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How Connected Data Ecosystems Are Unlocking New Business Growth

Published

2 years ago

September 4, 2024

Cloud data ecosystems are the way forward for both industrial enterprises and the technology providers that support them, says Rónán de Hooge, Executive Vice President, Cloud Platform Business, AVEVA. An industrial environment where machines anticipate their own maintenance needs, supply chains innovate in response to real-time demand and resource shifts, and industries operate with unparalleled efficiency and minimal waste—all orchestrated by human experts?

That vision is fast becoming a reality as industries organize in response to the evolving business landscape. Disrupted supply chains, resource scarcity, changing customer needs and increasing regulation are all now commonplace in our integrated, digital-first economy. Success in this challenging environment depends on collaboration. When suppliers, distributors and other chain partners share business information, insights and best practices, they can create combined value that exceeds what each can achieve individually.

Businesses aren’t just connected to each other—they’re interdependent. In industry and elsewhere, the future of business increasingly relies on a connected data ecosystem. Data ecosystems represent the next wave of digital transformation. They leverage a trusted network of technologies to connect people with data from industrial operators and their partners.

With industrial data ecosystems, companies gain access to new capabilities or expertise they may not have in-house. More importantly, a unified view across the value chain, enables companies to discover crucial new insights and leverage broader expertise that enhance their abilities amid a changing business environment. When this industrial intelligence is unified and shared in the cloud, every value chain participant – including partners, regulators and customers – can visualize routes to better efficiency, productivity and sustainability.

Data is the bedrock of growth for the industrial enterprise

Businesses everywhere are now using connected data ecosystems with customers, suppliers, partners and operators. Such integrated networks may even straddle two or more formerly separate sectors. In all cases, they carry value for each player within the ecosystem, including for technology developers.

At the core of this collaboration is data. Industrial organizations now collect data in greater quantities and from a wider variety of sources than ever before. Too often, however, this strategic asset remains siloed at the point of collection because of technology, security and governance barriers, rendering it inaccessible to even internal departments.

Sharing data across an organization—as well as with external partners—gives every player within the ecosystem a contextual understanding of how to optimize their role in the value chain. Industrial organizations are therefore catalyzing digital transformation to create seamless collaboration across the lifecycle and unlock greater value and sustainability gains for all stakeholders.

Around the world, many players are already leveraging these platform services to drive positive outcomes on several fronts:

Drive efficiency through collaboration: Sharing data from a single source of truth empowers experts—regardless of location or technical background—to make better decisions faster.
Achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets: Viewing unified value chain data in context helps surface the interdependent areas where sustainability action can have the greatest impact, such as greater circularity, improved efficiency, reduced emissions and better regulatory compliance.
Enhance individual and joint innovation: The competitive advantages gained from secure data-sharing communities strengthen trusted supplier and partner relationships. By adding context to real-time data, companies can expedite R&D, innovate together and mutually enhance competitive advantages.
Improve decision-making: Seamlessly connecting diverse data sources and extensible applications within an ecosystem gives businesses richer and more complete insights that can reduce operational costs and improve revenue outcomes.
Transform business for faster revenue: An industrial data ecosystem delivers value within hours instead of days or weeks. Accordingly, companies can achieve faster adoption, expand their market reach, and leverage economies of scale—all while reducing costs through lower software investments upfront and lower ongoing IT and maintenance expenses.

How ecosystem building works for technology companies

As industries begin strategizing for the outcomes enumerated above, data ecosystems are helping them meet their needs. This kind of ecosystem thinking also supports innovation for technology providers and developer partners.

Such digital platforms bring together a multitude of complementary solutions and applications that can be tailored to specific business needs. At their core, such an industry data community is a network of interconnected software applications, services, and platforms that integrate seamlessly to enhance process efficiencies while uncovering new value for end customers.

With an open and neutral platform, partners can expedite the development of emerging technologies and services, driving agility and value for customers. The ability to securely share specific data streams within a standardized format and with granular control supports the development of new applications and value-added services – without compromising intellectual property.

This adaptability is a game-changer at a time of increasing cross-domain innovation, when developments in one field, such as artificial intelligence, can support progress in another area. Connected data ecosystems provide the advantages developers need in an ever-evolving industrial landscape.

Industry appetite and the flywheel effect

Different industrial sectors have either already added to, or are accelerating, their investment in connected data ecosystems. The vast majority (90%) of respondents in IDC’s 2023 Future of Industry Ecosystems global survey said they plan to maintain or accelerate their investment into such data ecosystems this year and next. Principal motivations included increasing business agility, better process automation, improved systems integration, and increased data-sharing with partners, including for ESG reasons.

The survey interviewed 1,288 C-suite and business line executives decisionmakers across energy, construction, process manufacturing, government and other industries around the world. Overall, the appeal of the connected data ecosystem could lie in its ability to accelerate the flywheel effect, a concept familiar to engineers.

With the flywheel effect, small wins accumulate over time to create a momentum that keeps the business growing. Likewise, within the kind of integrated data community described here, every player can expect to be able to recalibrate for resilience in real-time, driving incremental gains for all stakeholders on a continuous basis.

