Data silos limit insights and raise costs: IDC

Data silos within Asia Pacific organisations are raising IT costs and security risks, while limiting the ability of organisations to make insight-based decisions, according to IDC research released on Tuesday.

The research paper, commissioned by Commvault, revealed 40 per cent of 600 IT decision makers across the APAC region reported that backup, recovery, data protection and analytics strategies are still managed at a departmental level.

More locally, 16 per cent of Australia and New Zealand IT decision makers think data silos are causing lower productivity and hindering the ability to collaborate, while 34 per cent cited security as a major issue of data silos, compared to an average of 29 per cent across APAC

Data was found to be spread across different business departments and locations on-premise, as well as in third-party data centres and highly virtualised environments. Key data management processes were often not well defined, managed or measured, according to a release.

The research also found that cloud remains among the top investment areas for IT, but ensuring secure and real-time synchronisation of confidential and business critical data was a key challenge when moving data to the cloud in A/NZ (32 per cent) and across APAC (21 per cent).

The issues of data silos were also highlighted by the shift towards what IDC calls the “3rd platform", where businesses are increasingly focused on taking holistic views of their data in order to effectively make informed business decisions.

Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, senior program manager of big data, analytics, enterprise applications & social from IDC, said the 3rd platform approach presents significant opportunities for businesses to drive future growth and innovation.

“In the 3rd platform era, becoming a data-driven organisation is no longer a choice, but a necessity. Making decisions based on data-driven approaches not only increases the accuracy of results, but also provides consistency in how the results are interpreted and fed back into the business.

“This necessary shift in the way data is stored, managed and analysed requires organisations to move from departmental (or siloed) approaches when managing their data assets to an integrated data-driven culture.”

Bryan Stibbard, Commvault’s area VP for A/NZ, said the report findings are indicative of the need for more holistic data management solutions to address these ongoing data management issues.

“Data management silos are creating bottlenecks that result in missed opportunities and prevent organisations from achieving the full value of their data as a powerful, strategic asset,” said Stibbard.

“By taking a more integrated approach to data management, [CIOs] are able to more easily leverage new and more open technology like the cloud, while increasing information security.”