100% of IT execs are modernizing architectures, but struggling with data silos and vendor lock-in

99% of IT execs report challenges with architecture modernization and 98% report challenges with their corporate data architectures (data silos), a DataStax survey reveals. Vendor lock-in (95%) was of particular concern among respondents.

The survey, conducted in conjunction with Dimensional Research and DataStax, takes the pulse of IT architecture modernization trends by investigating current experiences with and plans to reduce complexity and cost around architecture modernization. Respondents included more than 300 executives who work for companies of more than 5,000 employees.

The resulting report provided a number of key insights, including:

• Architecture modernization is both necessary and hard: 100% of respondents are modernizing their technology architecture with the goals of reducing costs, improving customer and employee satisfaction, and gaining data-driven insights. However, 99% report challenges with architecture modernization and no standards exist for funding new application development.
• Cloud flexibility is key: 85% of respondents have cloud initiatives as part of modernization efforts, 72% are moving to a hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructure, more than half of all new application architectures will support hybrid or multi-cloud environments, and 95% have concerns about vendor lock-in.
• Data is the driving factor behind modernization: 98% of respondents report challenges with their corporate data architectures with data silos topping the list, 99% say database architecture is important when building hybrid or multi-cloud environments, and 84% say that they are developing more real-time transactional applications.
• Open source is increasingly valued by large organizations: 82% of respondents report that their teams are more receptive to open source today than five years ago, and 50% report open source is part of their architecture modernization plans.

The report dives into all the key findings above, showing exactly how all respondents answered the questions and detailing the key drivers and challenges behind their architecture modernization efforts.

“What this report makes clear is that data is certainly the hardest part of architecture modernization,” said DataStax SVP and Chief Product Officer Robin Schumacher.

“While the cloud makes so many things around architectures much easier, it also creates additional data-related challenges. DataStax helps enterprises face those challenges so that architecture modernization goes from a daunting task to one that makes it easier for them to out-innovate their competition.”