Data Is the New Oil Date:   Thursday , December 03, 2015 How are the big fishes in the market seeking Informatica\'s aid for real-time decision making? There is a fundamental shift in analytics and hence, security. The traditional data warehousing, which is reactive in nature, is not enough in todays hypercompetitive world. Organizations are embracing real-time analytics to obtain clear insights about their internal and external stakeholders. While leveraging real-time data creates umpteen of revenue opportunities for organizations, the contextual offers also helps customers to relish a better shopping experience. In a data-driven smart city, an ambulance, a fire engine or a police vehicle would be able to leverage real-time traffic flow information to find the best possible route. The intelligence gained by comprehending the security risks around data in real-time basis is much more powerful. Can you throw some light on data security? In this new world, data is the new oil, which is an organization\'s most valuable asset (fuelling its growth) that everyone wants to steal. Traditionally, security has always been around parts of physical infrastructure (network, server, database, application, mobile devices and so on). But today the volume of data is proliferating; the number of users, devices & locations keeps skyrocketing and naturally the amount of data getting stolen keeps mounting in every country (some countries more than others). The first step towards data security is having the intelligence about what need to be secured (if you don\'t know where your precious jewels are at your home, you can\'t secure them). You also need to precisely know who is touching the data in your organization, because one insider attack is equal to hundred outsider attacks, since the insider knows exactly what to steal. Organizations should segregate their sensitive data and encrypt them. Likewise, individuals should also keep their sensitive data encrypted and password protected. They shouldn\'t leave their emails open and let their sensitive data hanging around; say, in a shared computer in airport. As the government itself is moving towards e-Governance, what role it should play in enforcing security policies? The government should ask every organization three questions: what is your sensitive data, where is it distributed and who has access to it? Laws should be constituted around this. While attempting to magnetize consumers, a few organizations cross the moral, ethical and legal boundaries at times. Amplifying ones voice using social media is as far as an individual can go to manage his/her own rights. Hence, government policies should create right structure for organizations to follow. Startups feel that they are too small to embrace data analytics? Isn\'t it time for them to embrace analytics? To be candid, if startups don\'t have insights about their customer or even employee base, they are basically shooting in the dark. They might very well end up with the wrong product. Today, there are plethora of cost-effective cloud-based services that a startup can exploit. Which vertical is the latest entrant in the analytics field? Who needs it the most? In this hyper-connected world, there could not be a better time than now to leverage data across every industry; be it healthcare, automobiles or manufacturing. The biggest value creators and the biggest success stories in the next decade or so will be those companies who leverage data better, rather than assets. For instance, Uber is a rising data company that doesn\'t have a single car in its fleet. What are the challenges faced by data analytics organizations and how to overcome them? As the volume and variety of data has expanded exponentially, bringing the data together is a massive challenge. Also high quality should be maintained by ensuring that large data makes sense. Last but not least, data should be secure, because that is the livelihood of an organization. If these fundamental issues are unresolved, then we are performing incomplete analytics, after-the-time analytics or insecure analytics. Startups should focus on a very specific piece of a problem, understand its end-to-end use case and customer environment, solve it and then should slowly and steadily branch from there. Large organizations should encourage intrapreneurship. If your people have great ideas and the desire to go above and beyond, let them be. They\'ll amaze you. Informatica believes that entrepreneurship is not limited to startups, but it is defined by the environment you put around people. For instance, twelve months back, a small team within Informatica built a product from scratch, like a startup. We created the beta version in six months, demoed it and won the best new product in RSA security conference. Id argue that probably we have one of the richest roadmaps in terms of building products and taking them to market. We never perceived our India development center as a low cost offshore development center, but as an independent location, where many products are completely built. This end-to-end control motivates our team and keeps the average tenure of our employees through the roof; especially in Bangalore. (As told to Anamika Sahu & Susila Govindaraj)