According to a new survey from Syncsort, a US-based provider of Big Iron (aka mainframes) to Big Data software, many firms are still struggling to make data accessible and get value from it, with 68% of respondents reporting that siloed data negatively impacts their organization.
The 2019 Data Trends survey found that most IT departments in the financial services and public sector were still grappling with data delivery and value. Just 9% of respondents called their organization “Very Effective” at getting value from data, while nearly half (48%) responded just “Somewhat Effective.” Making data accessible to users across the enterprise was the third most cited IT challenge, and only half (50%) called their organization “Very Effective” or “Somewhat Effective” in getting data insights to business users.
Despite this, “Improved Access to Data” fell fourth on the list of business initiatives IT indicated they would support in 2019, behind Increased Operational/Workforce Efficiency (48%), Improved Customer Experience (46%) and Cost Reduction (42%).
Cloud/Hybrid Computing was the top IT initiative for 2019, selected by 46%, with 39% already in Early Adoption (less than 2 years), 27% In Production (2-5 years) and 10% in Mature Adoption (5+ years). Blockchain (34%), IoT (32%), AI (30%) and Streaming Data Technology (24%) had the largest number of respondents still in Research/Evaluation, but early adopters show traction for these technologies.
Notably, ‘Modernizing Infrastructure’ was the second highest priority IT initiative for 2019, selected by 38%, and was the top technology currently providing business benefits, chosen by 25% – the largest group – of respondents.
Just 9% are in Mature Adoption (5+ years) with Data Lakes while 17% are In Production (2-4 years), 24% in Early Adoption (less than 2 years) and 23% still in the Research/Evaluation stage. Most building Data Lakes are populating them from their Enterprise Data Warehouse (52%), with a lower percentage using data from RDBMS (37%), NoSQL Databases (24%), Third-party Providers (23%) and Cloud Repositories (21%).
“There is so much data being produced today, and it’s creating a significant number of new opportunities and challenges,” says Tendü Yo?urtçu, Syncsort Chief Technology Officer.
“We are seeing cloud and hybrid cloud as the mainstream trends, which is consistent with the results of our 2018 cloud survey. With the gravity of data shifting, organizations are trying to take advantage of the cloud’s elasticity and gain the ability to analyse and deliver trusted data into application pipelines as quickly as possible. These are the precursors to improving data accessibility and taking advantage of the emerging technologies, like machine learning and streaming analytics, that will help deliver more value out of data.”
