New Study from Igneous Highlights Enterprises Struggling to Manage Huge Volumes of Unstructured Data


Typical Data-Centric Enterprise Manages more than Ten Billion Files

SEATTLE, Oct. 23, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A new study from Igneous, The State of Unstructured Data Management Report, shows that North America’s data-centric enterprises are working with massive, difficult-to-manage volumes of unstructured data. Most (59 percent) of the respondents report managing more than 10 billion files, with an average annual growth rate of 23 percent. The research found that these enterprises are indeed struggling to effectively manage today’s influx of machine-and human-generated unstructured data.

Igneous, the leader in unstructured data management, sponsored the study, which polled 200 IT leaders in North America in data-intensive organizations from a wide range of industries to explore this topic.

“We are witnessing a shift from transactional workflows to data-centric workflows. Machine learning workflows, for example, start with massive amounts of data and then rely on a high-volume flow of data to fuel critical decisions,” said Kiran Bhageshpur, CEO, Igneous. “These new data-centric workflows create great value as well as tremendous amounts of unstructured data that is retained longer.”

Unstructured Data Growth from Machines and Data Workflows
Eighty-two percent of respondents manage 1 billion or more files and objects. In fact, a staggering 59 percent manage more than 10 billion files. Study respondents also reported:

  • Most of their unstructured data growth (55 percent) comes from machine-generated data (apps, imaging, sensor data, etc.).
  • The average respondent has 7 NAS storage systems. One in three has more than 10.  One in 12 has more than 50.
  • AI / ML / HPC data workflows are the dominating driver of data management and IT architecture strategies across all verticals.

To further explain how different industries work with massive data stores, Igneous assembled a panel of experts for a discussion of data enablement at scale. According to George Crump, Chief Steward, Storage Switzerland, “Unstructured data growth outweighs structured by at least ten to one, maybe more and it's mostly machine generated.”

Data is Hugely Important to Organizations 
Survey respondents reported that data is their business’ most important asset, second only to customers and employees. Respondents ranked data as more important than brand, intellectual property or even their physical assets. In fact, 40 percent of a typical organization’s value comes from this data.

Key Asks for Unstructured Data Management
Since data management for databases and VM’s is better-understood and already well covered by the tools on the market, the survey focused on unstructured data management. The survey explored not only which aspects of unstructured data management are most valuable to organizations, but also how difficult these aspects are. Out of ten pillars of unstructured data management, the following three were ranked as most important: first, data accessibility; second, data governance; third, data insight. Overall, this points to a desire for better access to and understanding of unstructured data.  “Many vendors are offering storage technologies that can handle massive growth, but it’s the insight into that data that’s lacking,” says Jeff DiNisco, CTO at P1 Technologies. “Without having the tools to actually organize, move and process that data - and process it in the long term - you can’t really do anything with it. You have to be intelligent about the way you manage data so you can do something with it decades from now.”

Interestingly, while data accessibility and data insight are among the respondents’ top three data management priorities, respondents ranked these two as among the most difficult to achieve. This explains why respondents also reported performing poorly on these two goals. 

The full State of Unstructured Data Management Report is available at https://www.igneous.io/download-report-unstructured-data-management.  The report includes a list of top strategic tips from Igneous, whose customers are North America’s leading data-intensive organizations managing billions of files and petabytes of unstructured data.

About Igneous
Igneous delivers the only Unstructured Data Management (UDM) as-a-Service solution, enabling data-centric enterprises with visibility, protection and data mobility at scale, wherever datasets and workflows live. Igneous combines all UDM functions into a single, API-enabled, cloud native solution so organizations can see, protect, analyze and act on all unstructured data assets to accelerate data usage and organizational value. Igneous: The right data, in the right place, at the right time. Find out more at igneous.io.

About P1 Technologies

P1 Technologies is a best-of-breed, leading edge IT consulting company located in Southern CA’s Manhattan Beach. They concentrate on storage and disaster recovery solutions with key networking products and services. Their founders bring over 50 years of IT consulting in enterprise storage design, implementation and management expertise. They have worked both as customers and employees of companies like EMC, NetApp, Data Domain, and Sun Microsystems. They partner with the customer instead of the manufacturer to deliver impactful solutions that fit the environment, instead of working narrowly with one technology.

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