Report: New Data Management Models Are Essential To Operate In The Cloud

As organizations increasingly embrace cloud-first principles and the quantity and variety of their data exponentially increases, Capital One’s new Forrester study finds the vast majority of data management decision-makers are deeply concerned about controlling and forecasting data costs, leveraging data at scale, addressing data quality and consistency, and better protecting data.  

Key study findings include:

One of the biggest data challenges decision-makers currently face is fully understanding the complexity of their organizations’ data estates. 

  • Data usage costs are increasingly unpredictable, with 82% of data management decision-makers citing difficulty forecasting and controlling costs as a top data ecosystem challenge. 
  • Nearly 80% of decision-makers cite a lack of data cataloging as a top challenge. Without data cataloging, decision makers struggle to understand what data they have, how the data is used, and who owns the data. 
  • Other key concerns include poor data quality (80%), difficulty understanding data (76%), and a lack of data observability (74%). 

Tracking and enforcing adherence to data governance policies is another key concern for data management decision-makers. 

  • A majority of respondents (82%) cite confusing data governance policies as a top challenge.
  • Eighty percent of respondents say that they have difficulty governing data at scale overall.
  • Additionally, 80% note a lack of entitlements and enforcing role-based access to specific data.

 Data management capabilities are expected to drive spending.

  • Decision-makers anticipate that investment in entitlements is expected to nearly double from 17% today to 31% in one to two years.
  • Nearly half of respondents say cloud data investment priorities going forward will include protection and security (49%), tools that make data easier to find and use (47%), along with tools that reduce and manage costs (39%). 

Data management decision-makers plan to use multiple providers for different use cases. 

  • Over the next one to two years, 84% plan to use different or multiple providers to house data. (This is in stark contrast to decades prior where just a single provider helped to manage data estates.)
  • Today, only 10% of respondents use different vendors for different use cases, but over the next one to two years, multivendor use will increase nearly four-fold to 38%.
  • Eighty-seven percent of those surveyed are using commercial tools or vendors, while just over a quarter (28%) use a mix of homegrown or open-source tools.

Conclusion

As organizations progress on their cloud journey, they must adjust how they balance global and local data use with a federated approach to ensure governance requirements are met and data access, quality, and observability is at its best. Organizations must invest in tools that control and forecast data costs. Inherent exponential costs associated with operating on the cloud need to be addressed early to ensure success.

Download Capital One’s new Forrester study HERE.

Methodology

This Opportunity Snapshot was commissioned by Capital One. To create this profile, Forrester Consulting supplemented this research with custom survey questions asked of 157 data management decision-makers in North America. The custom survey began and was completed in March 2022.

Sign up for the free insideAI News newsletter.

Join us on Twitter: @InsideBigData1 – https://twitter.com/InsideBigData1