Enterprises struggle to manage growing volumes of data

Enterprises struggle to manage growing volumes of data

A suite of surveys find that companies are having trouble coping with the amount of data they need to manage and protect.

Dell has released its 2021 Global Data Protection Index. The survey spotlights the challenges organizations face arising from the threat of ransomware and complexities around data growth.

The survey found that organizations are managing 10 times more data on average than they did five years ago. Specifically, the volume has gone from1.45 petabytes in 2016 up to 14.6 petabytes in 2021.

AI and cloud computing are increasing the data load

The situation is further strained due to the accelerated adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. According to a Statista survey, managing data in multicloud environments could be the most challenging data management challenge for enterprises.

Emerging technologies like cloud-native apps, containers, AI, and machine learning present data protection blockers to organizations. This could negatively impact their future-readiness.

Fully 82% of the Dell respondents reported concern that their organization’s solutions won’t be able to meet future business challenges. This means that most business leaders lack confidence in their data protection solutions.

Even companies that are addressing the challenge head on say that they expect to face major difficulties. The Dell survey found that 58% of businesses investing in software-as-a-service apps struggle to find data protection solutions for them.

Finding a solution to the problem

The results of the Dell report align with other studies of data management at the enterprise level. A 2020 Seagate/IDC survey found that organizations collect only 56% of the data potentially available through their operations. This is due to gaps in infrastructure and internal tooling, they say. Two out of three said their problems were due to insufficient data security and the distributed nature of their data.

A possible solution to this problem could lie in the various data management solutions. Enterprises could use these to better leverage their data. They include analytics-enabled data orchestration and streamlined data architectures. Companies could also benefit by focusing on specific projects and business initiatives that move them in the right direction.