BENGALURU, INDIA: EMC Corporation announced the results of the IDG Mindtrack survey on information infrastructure priorities within the Indian CIO community.
The survey draws upon the experience and feedback of 148 CIOs polled from leading organizations across different industry verticals. The results of the study reaffirm the need for information management solutions that will mitigate the challenges associated with the exploding digital data universe.
The digital universe, according to the EMC survey, is getting bigger and growing more rapidly as a result of accelerated growth in the use of digital cameras, Web 2.0 technologies, SMS, streaming multimedia and other sources of digital information. In March 2008, an EMC-sponsored report by IDC has forecasted a 10 fold increase in the digital universe from 180 exabytes (1 billion gigabyte = 1 exabyte) in 2006 to 1,800 exabytes in 2011 as a result of this accelerated growth. The Mindtrack survey revealed that this increase in unstructured data versus the availability of storage is driving corporate investments in storage virtualization, information lifecycle management and back-up or archival technologies, with the latter receiving the most attention.
The study revealed that close to 80 percent of the data within organizations is either partially or completely unstructured with only a fraction of the employees having complete access to structured data. In the current economic climate, interfacing with customers and increasing customer loyalty is at once, an extremely critical function and the hardest job in an organization. As was found in the survey, a majority of CIOs are firmly convinced that enterprise-wide information management strategy is important, if not critical, for the success of their businesses. CIOs however are divided on the issue of whether or not there are benefits to heterogeneous storage architecture.
As business relevant information becomes a critical component of any organization’s success, technologies and solutions that secure this vital asset are receiving increased attention and investment. The results of the security survey shows that more than half of CIOs surveyed will increase their security budgets in the range of 10 to 30 percent to combat rising theft and leakage of intellectual property and financial information. In a bid to understand and get an unbiased assessment of their security credentials, a large majority of those surveyed will be outsourcing their risk assessment and security audit functions to a trusted technology partner.
Commenting on the study, Alok Ohrie, President, EMC India and SAARC said, “The study reaffirms EMC’s understanding and positioning in the information infrastructure market. With Indian information infrastructure market reaching the USD one billion mark, vendors must align their products with the key concerns and the needs of the CIOs.”
“The survey shows us that companies must adopt an information centric approach to securing their vital digital assets. We at RSA, the security division of EMC, have always advocated a risk-based security strategy to safeguard assets,” said Amuleek Bijral, Country Manager—India and SAARC, RSA.