At a time when digital transformation is one of the biggest buzzwords in the business market, a new study by Commvault has found that better managing and utilizing data is the number one priority for Canadian IT departments.
Released in conjunction with Quadrant Research, the New Jersey-based data protection and information management software company’s latest survey, “Measuring IT’s Readiness for Digital Business”, shows that 57 per cent of Canadian IT departments feel that they need new tools to analyze increasingly sophisticated data in order for them to achieve success, followed by better data collection and management. For comparison, only 49 per cent of overall North American respondents felt new data analytics tools were the top priority.
This means that participants of the study believe data is the most important business element, ranking it higher than traditional components like customer service, corporation reputation, and high profitability.
“Having data sitting around in what we call ‘data lakes’ just doesn’t cut it anymore; we need to make sense of it and turn it into actionable information,” Matt Tyrer, Commvault Canada’s director of solutions marketing, tells IT World Canada. “Companies need to be looking at what they can do with the data they collect, what value they can get out of it, and how to use it to strengthen their business.”
However, the Commvault study points out that there is a large disconnect between what company executives and what their IT departments are thinking. While 41 per cent of all executives believe their organizations understand and are prepared for innovation and digital disruptions, only 29 per cent of IT professionals feel the same.
In particular, 37 per cent of IT department members believe their executives would be “concerned, anxious, or panicked” if they knew what staffers knew in terms of the state of digital innovations.
As a result, companies need to be more prepared for the data explosion happening right now, according to IT departments. Approximately 33 per cent of IT professionals in North America believe more training is required to deal with issues facing their organizations, while 41 per cent of them are concerned that more data and software training is needed.
“A lot of IT professionals don’t think their organizations are prepared to handle all this data, and want more training and more knowledgeable people working with them. Commvault has data collection services and we just announced a new data analytics platform that companies can use to help them in this area,” Tyrer says.