New study reveals that an enterprise-wide data management platform is essential for data-driven organizations to gain or maintain competitive advantage

Rubrik, the Cloud Data Management Company, announced the results from an IDC White Paper study, commissioned by Rubrik, to evaluate the magnitude of the data sprawl problem and how IT organizations are prepared to deal with it. The white paper finds that more than 80% of IT leaders surveyed by IDC identify data sprawl as one of the most critical problems their organizations must address today. Given that the volume of data companies need to manage is expected to more than double every two years, IDC analysts predict that the challenge of managing data sprawl will only grow increasingly complicated.

“Valuable data is now commonly spread across multiple physical locations and different repository types,” said Phil Goodwin, research director at IDC. “This creates a problem of data sprawl and fragmentation, meaning that appropriate stakeholders do not have access or know where to find the right data to make informed business decisions. As a result, they are unable to leverage their data to its fullest extent. It also stymies robust AI, machine learning, analytics and compliance solutions that need enterprise visibility to operate optimally.”

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As IT leaders worldwide accelerate their digital transformation initiatives to weather the COVID-19 crisis, they are recognizing that cloud is an indispensable part of their IT infrastructure and will be a critical area of investment for effectively managing data sprawl. As leaders seek to leverage data for business insights, data center consolidation and cloud migration will be at the heart of their strategy to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. By consolidating data centers and adopting a cloud-first strategy, organizations can achieve more efficient IT architectures and mitigate enterprise risk, as well as leverage the flexibility and scalability of cloud deployments.

In fact, IDC research has found that 70% of surveyed CIOs have a stated cloud-first application deployment strategy. However, few organizations have an effective and efficient enterprise-wide data management strategy and platform to gain the full potential from their data. These challenges will continue to grow as valuable data is commonly spread across data centers, private cloud(s), and public cloud locations such as SaaS applications and at the edge, including remote locations, endpoint devices, and specialized IoT devices.

“As the amount of data generated by enterprise organizations continues to skyrocket, a powerful, policy-driven data management platform is imperative to business success,” observes Chris Wahl, Chief Technologist at Rubrik. “Many organizations still struggle to manage and secure their data as they adopt cloud strategies, which will only contribute to the data fragmentation problem.”

To measure the impact of these challenges associated with data sprawl, identify the critical steps that leading organizations are taking to extract more value from their data, and quantify the business impact of data management innovations, Rubrik commissioned IDC to develop the IDC White Paper, The Data-Forward Enterprise: How to Maximize Data Leverage for Better Business Outcomes. The white paper reveals:

Untapped potential: Organizations are not leveraging data to its fullest extent, causing them to leave revenue on the table.

IT organizations still struggle to capitalize on the value of their data, which can drastically impact their bottom line. In fact, organizations that were surveyed without an enterprise-wide data management solution incur 66% more operational costs and are 67% slower to market than their innovative peers. By contrast, leading innovators (as defined in the study) in data management achieve 69% more revenue and 57% more profit. These leading organizations also enjoy 72% greater customer satisfaction and are able to deploy 62% more new products and services, indicating high potential for lasting leadership in the marketplace.

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Organizations are unprepared to manage data growth.

IT organizations understand the importance of data management, yet most are not doing enough to prepare for future data challenges. For example, 44.5% of respondents anticipate that data sprawl will be a major or devastating issue two years from now if their organization continues in its present approach to data control and management. Furthermore, only 9.2% of organizations have a single, centralized data management system or platform. The amount of data organizations manage and generate will only continue to grow, and consequently, organizations that are not developing a sound data strategy today will be unprepared for future challenges associated with data sprawl and fragmentation.

Cloud is critical to digital transformation.

IDC finds that 60% of organizations surveyed have either completed or started digital transformation initiatives in order to become more data-driven and increase data leverage. Cloud initiatives are critical to these digital transformation initiatives, and IT teams cite investments in cloud computing (private, public, hybrid and multicloud) as their highest organizational priority. Although organizations may seek to modernize their current environment by transitioning to a multicloud ecosystem, most still encounter significant challenges in doing so.

IDC notes that organizations should seek a cloud-first solution to help them effectively navigate this transition. Analysts also recommend seeking the following elements when searching for a technology solution that will mitigate the risks of data sprawl, future-proof one’s IT environment, and improve data management innovation:

1. Consolidated Platform
2. Centralized policy-engine
3. Metadata management
4. API-driven extensibility
5. Ability to search, ingest, and classify data

Positive business outcomes result from data management innovation.

As for IT organizations surveyed that do have a more sophisticated cloud data management strategy, they are already reaping the benefits. Specifically, staff productivity has increased by 24% with employees spending 64% more time on new initiatives rather than “just keeping the lights on.” Additionally, unplanned downtime decreased by 59% for those with modernized data environments.

Data management innovation leaders are also able to strategically leverage metadata intelligence, allowing them to gain insights into how their data is changing, who is accessing it, where it’s located, and whether or not it is compliant. By ingesting, indexing, and accessing data across silos in a unified manner, organizations are able to limit the risk of sensitive data exposure with native immutability, simplify data management across their entire environment, and unlock critical insights from their data.

Leading innovators are ultimately leveraging data to disrupt new markets and gain a competitive advantage through strategic data management innovations, including consolidating data onto a single platform, deploying intelligent policy engines, automating workflows, and deploying applications and policies to simplify data governance.

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