Today Informatica Corporation announced the availability of a new independent research study entitled "Information, Unplugged: 2009 OAUG ResearchLine Survey on Enterprise Application Information Lifecycle Management." The report details the challenges IT is facing because of the surge in data flowing through today's enterprise applications and databases. "Inadequately managed data growth is fast becoming a problem of epic proportions, with some enterprise applications and databases increasing in size by as much as 50% a year," notes Adam Wilson, general manager, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Informatica.
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) survey revealed the need for "a more focused effort" toward applying ILM techniques to databases and applications to proactively manage data growth. Taken together, techniques like database archiving, database subsetting and data masking can counter the progressively negative impact data proliferation has on application performance, information availability, IT costs and business risk.
Produced by Unisphere Research, which surveyed more than 225 members of the OAUG, the Informatica-sponsored study exposes the lack of an overarching strategy in many organizations to deal with the rising tide of information. The research shows that "most organizations are only just beginning to take the steps necessary to address these challenges." According to the report, 35% of respondents lack "a grasp on how to manage the growing data volumes within their enterprise applications."
Most respondents try to combat performance issues with solutions of limited effectiveness such as tuning the application stack, which yields diminishing returns, and upgrading or expanding their hardware environments, which adds complexity and costs. According to the survey, 87% of respondents "blame their performance issues on data growth"; and 27% are currently meeting all service level agreements. Maintenance costs are disproportional to the usefulness of the application, and the majority of those surveyed have no formal method for legacy application retirement. For example, 42% require one to five full-time employees to maintain a legacy application; while one in seven requires even more headcount, and 14% devote a tenth of their annual IT budget to maintaining such applications.
"The results of this OAUG ResearchLine survey are a wake-up call for business enterprises of all sizes," states David Ferguson, president, OAUG. "Armed with the timely feedback, progressive organizations would be wise to seek a proactive and holistic ILM path for managing the growing terabytes of enterprise-wide data."
For information about the OAUG, go here.
For more about Informatica, go here.