In this book you will understand how a wide variety of roles involved in managing, controlling, and using data. Some roles are business-oriented, some involve more engineering, some focus on research, and some are hybrid roles that combine different aspects of data management. Your organization may define roles differently, or give them different names, but the roles described in this unit encapsulate the most common division of tasks and responsibilities.
Over the last few decades, the amount of data generated by systems, applications, and devices has increased significantly. Data is everywhere, in a multitude of structures and formats.
Data is now easier to collect and cheaper to store, making it accessible to nearly every business. Data solutions include software technologies and platforms that can help facilitate the collection, analysis, and storage of valuable information. Every business would like to grow their revenues and make larger profits. In this competitive market, data is a valuable asset. When analyzed properly, data provides a wealth of useful information and inform critical business decisions.
The capability to capture, store, and analyze data is a core requirement for every organization in the world. In this chapter, you'll learn about options for representing and storing data, and about typical data workloads.

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