To compete in today’s hyper-competitive economy, organizations need the right information, at the right time, at the push of a button. However, there is no one single source for relevant data; the typical enterprise today has a vast array of data types and formats pulsing through its veins, flowing in from its own systems and databases, as well as streaming in from external sources. For today’s data manager or professional, the challenge is being able to provide end users access to actionable information in as close to real time as possible. Today’s data systems—many of which were built and designed for legacy systems of the past decade, supporting far less data—are not up to the task.
Survey key findings:
- Companies now manage massive data stores, scaling into the hundreds of terabytes. Seventy percent of respondents to this survey also report their levels of unstructured data—such as video, graphics and web data—is also rapidly growing. However, moving this data to where it is needed may be a difficult challenge in many organizations. A majority of companies, 51%, report they move only a fraction—less than 500GB—of data between systems and users on a daily basis.
- Half of the sites surveyed deliver data within 24 hours of initial creation, but half take longer. Almost a third of respondents agree that users want to see data closer to real time. However, funding to make this possible remains an obstacle, as well as concern about the quality of such data.
- Relational databases and data warehouses still lead as the primary platforms by which analytical data is delivered. However, high-volume sites are shifting to newer types of solutions, such as appliances and data virtualization to move data faster and more seamlessly. Respondents recognize the advantages cloud computing can bring to real-time data integration, and many efforts are now underway, mainly with private or hybrid cloud-based services. Most already have some workloads and data in the cloud, and expect this to keep growing.
- Most companies are not yet data-driven organizations. Organizations are still bound to traditional, closed, or siloed, data management environments, thus impeding their ability to bring analytic capabilities to decision makers that need it.
Moving Data: Charting the Journey from Batch to Blazing, 2012 Survey on Data Integration Strategies was produced by Unisphere Research and sponsored by Attunity.