The 5 Type of Data Sources that Every Enterprise Should Think About

In broad terms, we see five major categories of data sources:

  1. Production data: Data coming from core web and mobile apps and / or the line of business apps, and their underlying production databases that contain user data and profiles. Examples are relational database like Amazon Aurora or a NoSQL database like DynamoDB.
  2. Sensor data: Data from connected devices / IoT devices like cell phones, vehicles, appliances, buildings, meters and machinery. The sensors collect a constant stream of environmental and usage data.
  3. Event data: Event data (also “behavioral data”) describes actions by users or entities, and contains three pieces of information: An action, with a timestamp and a state. Events is very rich and can have hundreds of properties. Examples are clickstream data for a web application, or log data from connected devices.
  4. SaaS data: Data from SaaS systems to support the customer lifecycle and the lines of business. Examples are data from systems for marketing automation (customer acqusition), in-app engagement (analytics), payments (monetization), or account management  / support (CRM).
  5. 3rd party data: Data that’s coming from private data brokers or government agencies, to enrich and provide additional context to existing in-house data sources. Examples are weather data, census data, or credit card transactions.