With over half the world online and actively sharing information, the amount of data generated is exploding. In the chaos of 2020, becoming data-driven has become the key to business success. And companies are eager to leverage the insights data can bring. But adopting technologies such as artificial intelligence is one thing; keeping data accessible and secure across a dispersed environment is another.

“Data science is great, artificial intelligence is great, but you still have to have good data underneath and you have to do it at speed,” said Scott Buckles (pictured), North America business unit executive for database, data science and DataOps at IBM. “DataOps is all about driving more efficiency, more speed to [the data management] process, and doing it in a much more effective manner.”

Buckles spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Actifio Data Driven event. They discussed the value of data and how DataOps is helping data scientists leverage data assets. (* Disclosure below.)

Actifio and IBM work together to speed and secure the data pipeline

IBM was one of Actifio’s earliest partners, and the relationship has grown along with the copy data management market that Actifio pioneered.

“In the DataOps world where we are looking to help all of our customers gain efficiency and effectiveness in their data pipeline and get value out of their data, Actifio really compliments a lot of the solutions that we have very well,” Buckles said. 

Those solutions include IBM Virtual Data Pipeline powered by Actifio, which speeds the test and development process for virtual data copies. With the 3.0 release of IBM’s Cloud Pak for Data, VDP can now be launched directly from Cloud Pak for Data.

“It’s a native integration, and that’s the first of many things to come with how we are tying those two capabilities and those two solutions more closely together,” Buckles said.

There are three primary customer use cases for Cloud Pak for Data with VDP, according to Buckles. First is accelerating the development process: “How do you take data from its raw form, which may or may not be usable … and get it to a business-ready state so that your data scientists, your business, your data models can take advantage of it,” he said.

Second is reducing storage costs: “As data has exponentially grown so has storage costs,” Buckles added. “We’ve been in the test data management world for a number of years now, and our ability to help customers reduce that storage footprint is also tied to the acceleration piece.”

The third use case is mitigating risk. With data security challenges increasing, “customers are continuously looking for ways to mitigate their exposure to somebody manipulating data, accessing production data and manipulating production data, especially sensitive data,” Buckles said.

As VDP virtualizes the data, it mitigates the risk of data breaches.

IBM has had “several significantly large wins,” where Actifio has provided the solution for clients struggling with data pipelines, Buckles explained. A key case was the merger of two high-profile banks, where secure data and systems were converged quickly, securely, and with minimum impact to the bank’s customers.

“That was one of the best wins that we’ve had in the recent months,” Buckles concluded.  

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Actifio Data Driven event. Neither Actifio Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE