Transform Unmanaged Data Growth into Organized Intelligence

“The amount of digital data created over the next five years will be greater than twice the amount of data created since the advent of digital storage.”

Dave Reinsel, Sr. Vice President at IDC

This bold prediction from Dave Reinsel at IDC came after the company revealed a stunning figure in a recent annual report: a whopping 64.2 zettabytes of data was created or replicated in 2020 (Confused? Our helpful guide on the Scale of Enterprise data quickly explains the baffling amount of 1 zettabyte of data).

Clearly, the amount of data organizations have to contend with in today’s business climate is staggering. With such rapid growth, how can any organization possibly hope to wrap its arms around all its data while continuing to innovate and drive business growth? 

Understanding the exponential data growth challenges organizations face provides invaluable context for exploring solutions. 

Laptop with animated files showing the increase of data from 2007 to 2021

The Challenges 

Data Storage

One of the most obvious problems caused by data growth is the increased need for data storage. Not only will your organization need more storage in its local servers, but it will also need to consider file shares, individual desktops and even cloud storage, which all carry significant costs. This can exacerbate data silos and make it even more difficult for employees to find what they need when they need it. 

The aforementioned IDC report, data creation and replication are likely going to outpace organizations’ installed storage capacity. This is worrying as 65.5% of organizations already spend more than 30% of their IT budgets on data storage and management, according to a recent survey of 300 global enterprise storage IT decision-makers. 

Data Breaches

The more data you have, the more likely you are to suffer a catastrophic breach. Unchecked data growth, combined with a lack of visibility, is increasing the risk of breaches, ransomware and compliance violations dramatically. And when these breaches do happen, they are economically devastating. According to IBM, data breach costs rose from 3.86 million USD to 4.24 million USD in 2021. 

This problem is compounded further by data regulation laws like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). If you are the victim of a breach, you can also be held liable for damages to users. This was all too real when Colonial Pipeline, which carries 45% of the East Coast’s supply of petroleum, diesel and jet fuel, was compromised in a ransomware attack earlier in 2021 and was sued for the gas crisis.

Data Growth and Inefficiencies 

The growing flood of data could result in businesses experiencing operational inefficiencies, delivering poor customer experiences, and losing revenue. By not understanding your data, your business suffers. This is only compounded by year-over-year exponential data growth. 

And this isn’t new – In a survey of 2,200+ global business and IT leaders in 2020, 47% bluntly said that their organization will fall behind when faced with rapid data volume growth. 

The Solution

Historically, companies have tried to manage their data by migrating it to a single, centralized application like an enterprise content management system (ECM) for a single source of truth. Today, however, moving the data is a very risky and massive undertaking. Moreover, these monolithic applications quickly become obsolete amidst an increasingly complex and ever-expanding data environment. 

Instead, a better approach to data growth is ultimately quite simple: Manage your organization’s content where it lives – across repositories, on desktops, and in file shares. 

In practice, this means finding and connecting data across your entire organization so you can enrich it for new insights. This is what drives business growth.  

Importantly, this requires powerful software that continuously works in the backend to keep pace with new data being created and replicated. Thankfully, investing in such a solution dramatically drives down data storage costs and, as a byproduct, reduces risk and vulnerability as well. 

Data Understanding in Action 

At the end of the day, you can’t make good business decisions without a comprehensive understanding of your data. And until you can get control of your data growth, it is impossible to leverage your data intelligence. 

Shinydocs provides a plethora of solutions based on the data challenges you face. Let’s work together to unlock the power of your data. Book a free demo to learn more.

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