So you found some oil. Now you need to do something with it, but where do you start?
By building a rig.
A drilling rig is a device that extracts oil. It sounds so simple on the surface, but if you drill down (see what we did there?!), you’ll see that the oil industry is built on layers upon layers of bundled business services and many different owners. Every layer is complicated, and ultimately the owners of the oil — the people trying to extract value — are looking for trained operators. They need operators who are trained to follow processes and run refinery equipment that has been uniquely configured for their products, not just for pulling crude out of the ground.
As discussed previously, simply locating oil in its raw form is nearly useless without the ability to refine it reliably, repeatably, and dynamically, and may even trick you into thinking you’ve struck it rich.
So while finding oil might be one of the most exciting parts of the process, it isn’t long before you realize that rigs can’t produce exactly what you want.
Data is the same way. And while there is a lot of excitement for finding data in the first place, it’s easy to forget the source of the actual value. Hint: it isn’t the rig!
Many of us seem to have gotten our hands on lots of data in recent years from various advances in medical devices and cloud services, and that might feel like progress, but it turns out that we can’t do anything useful with it yet. It turns out that data, like oil, is dirty. It’s complicated to extract it, store it, transport it, and refine it. It requires complicated — and often expensive — systems.
Here’s the key distinction: No one wants oil. We want the products that can be refined from oil. We can’t forget that important difference.
Once again, it’s the same with data. As an industry, we’ve pivoted really hard to “Everybody, go get data!” Everybody’s seemingly running around saying that they want it, but too many are trying to design their own refineries, or worse, unclear what to do with it at all. We’ve managed to commoditize production of vast quantities of data, and secure cloud connectivity is a given. The focus on most efficiently creating exponential value from that flowing crude is the real differentiator.
Yes, data is the new oil. But we need to understand and honor the complex process that’s required to extract value from it before declaring victory.
