UK & Ireland organisations struggling with data sprawl

Almost two-thirds (65%) of organisations are experiencing high costs for their analytics and 73% are concerned by the cost of training staff, due to the impact of having multiple clouds and analytics platforms according to new research from analytics leader SAS.

The findings were revealed in a new report entitled A Silver Lining from Every Cloud, which looks at the challenges businesses face when relying on a mixture of public and private cloud environments to host business data and applications, along with using a number of analytics platforms to extract insights from that data. More than 200 key decision-makers in the UK & Ireland in data, analytics and cloud services, from companies each with more than 3,000 employees, took part in a survey which led to the report.

The study found businesses are typically operating across three private clouds, with nearly half (42%) also relying on at least two public cloud providers. This is creating headaches for organisations and is compounded by them operating, on average, four analytics platforms to garner insights from their data and applications.

When asked about the issues that operating across multiple clouds created, 64% said that high costs to gain insights was their biggest issue. Respondents were also asked about the challenges arising from also having multiple analytics platforms - nearly-three quarters (73%) were concerned by the cost of training new analytics staff, with a further 65% experiencing high costs for their analytics work.

There is evidence of what is driving these high costs of operation, as 62% say it is difficult to redeploy staff between different analytics platforms and 60% say there is a long wait to secure insights from data. Other factors contributing to higher costs and delays are the fact 80% have an analytics platform that requires regular snapshots of data to be pulled into a common pool from all the clouds they operate. A similar majority (70%) use different analytics platforms on each cloud and have to consolidate answers which takes time.

"With businesses across all sectors looking for ways to ensure profitability and drive operational efficiency, the need for timely and accurate insights from data is more important than ever," says David Shannon, Head of Hyperautomation at SAS UK & Ireland.

"But after 15 years of rapid cloud growth, organisations are struggling with a sprawl of technology and data, with multiple clouds and analytics platforms creating complexity which is driving inefficiencies and high costs," he says.

"A solution is moving to a single analytics platform that is cloud agnostic and can securely and efficiently connect to data from different clouds, as well as data stored on premise, to simplify operations and drive efficiency. 

"Furthermore, having a platform with trusted algorithms and high compute speed, will also deliver efficiency and costs savings. If the platform also supports a variety of ways of working from no-code to pro-code, it can significantly reduce the costs of redeploying and retraining staff and encourage wider adoption."