IT and data management challenges for 2021

Cohesity announced the results of a survey of 500 IT decision makers in the United States that highlights critical IT and data management challenges midsize and enterprise organizations are facing as companies prepare for 2021.

The survey included 250 respondents from midsize companies ($100M-$1B in revenue) and 250 from enterprise organizations ($1B+ in revenue).

Some of these challenges came to light as companies answered questions about their appetite for Data Management as a Service (DMaaS). With a DMaaS solution, organizations do not have to manage data infrastructure – it is managed for them.

DMaaS provides organizations with easy access to backup and recovery, disaster recovery, archiving, file and object services, dev/test provisioning, data governance, and security – all through one vendor in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Key findings

IT budgets are being slashed: Seventy percent of respondents state their organization is being forced to cut the IT budget in the next 12 months. Around a third of respondents have to cut the IT budget by 10-25 percent, a tenth have to cut it by a whopping 25-50 percent.

Verticals facing the largest cuts on average: technology (20 percent), education (18 percent), government/public sector (16 percent).

Many midsize companies are struggling to compete against larger enterprises because of inefficient data management: 27 percent of respondents from midsize companies say they have lost 25-50 percent of deals to larger enterprises because larger enterprises have more resources to manage and derive value from their data.

Even worse, 18 percent of respondents from midsize companies claim to have lost 50-75 percent of deals to larger enterprises for the same reason.

Organizations are spending inordinate amounts of time managing data infrastructure: Respondents say IT teams, on average, spend 40 percent of their time each week installing, maintaining, and managing data infrastructure. Twenty-two percent claim their IT team spends 50-75 percent of time each week on these tasks.

Technology is needed that makes it easier to derive value from data while also reducing stress levels and employee turnover: When respondents were asked about the benefits of deploying a DMaaS solution versus spending so much time managing data infrastructure, 61 percent cited an ability to focus more on deriving value from data which could help their organization’s bottom line, 52 percent cited reduced stress levels for IT teams, and 47 percent are hopeful this type of solution could also reduce employee turnover within the IT team.

“As 2020 comes to a close, it’s clear that IT teams are expected to face significant challenges in 2021,” said Matt Waxman, VP, product management, Cohesity.

“Research shows IT leaders are anxious for comprehensive solutions that will enable them to do more with data in ways that will help boost revenues and provide a competitive advantage at a time when they are also facing budget cuts, burnout, and turnover.”

The growing appetite for technology that simplifies IT and data management

As businesses look to simplify IT operations, be more cost efficient, and do more with data, respondents are very optimistic about the benefits of DMaaS, which include:

• Cost predictability: Eighty-nine percent of respondents say their organization is likely to consider deploying a DMaaS solution, at least in part, due to budget cuts.
• Helping midsize companies win more business: Ninety-one percent of respondents from midsize companies believe deploying a DMaaS solution will enable their organizations to compete more effectively against larger enterprises that have more resources to manage data.
• Saving IT teams valuable time: Respondents who noted that their IT teams spend time each week managing IT infrastructure believe those teams will save, on average, 39 percent of their time each week if their company had a full DMaaS solution in place.
• Doing more with data: Ninety-seven percent of respondents believe DMaaS unlocks opportunities to derive more value from data using cloud-based services and applications. Sixty-four percent want to take advantage of cloud-based capabilities that enable them to access and improve their security posture, including improving anti-ransomware capabilities.
• Alleviating stress and reducing turnover: Ninety-three percent of respondents believe that deploying a DMaaS solution would enable them to focus less on infrastructure provisioning and data management tasks. 52 percent of these respondents say deploying a DMaaS solution could reduce their team’s stress levels by not having to spend so much time on infrastructure provisioning and management. Forty-seven percent believe deploying a DMaaS solution could reduce employee turnover within the IT team.

Choice is the name of the game for IT in 2021

“The data also pinpoints another important IT trend in 2021: choice is critical,” said Waxman. “IT leaders want to manage data as they see fit.” With respect to choice, respondents stated:

• It’s not one or the other, it’s both: 69 percent of respondents stated their organization prefers to partner with vendors that offer choice in how their company’s data is managed and will not consider vendors that just offer a DMaaS model — they also want the option to manage some data directly.
• Avoiding one-trick ponies is key: Ninety-four percent of survey respondents stated that it’s important to work with a DMaaS vendor that does more than Backup as a Service (BaaS). If the vendor only offers BaaS, 70 percent are concerned they will have to work with more vendors to manage their data and doing so is likely to increase their workload (77 percent), fail to help reduce costs (65 percent), and lead to mass data fragmentation where data is siloed and hard to manage and gain insights from (74 percent).