Data Going to Waste, WANdisco Says

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A new report unveiled by WANdisco this week finds that companies are struggling to move data out of silos and into places where it can be analyzed and used for the benefit of the company, including driving digital transformation. The company also this week launched a new offering called Edge to Cloud designed to tackle the problems identified in the report.

“Data isn’t getting where it needs to go to activate its full value,” WANdisco writes in its report, which was prepared by Wakefield Research. “Significant barriers include data taking too long to get to the cloud, analysts taking too long to analyze it, disruption moving data to the cloud, and data being too distributed.”

Some of the specific findings of the report, which is based on a survey of 450 data leaders at companies with 1,000+ employees in the US, the UK, and Germany and is titled “Exploring the State of Digital transofrmatoin and Data Activation Among Large Companies,” include:

* 75% of data leaders report half or more of their data being trapped in a silo;

* 45% say they feel “moderate to significant frustration” as a result of data silos;

Data remains largely siloed at large companies (Graphic source: WANdisco report)

* 69% somewhat or strongly agree that their data ends up being trapped and not fully utilized;

* 78% say data is growing faster than their ability to derive value from it;

* 43% cite technical skills as a reason, while 34% cite poor or outdated data infrastructure.

Many companies want to move data into the cloud, but they’re unable to do that in a way that works, says Dave Richards, the CEO and co-founder of WANdisco, which is based in San Ramon, California.

“To understand and act on your data, it has to be in the cloud,” Richards says in a press release. “All the big companies are finding ways to get at least some of their data there, but it’s not happening at scale. It’s certain applications here and there, not every data point generated across the enterprise.”

The survey found 17% of respondents say the inability to fully capitalize on their data is a “significant” factor in preventing a company from realizing its digital transformation plans, while 53% said this was a “moderate” factor holding them back.

But it was not all doom and gloom. Nearly all of the respondent (96%) said they’ve been able to utilize their data to create new revenue streams, and more than half (56%) say they’ve created several new revenue streams.

Data becomes trapped for several reasons (Graphic source: WANdisco report)

The enormous upside of data is tantalizing for Richards. “Just bits and pieces of enterprise data are turning into tangible results. So can you imagine what would happen if every last data point was put to use?” he says in the press release. “The data-driven value generated to date is going to feel like a grain of sand compared to the beach we’ll be sitting on in 10 years.”

To help customers actually realize that lofty goal, WANdisco yesterday launched an “IoT activation solution” dubbed Edge to Cloud. The company says that the new offering connects IoT data storage with cloud-based AI, machine learning, and analytics applications, “allowing every sensor-generated data point to add business value and be monetized.”

Within three years, the world is projected to have more than 25 billion IoT devices, each one generating data of some type for companies in the manufacturing, telecommunications, energy/utilities, healthcare, and automotive sectors. Funneling all of that sensor data into public cloud data centers will be critical for companies that want to actually monetize that data, WANdisco says.

To download a copy of WANdisco’s report, click here.

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