Overcoming challenges of data gravity

Applications don’t just hold data, but they also produce a lot of data that they share with other applications. Data will attract new data and services in other applications. As data accumulates, more and more applications and services will use it. Data and applications are attracted to each other, as in the law of gravity. To put it short and simply: the amounts of data will grow, either autonomously, but likely because data sources will be connected to other data sources.

In addition to a strategic advantage of having access to this data, this also presents a major challenge. Databases are becoming so large that it becomes almost impossible to move the data. This can lead to the situation that companies are tied to a certain location to hold that data. In addition, companies that use each other's data and services must stay close to each other in order to provide good service. By keeping data physically close together, it can be exchanged...