Lenovo recently launched its first-ever ‘Smarter Data Management Technology Playbook’ that captures insights from 550+ CIOs across Asia Pacific. The IDC led report highlights the current state of the data management landscape, digital maturity and readiness of CIOs to meet the data challenges and priorities now and in the future. Commissioned by Lenovo, the IDC study provides critical insights on infrastructure readiness, data innovation, sustainability, and selecting the right storage partner.
Key Highlights:
Digital Maturity
Businesses in AP expect 52% revenue to be digitally driven by 2027, but only 39% are at Stage 3/4 of Digital Maturity. Stage 3 or 4 indicates a well-defined multi-year execution roadmap of an organization.
India falls behind with 48% of businesses at Stage 1 of digital maturity. Lack of competitive pressure and cultural resistance to change hinder the transformation journey.
Digital Infrastructure Readiness
Majority of AP businesses (84%) consider digital infrastructure to be mission–critical or important for achieving business goals. However, only 38% are exceptionally or sufficiently prepared to maintain standard service levels, security and cost-optimization during events of unexpected business demands.
Nigel Lee, Director of Storage – AP, Lenovo ISG, said “Data innovation acts as a compass for CIOs, providing guidance to unlock new business opportunities and achieve digital success. By harnessing the power of data, companies can gain valuable insights to improve productivity and stay ahead of the competition. Lenovo’s open, reliable, and secure infrastructure solutions are helping customers modernize their data management infrastructure.”
A similar trend is in India, where digital infrastructure is either mission-critical or important for 87% of businesses, but in reality, only 33% are exceptionally/sufficiently prepared. To attain stage 3 or 4 of digital maturity, organizations must leverage future-ready IT driven by Hybrid Cloud platforms to utilize real-time business insights that lead to investment-focused outcomes.
Data Innovation
Data-driven innovation is critical for digital success and driving myriad business outcomes. However, lack of cyber resiliency, growing AI/ML workloads and limited data mobility in hybrid cloud impede data innovation.
Of 36% of the organizations in AP that are driving data innovation strategically or fairly strategically, 33% are investing in it to improve supply chain operations. The top two investment priorities for businesses in India are towards product & services engineering by 39% and driving competitive differentiation in products and services by 37%.
97% CIOs in India plan to accelerate their data-innovation journey in the next 2 years. To become digital natives CIOs will need to accelerate IT modernization and transformation. This also addresses the key challenges around data security and cyber resiliency, the growing mix of AI/ML-powered high-performance, and energy costs to support data explosion.
“It is interesting to see the majority of CIOs in India committed to accelerating their data innovation journey in the next two years,” said Amit Luthra, MD – India, Lenovo ISG. It presents a great opportunity for Lenovo to offer the best of data management systems and solutions to help organizations become digital natives and achieve their investment-focused outcomes.”
Information Management
Increasing deployment options, whether public, private, hybrid, or multi-Cloud, have led to challenges around data residing in silos. Businesses in AP are significantly investing in data storage and information management technologies for Hybrid cloud, Public cloud, and Software-defined storage.
Data Management platform for hybrid/multi-cloud is the #1 investment priority (53%) for CIOs across all AP geos, with the exception of India, which follows an inverse pattern. More than half (52%) businesses in India are looking to invest in software-defined storage solutions, followed by 44% in public cloud for data backup & business continuity, and 42% in data management platform for hybrid/multi-cloud.
Unified Data Management
Unified Management Platform is key to securing competitive advantage. Only 16% of the organizations in AP indicated that they have managed to build a single data management platform. 29% organizations have managed to minimize the number of data management platforms and made significant progress, opines IDC.
Businesses in India appear to be lagging with only 18% managing to reduce multiple Data Management platforms down to a few. Nearly 50% businesses still use multiple data management systems to independently manage block, file, and object data types with limited data mobility between public and private cloud, and edge locations.
Sustainability
93% of the organizations in AP indicated a strong focus on sustainability. 35% see a significant impact on brand reputation as the younger generation becomes much more concerned about climate change.
The sustainability wave is strong in India, with 94% businesses including it in their business agenda. Regulatory and compliance requirements, improving resource utilization, and attracting or retaining talent have become key business drivers of the sustainability agenda.
Amit Luthra added, “As Lenovo advances efforts towards a more sustainable world, we are delighted to see the growing importance and focus on sustainability in business priorities.”
To continue the focus and improve sustainability goals, CIOs and line-of-businesses (LOBs) need to collaborate to build a set of discrete business outcomes, beyond social branding and regulatory compliance requirements. Here’s how organizations in India see infrastructure and data management technology investments to drive sustainability:
- AI/ML-based management, provisioning and orchestration software to increase storage capacity utilization levels
- Inline compression & deduplication technologies to reduce storage capacity requirements
- Consolidate departmental and workgroup storage with private cloud
The Smarter Data Management Playbook studied 100+ IT and business decision makers (ITBDMs) from India.