Whether for industrial enterprises, technology companies or developers, the whole truly then becomes worth more than the sum of its parts. The value of connected data ecosystems—and the potential exponential growth they promise—will be the foundation of our sustainable future.

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Datadobi Adds Data Access Governance to StorageMAP, Enabling Enterprises to Answer the Critical Question: “Who Has Access to What?”

Published

3 days ago

September 26, 2026

Integrator Web-Editor

Datadobi, a leader in the Data Storage Management Services space, today announced the general availability of Data Access Governance (DAG) within StorageMAP. The new capability gives organizations visibility into who has access to their unstructured data and whether that access aligns with corporate policy. It extends Datadobi’s ability to help enterprises discover, align, and operationalize data across fragmented environments as their intelligence and orchestration layer.

As AI initiatives, cyber threats, and rising data complexity expose the limits of traditional approaches, DAG addresses a critical gap: organizations cannot govern, protect, or extract value from data they cannot see or control. As AI initiatives, cyber threats, and rising data complexity expose the limits of traditional approaches, DAG addresses a critical gap: organizations cannot govern, protect, or extract value from data they cannot see or control.

StorageMAP’s DAG capability gives administrators comprehensive visibility into access permissions across fragmented unstructured data environments. By surfacing who has access to what data, and whether that access aligns with business and security policy. Organizations can detect misaligned permissions, reduce cyber exposure, and enforce governance at scale. This visibility is the essential first stage of the broader DSMS discipline — visibility, understanding, decision, execution — that determines whether organizations can act on their data with confidence.

The introduction of DAG extends StorageMAP’s existing capabilities across data discovery, classification, risk assessment, lifecycle management and AI Data Readiness. Together, these capabilities help organizations to discover what data they have, align it with business value and risk requirements, and operationalize policy-driven action across their environments. The result is unstructured data that supports AI initiatives, strengthens cyber resilience, reduces cost, and drives long-term business value rather than holding it back.

DAG, which was trialed by a number of beta customers, supports a range of enterprise use cases, from protecting sensitive data and reducing breach impact, to maintaining records compliance and managing risk through mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Early access customers identified a gap in their understanding of which critical datasets were exposed and who could access them, often relying on manual investigation to respond to audits and security incidents.

With Datadobi’s DAG capabilities, these organizations quickly identify overexposed data and validate access controls to proactively strengthen their security posture. For organizations investing in AI, it provides the governance foundation that trusted, well-governed data requires. And for those subject to data protection regulations (such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS), it delivers the visibility needed to demonstrate that access controls are in place, operating as intended, and aligned with business policy.

“Unstructured data is at the center of every major enterprise challenge right now including AI readiness, cyber resilience, cost management, and regulatory compliance,” said Michael Jack, Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer for Datadobi. “But organizations cannot address any of those challenges with data they cannot see or control. Data Access Governance gives teams the visibility to understand who has access to what, identify where risk exists, and take action to bring their unstructured data under control. It is a foundational step in turning unstructured data from a source of risk and complexity into a driver of business value.”

Tech News

Cloudera and Muroon Announce Strategic MoU

Published

4 days ago

September 25, 2026

Integrator Web-Editor

In a strategic move to advance enterprise digital enablement and support the technological ambitions of Saudi Vision 2030, Cloudera, the only true hybrid platform for data, analytics, and AI, has agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with MuroonI the technology and digital enablement subsidiary of Tawuniya.

The proposed collaboration aims to evaluate opportunities to help organizations across the region modernize their technology capabilities, accelerate digital transformation, and unlock long-term business value. By leveraging Cloudera’s products and services, the engagement will explore how Cloudera’s hybrid data platforms and AI-driven analytics can help to boost Muroon’s expanding IT and digital enablement objectives.

Under the proposed partnership, Muroon and Cloudera will aim to collaborate on delivering secure data exchange and modern cloud architecture. Integrating Cloudera Anywhere Cloud™ principles, the proposed collaboration will explore ways to deliver a consistent cloud experience, enabling organizations to deploy AI and analytics workloads across private data centers and cloud environments with unified governance and security.

The proposed alliance creates complementary roles for both organizations. Muroon will leverage its delivery capabilities, consulting expertise, implementation services, across the Tawuniya ecosystem and the wider region. Cloudera will look to provide technology leadership, platform expertise, solution architecture, and technical enablement.

Ahmad Shakora, General Vice President of META, Cloudera, said:
“Our proposed collaboration with Muroon represents an important milestone in empowering regional organizations with modern hybrid data and AI architectures. Through Cloudera’s ability to bring AI and analytics to data anywhere it resides, combined with Muroon’s deep digital enablement and implementation capabilities, we aim to accelerate innovation, ensure secure data management, and actively contribute to the digital economy goals of Saudi Vision 2030.”

Faisal Bakhsh, Vice President of Business Development and Services Delivery at Muroon, added:
“As the technology arm of Tawuniya Group, Muroon is dedicated to delivering cutting-edge digital solutions that drive operational efficiency and business growth. Exploring this partnership with Cloudera allows us to harness world-class hybrid data and AI platforms to expand our service capabilities, facilitate secure data exchange, and deliver transformative value to our ecosystem and clients across Saudi Arabia.”