Only one fifth of IT decision-makers can analyse all of their firm's data using one tool

67 per cent said they could not look at and analyse all of their data within a single shared resource

Just over one fifth (21 per cent) of senior IT decision-makers can analyse all of their firm's data within a single shared resource, according to Computing Research.

In a research paper, sponsored by IBM, Computing Research found that out of 130 senior IT decision makers, 67 per cent said that they could not look at and analyse all of their data within a single shared resource, while a troubling 12 per cent could not answer the question.

The results suggest that many organisations are finding that their legacy systems are making the data gathering and analysis tasks harder than necessary, and in turn this is making it difficult for them to unearth any meaningful insight from the data that they have to hand.

The research found that IT decision-makers are also finding it hard to distinguish between mission-critical, useful, and obsolete data.

Only nine per cent of respondents said that they are able to distinguish between the different types of data, with a further 50 per cent answering "mostly yes"; eleven per cent of respondents said either "no" or "mostly no" and nearly 30 per cent of respondents said only "with some difficulty".

But while bringing together data for analysis and management is already difficult for some enterprises, the likelihood is that the challenge will grow, particular with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) which will introduce new levels of complexity.

However, the challenge is being taken seriously. Computing Research found that enterprises were placing importance on IoT, rather than dismissing it as another buzz-phrase.

A quarter of the respondents said that gathering and analysing data from IoT will be "extremely important", while 32 per cent said it will be "somewhat important".

For the full Computing Research paper, click here.