Data Resource is a component of information technology infrastructure that represents all the data available to an organization, whether they are automated or non-automated.  Different business organizations may have different needs. Today, it is not uncommon to find a single company operating in different industries. It is also not uncommon to find companies branching out to different geographical locations within the country it is operating in or even outside the country of its origin.

Setting up an information technology infrastructure can be very complex. As a rule, the more complex the company set up is, the IT needs become more complicated and it would become more difficult to set up the final IT infrastructure.

The IT infrastructure has many aspects. There is the network part where IT architects need to consider networking peripheral including routers, switches, cabling, wireless connection, and other products. Then there is the server aspect where certain powerful computers are assigned separate tasks like database server, web server, FTP server and others.

The data resource is a separate component of this infrastructure. Like the network and server components, and many other components not mentioned, it is important to carefully plan the data resource of the IT infrastructure.

The data resource encompasses all its representation of each and every single data available to an organization. This means that even those non-automated data such as bulks of paper files in individual desks of each staff, confidential paper data hidden in steel cabinets, sales receipts, invoices and all other transaction paper documents  constitute the Data Resource. It cannot be denied that despite the digitalization of all business processes, papers still play a large part in business operations.

A digital Data Resource provides faster and more efficient means of managing data for the company. In today’ world, Data Resource implementation does not just end in the the digitalization aspect.

Today, companies are finding out that the most efficient way to support Data Resource is constantly changing and evolving with technology. In fact, the changes have been very significant since the last 20 years.

In the field of digital Data Resource, in the not so distant past, there used to be large centralized facilities operating Mainframes to a distributed collection of client-server systems and back to recentralized arrays of commodity hardware.

Today, the physical nature of Data Resource may have changed dramatically but the same need for scalable and reliable infrastructure has not.

It is common today to have Data Resource scattered and connected via network. This makes so much sense today as the need for information becomes more and more pervasive and data consumers are now doing mobile computing: the web, mobile applications, national or global branch offices, worldwide partner sites, or subsidiaries.

It is no longer practical to create an infrastructure based on a particular location or piece of hardware, but rather on the other pervasive entity in every organization with the help of network. The network has so many inherent qualities which makes it ideal as the basis for managing hosted data resource infrastructure.

Data Resources may be scattered everywhere in the company. There may be data resource from finance, sales, marketing, HR, manufacturing and other company departments. Some data resource may come from several other departments from other geographical branches.

In short, Data Resources may come from everywhere and they may converge on one data warehouse they may send criss-crossing data from department to another. In whatever case, everything is moving towards networked infrastructure. The best example of networked Data Resource is the internet where the millions of web servers around the world are the Data Resources.