Cohesity has released new research revealing 95% of UK organisations believe the promise of the public cloud hasn’t delivered on expectations. The research shows IT teams and senior teams in fundamental disagreement over what the public cloud can achieve.
The majority of UK respondents believe it’s because their data is greatly fragmented in and across public clouds and could become nearly impossible to manage long term.
“While providing many needed benefits, the public cloud also greatly proliferates mass data fragmentation,” said Raj Rajamani, VP of products at Cohesity. “We believe this is a key reason why 38% of respondents say their IT teams are spending between 30-70% of their time managing data and apps in public cloud environments today.”
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The term mass data fragmentation was coined to encapsulate the current driver of data quality issues and the growing proliferation of data spread across a myriad of different locations, infrastructure silos, and management systems that prevent organisations from fully utilising its value.
While mass data fragmentation is not exclusive to public cloud environments, Cohesity’s research identified several factors which make it conducive to it:
- Many organisations have deployed multiple point products to manage fragmented data silos, but that can add significant management complexities. The survey found 42% are using 3-4 point products to manage their data – specifically backups, archives, files, test/dev copies, – across public clouds today, while 19% are using as many as 5-6 separate solutions.
- Respondents expressed concerns about using multiple products to move data between on-premises and public cloud environments, if those products don’t integrate. 59% are concerned about security, 49% worry about costs and 44% are concerned about compliance.
- Data copies can increase fragmentation challenges. 33% of respondents have four or more copies of the same data in public cloud environments, which can not only increase storage costs but create data compliance challenges.
“The public cloud can empower organisations to accelerate their digital transformation journey, but first organisations must solve mass data fragmentation challenges to reap the benefits,” continued Rajamani. “Businesses suffering from mass data fragmentation are finding data to be a burden, not a business driver.”
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