Data Fragmentation Is Putting Businesses at Risk

IT managers believe that fragmentation of corporate data across their IT infrastructure and an emerging “Shadow IT” network of user devices or consumer cloud services outside their control are putting their organizations at risk and driving up costs. New research from Freeform Dynamics shows over 80 percent of respondents believe effective business decision making is hampered by data availability and inconsistency issues. Eighty-three percent are concerned about the security of their corporate data as it is increasingly dispersed across their network and outside. Getting the situation under control is also proving difficult, with 93 percent saying that tracking and managing critical corporate data is now a big challenge, with the associated costs highlighted by 84 percent as being a further concern.

The report “Storage Anywhere and Everywhere – Dealing with the Challenges of Data Fragmentation” is the result of interviews with 300 IT professionals in mid-sized organizations across the U.S. and UK completed in April 2013. The independent report was sponsored by Mimecast. An infographic best practice guide and the full report can be found at www.mimecast.com/datafragmentation.

Key data:

• 82 percent of IT managers in UK and U.S. mid-sized organizations see decision making hampered by data availability issues and 77 percent by data inconsistency.
• 93 percent are struggling to control critical corporate data. 88 percent see keeping up with the growth and demand for data storage as an issue. 84 percent believe storage costs are running out of control.
• 83 percent of respondents see security risks. 38 percent are already experiencing the issues acutely.
• 81 percent are concerned that employees are putting sensitive data onto consumer-grade cloud storage and services.
• 92 percent see email as a common means of storing and sharing critical data within corporations. A failure of their email would result in significant costs. 62 percent say that local offline email stores – for example, PSTs on desktops, are frequently used for storing business information – compounding the risk.

Click through for findings from a data fragmentation study, sponsored by Mimecast and conducted by Freeform Dynamics.

Access to accurate information matters and it is vital to protect critical data. The majority interviewed report an increasing emphasis on better access to data, exploitation of information for decision-making, security and the ability to share critical data without losing control.

Outside IT-managed systems, so-called ‘Shadow IT’ means a significant amount of data is now under the control of departments and workgroups, as well as stored and distributed by individual users through PCs, mobile devices (including personal equipment), and consumer cloud services. Shadow IT fragments data further, creates conflicting versions of information, increases the risk of data leakage or loss, and introduces systemic risk into the wider organization.

This translates directly to wasted storage capacity due to repeated over-provisioning, multiple copies of data driving up storage volumes and costs, and a significant amount of additional overhead to manage the complexity. Over 80 percent of respondents recognize the problem or the danger of storage costs running out of control.

Most respondents recognize that the uncontrolled use of public cloud services is aggravating data fragmentation challenges and risks. This issue matched their concern about the impact of bring your own device (BYOD). However, many also believe that a managed adoption of cloud storage and archives is a good way of achieving consolidation without sacrificing the pervasive access and convenience craved by users.

Thirty-nine best practice or ‘elite’ performers in the study (13 percent of the overall sample) provide valuable insights into how best to deal with the challenges. They highlight the importance of knowing your data and defining clear policies around the storage, retention and protection by information type. This in turn allows investment in technology, services and processes to be prioritized objectively. They also put a strong emphasis on exploiting cloud options proactively, rather than just reacting to problems. A best practice infographic can be found here www.mimecast.com/datafragmentation.