GEC NEWS WIRESurvey highlights giant ‘Databerg’ of useless data will cost European businesses AED 3.27tn by 2020
Veritas Technologies reveals that companies in the UAE have one of the highest rates of Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial data (ROT) stored in their corporate networks. According to the Databerg Report 2015, a typical midsize company in the UAE, with 500 TByte of data, will waste AED 2.36million each year maintaining trivial files, including personal ID doc, music and videos wasting valuable IT resources and starving its cashflow.
“Data should deliver on its promise and work for the organization, but it’s apparent that in the UAE it is the other way round. The key findings of the Databerg Report 2015 reflect that companies invest a significant amount of resources to maintain data that is totally irrelevant for their businesses”, said Amer Chebaro, Regional Director, Gulf & KSA at Veritas. “The study revealed that the majority of companies (69%) in the UAE, one of the highest rates in EMEA, have not yet implemented a strategy to understand their Dark Data or to evaluate their business value. This has an impact on data quality as UAE companies have the lowest rate of business relevant data stored in their Databerg in the EMEA region”.
The survey provides insights on how 1,475 respondents (including 75 in the UAE) in 14 different countries across the EMEA region are dealing with the challenges surrounding turning data into valued business information.
The report introduces a new phenomenon called the Databerg, represented by three major types of data stored by organizations today:
Business Critical Data – data identified as being vital to the on-going operation and success of the organization. Business Critical data needs to be proactively protected and managed in real time by professionals with clear responsibility to the organization’s management team.
ROT Data – data identified as Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial. ROT data needs to be proactively minimized and safely deleted on a regular basis
Dark Data – data value has not been identified. It may include vital business critical data, useless ROT data or most importantly illegal or non-compliant data, leaving an unseen liability at the heart of corporate IT systems.
The study found a typical UAE organization reports Dark Data rates of 49% (EMEA avg. 54%), ROT levels of 43% (EMEA avg. 32%), leaving just 8% (EMEA avg. 14%), of identifiable Business Critical data. This equates to wasted corporate resources of up to AED 3.27tn in EMEA by 2020 if companies don’t change their strategy and culture around information management.
As organizations move more data into the cloud to cope with the escalating data volumes, study insights revealed, a growth of one third in cloud migration across EMEA over the next twelve months. However, with only 27 percent of respondents in the UAE stating they will utilize cloud storage facilities by 2016, the country is behind the rest of Europe. Organizations adopting these cloud services do not have appropriate policies to calculate the follow-up costs, switch to another provider or to retreat from the cloud in case of emergency.
The survey identified three major causes for Databerg growth. These relate to how data volumes disproportionately affect IT strategy, how vendor hype is driving the widespread adoption of currently ‘free’ storage and how employees are endangering corporate data through their own actions and becoming data hoarders:
IT strategies based on data volumes not business value
An increased reliance in ‘free’ storage such in the cloud
A growing disregard for corporate data policies by employees
All these factors are the major causes of Dark Data and ROT, as it move corporate resources away from the direct line of sight of management teams. It can also, thanks to impending legislation, present legal issues and business risks, which are not obvious at the time of purchase or usage.
Recommendations from Veritas
The following steps can be taken from organizations to gain valuable insights into their information and in-turn reduce the associated risks:
Identify Dark Data, expose risk and recognize valuable information
Eliminate ROT promptly to reduce wasted costs
Define a workable information governance strategy for unstructured data with C-level endorsement to encourage compliant user behaviour
Increase business agility by utilizing cloud storage environments
