New study proves current enterprise data strategies ineffective

Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR), the enterprise data cloud company, today announced the findings of a global research report, created in association with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, which examines the trends, pain points and opportunities surrounding enterprise IT challenges in data analytics and management in a multi-cloud environment.

The report: “Critical success factors to achieve a better enterprise data strategy in multi-cloud environment”, is based on insights from over 150 global business executives representing a wide range of industries, with almost half being organisations with $1 billion or more in revenue. The study found that the majority (69%) of organisations recognise a comprehensive data strategy as a requirement for meeting business objectives, but only 35% believe that their current analytics and data management capabilities are sufficient in doing so.

“This report reveals specific obstacles modern enterprises must overcome to realise the true potential of their data and validates the need for a new approach to enterprise data strategy,” said Arun Murthy, Chief Product Officer of Cloudera. “Cloudera is committed to helping our customers with the data analytics their people need to quickly and easily derive insights from data anywhere their business operates, with built-in enterprise security and governance and powered by the innovation of 100% open source. We call that an enterprise data cloud.”

The future is hybrid and multi-cloud

The report confirms that the future of analytics and enterprise IT data management is multi-cloud, with businesses managing data across private, hybrid and public cloud environments — but there is still progress to be made. Over half (54%) of the organisations surveyed have plans to increase the amount of data they store in the public cloud over the next year, but the majority still manage much of their data on-premises. As enterprises create cloud strategies that are customised to their needs, the ability to securely access data no matter where it resides and to seamlessly migrate workloads has never been more imperative.

Functions are diversifying

Most organisations are leveraging their data to support traditional functions like business intelligence (80%) and data warehousing (70%). Newer functions are less common but on the rise, with half of the organisations surveyed planning to implement artificial intelligence and machine learning in the next three years. To fully extract the business value embedded in data, an enterprise data strategy must support a full buffet of functions, from real-time analytics at the edge to artificial intelligence.

A deeper understanding of regulatory compliance and security

The introduction of new regulations and increasingly complex processes around governance means every single person in an organisation must understand the importance of keeping data secure and compliant. Ten percent of those surveyed did not know if they were required to secure data within a regulatory framework or not, which is a small ignorance that could result in serious risk.

An open foundation

A specific approach to open source is essential for an effective enterprise data strategy, but half of those surveyed agreed that current cloud service providers are unable to meet their need for access to open source software. Open compute, open storage and open integration are baseline capabilities that a comprehensive enterprise data platform must provide.

Methodology

Harvard Business Review Analytic Services surveyed 185 global executives across a wide range of industries, with almost half being organisations with $1 billion or more in revenue.