Dell Technologies is today releasing the results from a global commissioned study* conducted by Forrester Consulting, which shows most businesses in Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) are struggling with the proliferation of data. Instead of offering a competitive advantage, data has become a burden due to an array of barriers: a data skills gap, data silos, manual processes, business silos, and data privacy and security weaknesses. This “Data Paradox” is driven by the volume, velocity and variety of data overwhelming businesses, technology, people, and processes.
The findings are based on a survey of more than 4,000 decision-makers from 45 countries globally including 1000 respondents from nine countries across APJ (Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam). The new Digital Transformation Index revealed that “data overload/unable to extract insights from data” was the second highest ranking barrier to transformation in India, up from 12th in 2016.
1. The Perception Paradox
Two-thirds of respondents India: 74%, (Global: 66%, APJ: 67%) say their business is data-driven and state “data is the lifeblood of their organization.” But only a little over a fifth India: 24%, (Global: 21%, APJ: 21%) testify to treating data as capital and prioritizing its use across the business.
To provide some clarity around this paradox, the research outlines an objective measurement of businesses’ data readiness.
2. The “Want More Than They Can Handle” Paradox
According to the research, 82% of organizations in India (70% globally and 73% in APJ) say they are gathering data faster than they can analyse and use, yet 71% of businesses in India (67% globally and 69% in APJ) say they constantly need more data than their current capabilities provide. This could be the result of:
- Hesitant to change: 65% of businesses in India(Global: 64%, APJ: 62%) are guarding a significant amount of their data in data centers they own or control, despite the known benefits of processing data at the edge (where the data is generated).
- Poor data leadership: 60% of respondents in India (Global: 70%, APJ: 69%) admits their board still doesn’t visibly support the company’s data and analytics strategy.
- An IT strategy that doesn’t scale: 42% of businesses in India (Global: 57%, APJ: 54%) are of the opinion that they don’t possess the technical skills required to manage a data lake
Amit Midha, President, Asia Pacific & Japan and Global Digital Cities, Dell Technologies, said “At a time when businesses are under immense pressure to embrace digital transformation to accelerate customer service, they need to juggle getting more data in, as well as better mining the data that they have. Particularly now, with 44% globally and in APJ saying the pandemic significantly increased the amount of data they need to collect, store, and analyse,” “Becoming a data-driven business is a journey, and they’ll need guides to help them along the way.”
