Although many enterprises are at varying stages in their cloud journeys, most are adopting distributed mixes of on-premises and public cloud environments in order to maintain certain data and applications close by, while making others more accessible and available online. With such distributed cloud networks, core tenants of the enterprise, such as management, scalability and security, become increasingly challenging. There is a path forward, however.

Electricity is fundamental to our society. As climate change becomes more severe and demand for clean energy increases, the future is the electrification of everything and along with it, the need for reliable energy. The U.S. infrastructure spans over a vast 200,000 miles and inspecting all of it is a time-consuming and high-risk process that often calls for hanging from helicopters or climbing tall towers. It is inefficient, costly, and dangerous.

Heading into a new year filled with myriad crosscurrents, this much is certain: more organizations will find smarter ways to use data as they realize the benefits of digitally transforming their operations. We’re seeing this trend toward data-driven decision making already play out in different industries around the world as companies modernize their infrastructures.

More than a decade into the Internet of Things (IoT) era, the immense potential of IoT is becoming real. We’re moving from proof of concepts and pilots to projects at scale. What’s become increasingly clear is the vast complexity of deploying IoT solutions at scale and the necessity to do so to become a data-driven business.

Digital transformations are fueling the equivalent of a global data gold rush. We know from leading analyst firms that 90% of all data was created in the last two years and it will grow by a factor of two over the next five years. This has resulted in a changed perception of business, one that requires a shift from conventional business models to those that leverage data to gain actionable insights to improve operations, enhances customer experience and accelerates revenue.

Organizations with the best Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are poised to deliver better customer outcomes, maximize revenue opportunities, and leave the competition behind. AI-driven insights can help companies achieve many business objectives such as improving customer loyalty, delivering effective training, reducing the impact of outages or providing better healthcare to patients. Applications are aplenty.

“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” The famous line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” has a fitting application to today’s data problem. Enterprises are deluged with data, but they often have no way to leverage it. According to most experts, only a small percentage of data is usable and made useful, and most of it is in the dark — thus the term, “dark data.”

As an estimated 92% of enterprises have adopted hybrid and multicloud strategies, according to the 2021 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera, cloud operations (CloudOps) teams face increasing pressure to simultaneously manage costs while improving business outcomes. What levers can CloudOps teams pull to achieve operational objectives such as reducing hybrid and distributed cloud complexity, enhancing security, and automating processes?

The following is Part III of a three-part series. Welcome to the final installment of a three-part series discussing the areas to take seriously when you want to drive business with analytics. In Part I of this series, I discussed how to prioritize data accessibility and how to address the challenges that come with it. Those challenges include: Part II discussed where the disconnect is and addressed how organizations can bridge the gap.