Report - Data investment the key to better business growth

New research from Digital Realty has revealed that almost half (47%) of IT leaders globally believe their business investment in data systems and infrastructure is a key obstacle or concern.

The research comes from Digital Realty's recent Global Data Insights report, which highlights the importance of funding to tackle data growth issues.

The 13 question survey garnered responses from 7,295 C-level executives - business and technology leaders, representing large multinational enterprises across 23 countries and nine industries, with revenues ranging from $100 million to more than $1 billion.

53% of respondents globally said that a lack of sufficient investment in data systems/infrastructure was a key obstacle their organisation faces when drawing valuable insights from data, and half believed there was insufficient investment in analytics tools.

In addition, almost three quarters (72%) of IT leaders globally said it was crucial to improve infrastructure in the next two years to enable more data-driven insights as the current data landscape changes and evolves.

The company says businesses all over the world aren't investing adequately in the tools and infrastructure required to handle increasing amounts of data, and as the Data Gravity effect intensifies, there will continue to be further issues within a variety of sectors that rely on data.

They say because extracting valuable insights from data is highly dependent on information being efficiently aggregated and controlled, there should be a distinct focus on data protocols and analytics.

Digital Realty VP of growth and global head of insights and analytics Dave McCrory says that the research shows a worldwide collective wants to change the way businesses think about data, and if action isn't taken, problems will continue to arise.

"As the volume of data grows exponentially across the world, the Data Gravity effect is inevitably going to intensify, particularly if information isn't effectively processed," he says.

"This phenomenon sees large volumes of data continually attracting more data, making it impossible to move, manipulate or extract value from. This forms barriers for businesses and can render their data useless if action isn't taken."

There was also reported to be a slight difference in statistics in regards to business size, with the research suggesting that larger companies are operating slightly ahead of the curve from a data perspective. This will likely give them an advantage over smaller competitors as the amount of data grows, and Data Gravity becomes a bigger challenge.

In a positive step forward, while there is a difference in uptake for small businesses, (75%) of $1B+ companies do now have a formal data strategy in the planning, adoption or execution stage.

Digital Realty says businesses need to understand the benefits that data can unlock and make data-driven strategies a priority if they want to stay competitive in an increasingly data-centric world.