Accelerate Business Growth by Getting More Out of Your Corporate Data

The world’s appetite for 24/7 access to information has made technology pervasive in our lives. We’re consuming and creating data at a rapid pace, we have more access to devices and services in our personal lives and in the workplace, and our expectations on what technology can deliver are greater than ever.

Over the years, organisations have quickly realised the opportunity of being able to turn information into insight, and leveraging it to understand customer sentiment, product lifecycles and brand perception. Naturally excited about the potential of these insights on business growth and competitive advantage, business leaders have had more say in IT purchasing decisions.

However, this fluidity of technology purchasing beyond the control of the IT department has led to the rise of ‘shadow IT’, where business leaders have looked to IT-as-a-service providers to improve or replace in-house services. When left unmanaged or unaligned to business objectives, IT-as-a-service introduces issues in governance, availability, long-term viability and silos of data and insights.

This is typically where frustrations can surface between business leaders and IT, particularly when they are misaligned. The complexities of deriving intelligence from data are large and varied, but what adds to the challenge is when business leaders and IT are not aligned on the answers they want to understand from their corporate data.

Recent research commissioned by Hitachi Data Systems and conducted by Vanson Bourne – the Information Innovation Index– surveyed 900 CIOs and IT decisions makers across the UK, France, Germany, Russia, South Africa, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands found that:

• Over half of EMEA CIOs (55%) believe they cannot extract value from their data due to current IT infrastructure

• Only 20% strongly agree that they have access to business leaders to develop and execute IT strategy

• Consequently, 50% of organisations are not mining untapped business intelligence as a result

Information can be a transformative force in business and Hitachi Data Systems calls for organisations to align business objectives with technology capabilities, and leverage information to drive business growth. IT-accelerated organisations use technology as a strategic asset, helping them to derive intelligence and mobilise information, enabling them to be more competitive.

Organisations that take a ‘Business-Defined IT’ approach to information, leveraging it beyond its primary and intended use, and connecting it with other datasets, will lead the way with innovation and benefit from the creation of new revenue streams. Through its solutions portfolio, Hitachi Data Systems is enabling IT departments to implement infrastructure for the future which is always available, automated and agile.

Hitachi Data Systems’ Continuous Cloud Infrastructure solutions can drive IT efficiency through a responsive, software-rich architecture that can quickly react to changing needs without continual redesign and disruption. A move towards Continuous Cloud Infrastructure ensures customers can build the most available, automated and agile environment for next-generation information infrastructures.

Hitachi Data Systems uses the following approaches to help organisations transform their business:

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