📸 10,000,000 views.

About six years ago I started uploading some of my photos to Unsplash. No strategy. No big plan. Just the idea of giving something back after using so many great free photos from other creators for my own presentations, documents and talks.

Last week those images quietly crossed 10 million views in total. That felt like a nice moment to stop and reflect on what has happened since I uploaded that first photo.

We hear a lot about technical debt, which leads to the storage of data in closed-off legacy systems. These include on-premises servers, databases, applications, and workloads that are defined by departmental and divisional silos.

Without the ability to share data across your business (using security and access constraints), it’s impossible for an SMB or enterprise to work cohesively to deliver new services and products. The goal is to use data to anticipate—not just respond—to customer experience demands across customer-facing applications, web portals, and all channels. But many businesses cannot achieve this goal due to data silos.