A survey by CBR of 120 senior IT decision-makers in the UK found that 41% believe business managers and users see data simply as a cost centre, not as an asset.
Yet the IT respondents to the survey were in no doubt as to the importance of data to the business. Asked how long they believed the company could continue operations in the event of the loss of both primary and backup datasets, 36% said for one day, 26% for a week, and 15% for a month. Another 15% said it could continue for over 12 months, 5% for one quarter and 3% for 6-12 months.
While data has in the past been called ‘the lifeblood of a business’, it’s possible that the proliferation of free data storage services online, from Flickr to Dropbox, have created the perception amongst users that enterprise storage is unnecessarily expensive.
The ‘consumerisation of IT’ – the fact that so many business people use IT in their own, consumer-focused lives, has probably skewed their perception of enterprise IT. Able to set up their own wi-fi networks at home, store vast quantities of data online for free, and search billions of web pages in a fraction of a second using Google or Bing, has left many disenchanted with enterprise IT provision.
IT directors however know that surrounding data with the security, governance and availability required in the enterprise makes it a very different proposition from consumer-style services.
Asked whether the ‘consumerisation of IT’ trend is putting more pressure on IT to be more responsive, 90% of senior IT decision-maker respondents agreed that it is.
We also asked whether their organisation already does, or is planning to capture and analyse data from social sites such as Twitter. 35% said they do already, 51% said they don’t nor have any plans to, while 14% said they plan to start doing so in the next 12 months.
Find all the results of the survey, conducted in association with HP 3PAR, in our ezine.
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