According to a report from Seagate technology, businesses are currently wasting over two thirds of the data available to them.  

Seagate Technology has released, Rethink Data: Put More of Your Data to Work – From Edge to Cloud. 

The report – based on a survey of 1,500 global enterprise leaders, which was commissioned by Seagate and conducted by the research firm IDC – identifies today’s most pressing data management challenges, and solutions to them. It pinpoints the amount of data available to enterprises that goes unused: 68%.

“The report and the survey make clear that winning businesses must have strong mass data operations,” said Seagate CEO Dave Mosley. “The value that a company derives from data directly affects its success.” 

The most significant findings include: 

• Data management is increasingly important as data proliferates. IDC projects that over the next two years enterprise data will grow at a 42.2% annual rate.
• Only 32% of data available to enterprises is put to work. The remaining 68% is unleveraged.  
• The top five barriers to putting data to work are: 1) making collected data usable, 2) managing the storage of collected data, 3) ensuring that needed data is collected, 4) ensuring the security of collected data, and 5) making the different silos of collected data available. 
• Managing data in the multi-cloud and hybrid cloud are top data management challenges expected by businesses over the next two years. 
• Two thirds of survey respondents report insufficient data security, making data security an essential element of any discussion of efficient data management. 

The report identifies the missing link of data management: data operations, or DataOps. IDC defines DataOps as, “the discipline connecting data creators with data consumers.”

While the majority of respondents say that DataOps is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important, only 10% of organisations report having implemented DataOps fully.

The survey demonstrated that, along with other data management solutions, DataOps leads to measurably better business outcomes. It boosts customer loyalty, revenue, profit, cost savings, plus results in other benefits. 

“The findings of this study illustrating that more than two-thirds of available data lies fallow in organisations may seem like disturbing news,” said Phil Goodwin, research director, IDC and principal analyst on the study.

“But in truth, it shows how much opportunity and potential organisations already have at their fingertips. Organisations that can harness the value of their data wherever it resides – core, cloud or edge – can generate significant competitive advantage in the marketplace.”