools will do less heavy lifting

• The key here is being able to reuse data quality rules and services pervasively across the business.  Cleansing data in one location but not in others merely leaves you open to welcoming data quality issues again at some point and time.  Furthermore, it’s important to be able to create quality rules consistently.  To address this concern, data quality tools must enable the creation of centralized data quality rules, deployable across all business processes and applications.

CEOs and Government Officials will gain enlightenment

• As the heads of state or business become more data aware, the need for driving data governance across the organization will become more acute.  To support key data governance initiatives, however, data quality tools must be capable of supporting those initiatives regardless of where the organization stands on the data governance maturity adoption curve.  As discussed above, openness, business/IT alignment and ease of use are all critical in driving success.

We will become more reliant on data

• It goes without saying that data is increasingly becoming a key strategic asset.  Data is now coming at us from all directions, both inside and outside the organization, on premise and in the cloud.  Is your data quality tool ready to handle the volume and variety introduced as a result?