A Data Standard That’s More Help Than Headache

Some functions related to data have advanced with astonishing speed: generation, dissemination, storage, even security (and yes, that one still has many challenges). But there are others still mired in the stone age—call it the 80s—of the digital era. For example, think copies.

How many business professionals still make multiple copies of sensitive data, just as it’s been done for the last four decades? What does this endless duplication do for regulatory risk, security threats and privacy liabilities?

This is a symptom of a larger problem: Far from the data-centric universe we all envisioned, we’re beholden instead to the apps used to create, store, and distribute data. There’s an app for everything, but also a database for every app, leading to dozens of data silos undergoing hundreds of integrations, increasing fragmentation, complexity, and costs. Integration-related tasks alone can drain half the IT budget.

One possible answer comes from Zero-Copy Integration, a new standard in Canada gaining global traction. I spoke to Dan DeMers, a technical committee member for the standard. He’s an accidental entrepreneur of sorts: While he never had dreams of launching and running his own company, that’s exactly what he did. His now four-year-old venture, Cinchy represents the essence of disruption—its Data Collaboration Platform offers the first technology to liberate data from enterprise apps, as advocated by Zero-Copy Integration. The technology enables collaboration without copying and transforms any operation with a universal data network.

Gary Drenik: What’s the easiest way to understand Zero-Copy Integration, especially as it applies to technology development and usage?

Dan DeMers: Zero-Copy Integration, a national standard developed by The Digital Governance Council and already approved by the Standards Council of Canada, calls for decoupling data from applications in order to eliminate database silos and copy-based data integration, allowing for meaningful access controls that can be universally enforced. It offers organizations a new framework to transform and enhance almost every aspect of data use and governance. It establishes a set of core principles that enable the C-suite, senior executives, and data professionals alike to accelerate digital innovation projects defined by increased control, efficiency, and collaboration.

This boosts the delivery of a wide range of digital innovation projects, from app development and automation to analytics and advances related to artificial intelligence and machine learning. These advances won’t be divorced from operating realities; they’ll ease navigation through onerous regulations such as Europe’s GDPR, California’s coming CPRA, and the plethora of state-level data privacy mandates.

Drenik: Why was it created?

DeMers: It could be argued that there are already enough mandates governing the use, and prohibiting the misuse, of enterprise data. However, almost all of these are prohibitive—they focus on what enterprises cannot and should not do. And they exist in an app-centric environment—the data exists only inside the applications that carry them.

Zero-Copy Integration takes a very different approach. It sees apps as the wrapping—the data is the gift, and much like money or intellectual property, it should be valued and protected, not copied, and passed around. It’s the first true regulation for the data-centric world.

The environment is ripe for solutions that can eliminate the need for endless copying. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, our data has become varied and app dependent. Consumers use smartphone apps for banking 59.2%, product browsing 56.7%, making a purchase 50.9%, paying for a transaction in-store 27.4% amongst other activities.

Extrapolating from those few statistics to the entire consumer universe gives a sense of how much data there is, and whether it can be used or misused.

Drenik: The press release announcing the standard states it eliminates data integration and data silos. How does it accomplish this, and how can it change the way the world works with data?

DeMers: There’s plenty of lip service paid to the importance of data as the ultimate corporate asset, but too often these principles are flouted to meet short-term business needs. As laid out by the non-profit Data Collaboration Alliance, which played a key role in developing the standard and of which I’m president and secretary, the distinguishing characteristics of optimal data management are universal control (when authorized parties control how their data is seen and edited); universal ownership (when the data has a single individual or institution as the official owner, with the right to designate management to third parties but retain accountability) and universal access (when the power to view or edit any dataset is granted only by the owner).

Zero-Copy Integration is the first meaningful attempt to make these achievable. With Zero-Copy Integration protocols established and aligned technologies implemented, business professionals can gain customer 360 views more easily, benefit from accelerated custom app development, enable workflow automation, modernize legacy systems and more. These are just some of the advantages—many more have long been discussed but remained elusive, and they’re all now at hand.

Drenik: What’s an ideal scenario for the adoption—government, industry bodies, large organizations, technology developers, etc.?

DeMers: It would be nice to assume that the government waves a regulatory wand, and all is well. However, there’s no single change agent that can achieve broad-scale adoption—we’ll always have the early adopters, then companies who see the early adopters reaping the benefits, and then entire industries driven by force multipliers.

The biggest boost might come from education. Perhaps industry groups can disseminate the message that while most standards are fundamentally restrictive, Zero-Copy Integration has the effect of speeding innovation, easing collaboration, and automating governance. They could also endorse custom versions of Zero-Copy Integration, retrofitted to meet their specific needs. Then we’ll see broad adoption. And there’s already activity into advancing Zero-Copy Integration with international standards organizations.

The standard supports a piecemeal approach—rather than ripping out and replacing installed technologies, organizations can evolve the transformation by gradually eliminating silos, integration, and complex code.

Drenik: What are the benefits with regard to a) data collaboration; b) data privacy; and c) compliance?

DeMers: All these benefits are intertwined and closely related. The idea of collaboration without endless copying should be archaic, but it’s still the norm. When multiple parties are working off the same data, collaboration is faster and safer—there are no fears of multiple versions, or of violating privacy and compliance mandates. A zero-copy architecture enables the automation of data governance, which makes the data self-protecting, self-correcting, self-versioning, and self-tracking.

Drenik: How will Zero-Copy Integration affect existing practices?

DeMers: For the first time, business professionals will be working with the data itself, not the applications used to carry it. Chances are they won’t even know this—the process is seamless. They won’t have to track multiple versions to see which has all changes. They won’t have legal or IT professionals worrying whether all mandates are being followed. They’ll see data used to power new apps faster and more economically than was thought possible.

Drenik: My thanks to Dan DeMers, co-founder and CEO of Cinchy. We’ll be watching how Zero-Copy Integration evolves. For now, Cinchy is the only company making this bold move towards the integration-free, data-centric environment with Zero-Copy Integration-aligned technology. It will be interesting to see which other companies follow their lead.

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