As companies store more unstructured data, companies find that it’s taking an ever-bigger cut of the IT budget. That is forcing some firms widen the search for solutions that can help them better manage it, according to a new survey from Data Analysis form Komprise.

For the 2021 Unstructured Data Management Report, Komprise survey more than 300 IT leaders at companies in the US and the UK to gauge the state of their unstructured data management strategies.

The majority of organizations surveyed are managing more than 1PB of data and spending more than 30% of IT budgets on data storage and protection – a cost overhead that’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Yet this unstructured data – application data, user documents, video and images, research files — represents untapped insights for future business value. IT leaders realize that migrating data to the cloud can help cut costs and enable data monetization.

The survey finds that they need analytics to help devise a cloud data management strategy for better planning, cost savings and support for cloud-based data lake and AI projects.

Highlights of the survey:

Unstructured Data is Growing as are its Costs

• 65.5% of organizations spend more than 30% of their IT budgets on data storage and management.
• Most (62.5%) will spend more on storage in 2021 versus 2020.

Getting More Data to the Cloud is a Key Priority

• 50% of enterprises have data stored in a mix of on-premises and cloud-based storage.
• Top priorities for cloud data management include: migrating data to the cloud (56%) cutting storage and data costs (46%) and governance and security of data in the cloud (41%).

IT Leaders want Visibility First Before Investing in More Storage

• Investing in analytics tools was the highest priority (45%) over buying more cloud or on-premises storage or modernizing backups.
• One-third of enterprises acknowledge that over 50% of data is cold while 20% don’t know, suggesting a need to right-place data through its lifecycle.

Unstructured Data Management Goals & Challenges: Visibility, Cost Management and Data Lakes

• 44.9% wish to avoid rising costs.
• 44.5% want better visibility for planning.
• 42% are interested in tagging data for future use and enabling data lakes.

“The Komprise 2021 State of Unstructured Data Management Report provides valuable insights into key customer priorities in unstructured data management,” said Krishna Subramanian, President and COO of Komprise.

“The survey shows that enterprises want analytics and systematic data management to make the best decisions on cloud migrations and archiving. The end goal is to cut storage costs and create new value from unstructured data over time.”

Download the full report here.