New Survey Identifies Major Gaps in Fast Data Use Despite Large Corporate Investments

By PRNewswire On Jul 26, 2018

Findings Highlight Overwhelming Recognition by Enterprises That How Quickly They Can React to Data Is Critical to Their Success

Streamlio, the intelligent platform for fast data, announced results of a new “Speed of Data” survey conducted with Dimensional Research. The survey of hundreds of corporate decision makers worldwide found near universal agreement about the criticality of faster data processing, along with a huge gap between where companies need to be and where they are today. Specifically, while 99 percent of respondents said processing and acting on data as quickly as possible is important, more than 80 percent admit they need to do that more quickly than they currently do and nearly three quarters still rely primarily on antiquated batch data processing. Even industries known for quickly acting on data said they can do better, with 95 percent of financial services and 86 percent of technology companies saying they want to act on data faster.

“Despite companies recognizing the need to process data immediately, there are still major barriers to doing so, with most still acting on information in batch the same way they did since the 1960s,” said Lewis Kaneshiro, CEO and co-founder of Streamlio. “There’s near universal recognition that speed is critical to business success. However, companies are struggling mightily with the demands of new initiatives to enable immediate reactions to customers, markets and systems by using machine learning, artificial intelligence, the cloud, microservices and more.”

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The survey highlights the struggle in stark terms:

There’s no debate about the importance and value of processing data immediately: More than 80 percent of companies have an immediate need to process data faster and more than three quarters track how quickly they can act on data. Larger companies are more likely to closely monitor immediacy of data processing, and speed is considered “critically important” by respondents in healthcare, energy and financial services in particular.
But there’s a huge gap between where companies need to be and where they are today: 99 percent have scenarios that would benefit from faster data processing. Top scenarios include business intelligence/reporting (60 percent), system and application monitoring (54 percent), security and fraud detection (52 percent), and customer interaction (51 percent). Top benefits include increased efficiency (68 percent), enabling real-time customer interaction (60 percent), and responding to changing business and market dynamics (50 percent).
Technology and people are barriers to fast data adoption: more than 90 percent of companies are currently investing in technology to bridge this gap, with almost 40 percent making “significant investments.” The top challenges include difficulty making changes to existing solutions and infrastructure (53 percent), finding people with the required skills (48 percent), and scalability (45 percent).

“What became clear in our survey is that nearly every company recognizes how critical it is to put data to use faster and have current initiatives driving immediate demand for fast data,” said Diane Hagglund, principal researcher at Dimensional Research. “What also jumped out is the tangible business benefits from speeding up data processing, with more than half highlighting increased customer satisfaction and new business applications.”