According to Michael Curry, Rocket Software’s President of Data Modernisation – data management has grown up. The job now isn’t to just accumulate and store data, but to see it, trust it, and use it regardless of where it lives. Leading teams now map end-to-end data flows, enforce shared definitions, and assign clear ownership so quality travels with the data.
The big shift is from “data protectionism” – locking data away for compliance and security – to “data leverage”. He argues that utilisation is now existential: companies are racing to extract value, not just guard the asset. Outcomes have moved beyond risk reduction to top-line growth – “finding alpha” in capital markets and radically improving customer experiences as GenAI makes previously hard-to-reach data AI-ready.
The real drag is organisational inertia, breeding poor data quality, strategy gridlock, poor customer experience, and lost competitive edge. To cut through the status quo, Curry advises to tie investments to hard business ROI – improved conversion, lower churn, shorter cycle time – rather than operational “plumbing” like storage savings. And to be AI-ready, build a documented ground truth: catalogue your data, define it, and ensure completeness and accessibility across the enterprise.
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