In
2020, every company is a data company. Not every company is good at
transferring the right data to the right people and doing so in a way that
protects the integrity and underlying privacy of that data, however. And in
this time of remote workers, many companies are suddenly finding out their data
storage and security and transfer systems are not up to the task.
“People- and paper-based processes
are breaking down, and it is forcing companies to hit the gas on their digital
transformation projects,” explained Matt Yeh, senior director of product
marketing for Delphix. “We’re
seeing an uptick in customer experience transition and cloud adoption. People
see the cloud as a place where they can easily match the resources that they
are expending with demand. We talk to customers and they say ‘we are in
keep-the-lights-on mode right now, but we know when we emerge from this, we
want to hit the gas’ on digital transformation projects.”
Delphix assists companies in
extracting value from their data through the acceleration of data transfer to
the cloud, where it becomes more flexible and usable for both the company and
its customers.
Yeh told FreightWaves that many
companies have the necessary data to succeed but accessing it is problematic.
He illustrated with the example of a manufacturing company Delphix is currently
working with.
“They have all sorts of data that
is trapped in their back-end system, and they want to do predictive analytics
on it so they can get a better understanding of how much material they need and
how much carrier capacity they need,” he said. “They are using Delphix to move the
data to a Google Cloud platform. That is oftentimes the latest data that is in
their production systems; and they can also transfer past data to help them
train their machine learning algorithms.”
In freight applications, Yeh said
carriers can utilize the service to gather data from customer onboarding
systems, track-and-trace systems, invoicing and more and bring that together
into a single cloud that makes that data accessible quickly and easily. J.B.
Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT) tapped into Delphix’s services when it was building its J.B.
Hunt 360 platform. The end result has been a service that landed the logistics
giant fourth place in FreightWaves’ FreightTech 25.
Data Company magazine recently spoke with J.B. Hunt on its digital transformation, and it shined a light on how the
company is utilizing all its data.
“The data-powered J.B. Hunt 360
platform gives carriers a level of visibility they’ve never had before,” Stuart
Scott, chief information officer and executive vice president of J.B. Hunt,
told the magazine. “We know where they’re going, when they’re going to get
there, and based on their usage patterns, what they’re going to look for next.
We can use data science to find those opportunities and alert carriers in
advance. It helps carriers operate more efficiently, which can result in new
revenue and cost savings.”
Yeh told FreightWaves that it is
the ability to quickly access previously siloed data that allows it to be used
in this way.
“I think people are aware [speed]
is an issue, but they are not aware there are solutions that can be put in
place to fix things,” he said. “As different parts of IT are starting to speed
up, they are realizing that data is the laggard.”
That is becoming more of an issue
right now with the large numbers of employees working remotely and having to
access internal company servers, which takes time and cuts into productivity.
“Typically, it can take days or
weeks until you get the dataset you need to do your job, and there is a huge
bucket of people involved in that [that creates a] bottleneck,” Yeh said,
adding that “you have all these different sources of data value — IoT,
information from your back-end systems, your drivers, carriers and shippers —
that are floating around, and to tap into that data you need to get it to the
data scientists.”
The remote environment is leading
to another issue that Delphix has taken a number of questions on, and that is
security. One of the hallmarks of Delphix’s solution is the ability to “mask”
data. The masking process turns real data into usable data that does not affect
or expose customer data.
“A lot of customers are in a
position where employees are working from home and they are worried about
securing their data,” Yeh said. “They are looking at Delphix as an insurance
policy to secure data.”
A global study from consultancy Thales, released in October, found that only 32%
of organizations considered security a priority when moving data to the cloud.
Just 31% believed that securing the data was their responsibility. Delphix, in a blog post earlier
this year, said that belief is unfounded.
The blog noted three myths
surrounding data security. One is that encryption is sufficient. The fact is,
Delphix said, encryption is a good start but unless the data inside the
encryption is protected, the data is still at risk. The second is to lock down production
data. Most companies put policies in place around production data but not
around the software systems that access and use that data. The final myth is
that you have to choose between speed and security.
“In a world where every company is
a data company, innovation, security, and operational excellence must go
hand-in-hand-in-hand, especially during the Covid-19 disruption,” the blog
stated. “It’s a reliable way to mitigate and control data risk in a way that
unlocks innovation while maintaining compliance and preserving customer trust.”
Yeh explained that Delphix’s
approach to masking data ensures that data is protected by turning it into a
data value that looks real but is not.
Ultimately, the key is to protect
the data when moving it into the cloud, and make access to that data quicker,
especially when it comes to development of new technologies.
“[Engineers] need data that is timely, so we shorten that path to getting that data,” Yeh said. “They also need data that is high quality. A lot of companies want to get data to certain people, but they have this huge amount of data and they can’t afford to move 20 terabytes of data and give it to someone, so they give a small slice of it [which leads to low-quality data].”
In today’s remote-operating environment,
protecting data has become more important.
“If you mask your data and someone
accesses it, it’s like stealing an empty purse,” he said.
As more companies are now realizing
the value of using the cloud to speed data transfers and gain access to the
right data quickly, Delphix is seeing an uptick in interest.
“We help enterprises move data from
one place to another,” Yeh said. “We get the teams that need data access to it
in a way that is very fast, efficient and compliant.”
