Data Is Power

Johnny Karam, Regional Vice President – Emerging Region, Veritas Technologies, Reveals Three Key Pillars That Can Enable Customers Translate Data Into Valuable Insights.

Today’s business landscape is in the midst of a data explosion. The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and advancements in trends such as artificial intelligence (AI) have prompted the rising number of endpoints, which produce immense volumes of data.

In fact, a study by research and analyst firm Gartner estimates that 25 billion connected devices will be in use by 2021. Subsequently, a separate study by the International Data Corporation (IDC), predicted that this influx in endpoints will mean that “by 2020 the digital universe – the data we create and copy annually – will reach 44 zettabytes or 44 trillion gigabytes.”

Data has become a key input for driving growth. It gives businesses the potential to differentiate themselves, make strategic decisions and maintain a competitive edge. However, many companies are still struggling to make sense of their data and create value out of them.

“Organisations today, especially those in major industry sectors such as finance, government and healthcare, have unstructured data growing at a phenomenal speed,” explains Johnny Karam, regional vice president for Emerging Region at global enterprise data protection firm Veritas Technologies.

Citing a study conducted by Veritas, Karam underlines that data is growing at a “faster pace than previously thought” creating both risks and opportunities for enterprises.

“Only 19 percent of data is ‘clean’ or business-critical, while the rest are redundant, obsolete, trivial or dark, which means organisations have no clue what it is,” he adds.

Understanding what data means is key to translating them into strategic insights, to do this, organisations need to first know where their data resides. With the right visibility, they can find and leverage whatever data is critical to them to build a competitive advantage.