With many years of cloud computing under their belts, some experts are taking stock of how well the cloud is delivering on real-world expectations. According to a recent survey of 900 senior IT decision makers conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of data management company Cohesity, things could be better.
More than two-thirds (68%) of the IT pros surveyed said the cloud has fallen short in delivering anticipated benefits of simplified operations, increased agility, reduced costs and greater data insights. Of those respondents, 91% cited mass data fragmentation as the culprit.
Significantly, mass data fragmentation is standing in the way of perhaps the key transformative benefit of becoming a digital business: the ability to analyze structured and unstructured data for actionable business and customer insights. Indeed, respondents to the Vanson Bourne study identified the top benefit of removing data fragmentation as improved analytics/AI on massive data sets now stored across multiple clouds.
How Does Data Become Isolated?
Data fragmentation happens when different applications launch in different clouds – an Oracle ERP application here, a CRM application there, for example. If those applications need to use the same data, then multiple data copies are created and remain in the silo of each cloud-based application. Over time, multiple data copies become multiple data versions as changes are made to what was once the same data.
“If marketing were to launch an AWS server, there would be files in-house and on AWS,” said Brian Grime, CIO of Superior Credit Union in Lima, Ohio, envisioning how fragmentation would play out at his institution.