Extra tags: data
According to new research released by Digital Realty, the world's largest provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data centres, colocation, and interconnection solutions, nearly half (47%) of IT executives believe their company's investment in data systems and infrastructure is a major roadblock or concern. Major corporations worldwide are underinvesting in the tools and infrastructure needed to handle growing volumes of data, and this problem will only worsen as the volume of data expands exponentially and the Data Gravity effect intensifies.
The research, outlined in Digital Realty’s Global Data Insights report, reveals that 53% of respondents globally cited a lack of sufficient investment in data systems/infrastructure as a key obstacle their organisation faces when drawing valuable insights from data. Similarly, half (50%) cited a lack of sufficient investment in relevant analytics tools. Respondents in Asia Pacific (APAC) raised similar concerns, citing a lack of funding in data systems/infrastructure, relevant analytics tools and internal talent to build technical capacity as the top three obstacles.
A barrier to business growth
For many businesses, a lack of investment in data analytics tools can be a roadblock to growth, as getting usable insights from data relies heavily on the information being efficiently aggregated and controlled. In fact, over three-quarters (72%) of IT executives worldwide agree that improving infrastructure in the next two years is critical for their companies to gain more value data-driven insights. This was especially true among respondents in APAC, where 69 per cent said that improving data infrastructure is vital.
If IT teams want to stay competitive in an increasingly data-centric environment, they must have the ability to extract value from data and prioritise data-driven strategies. However, according to the report, 65 per cent of IT leaders from some of the world's largest companies believe their teams need to improve their data competency in order to stay competitive and extract value from data. To stay competitive and extract value from data, 48% of IT leaders in APAC companies feel their employees need to improve their data proficiency.
The study also revealed that when it came to enabling data-driven insights, investing in artificial intelligence/machine learning technology was more critical than increasing employee capabilities around data amongst APAC respondents in the next two years.
Looking ahead
The research shows that IT leaders foresee just a minor rise in spending on data tools, infrastructure, and procedures over the next several years, with the majority of funds going toward using data to improve the customer experience.
Furthermore, 17% of IT leaders believe that data-driven insights would help businesses attract more talent in the future, implying that individuals will be drawn to companies that effectively use data. This is expected to have a compounding effect, with more data-savvy companies attracting more data-savvy personnel and increasing their competitive advantage.
Crucially, businesses need to understand the benefits that data can unlock and make data driven strategies a priority if they want to stay competitive in an increasingly data-centric world. Digital Realty’s research revealed that three quarters (75%) of $1B+ companies do now have a formal data strategy in the planning, adoption or execution stage. This compares to 63% of global companies generally, suggesting that larger companies are operating slightly ahead of the curve from a data perspective, something which is likely to give them an advantage over smaller competitors as the amount of data grows and Data Gravity becomes a bigger challenge.
“As the volume of data grows exponentially across the world, the Data Gravity effect is inevitably going to intensify, particularly if information isn’t effectively processed,” explains Dave McCrory, VP of Growth and Global Head of Insights and Analytics at Digital Realty. “This phenomenon sees large volumes of data continually attracting more data, making it impossible to move, manipulate or extract value from. This forms barriers for businesses and can render their data useless if action isn’t taken.
“Digital Realty understands the growing challenges business leaders face and that’s why we’ve built PlatformDIGITAL®, our first of its kind global data centre platform, designed to meet the ever-changing data, control and networking demands of global enterprises and helping them realise new, data-first strategies.”
