IT Managers Struggle to Manage the Data Deluge With Inadequate Budgets

Achieving Governance, Risk Management and Compliance Rules

Takes Over a Year for Nearly a Third of IT Projects

Recent research from Tarmin, the global pioneer of Data Defined Storage solutions shows that a lack of C-level understanding for the challenges of data storage is placing undue pressure on IT managers, faced with the arduous task of managing exponential data growth within financial institutions. In a recent survey of 350 IT managers, 66% say they are expected to deliver data storage that can manage huge data growth, yet they do not have the allocated budget necessary to meet the challenge. This pressure highlights a major disconnect within organizations between rampant data growth and the constraints placed on IT managers.

The need to do ‘more with less’ is not an unfamiliar pressure for bank IT departments. Failure to sign off on necessary budgets, can leave IT managers with two choices; they can either choose to not commission a project altogether or to implement a solution that will address only a small piece of their data growth challenge. If they choose the latter approach, then the lack of storage capacity is only deferred rather than resolved entirely, and this will lead to more complications in the future.

While CEOs want their IT departments to achieve cost-savings, the likelihood is that they, and many others in the organization, use a number of mobile devices as well as laptops which contain sensitive business data – further complicating the data storage task. Not only do these devices dramatically increase the amount of data being created, but they also increase the risk of data leakage through unauthorised access and loss of device; issues that need to be managed by IT managers.

28% of firms stated that achieving Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) rules from an IT project takes them over 12 months. In the constantly changing financial services regulatory landscape this inability to react quickly could cause companies to incur fines that will negatively impact their balance sheets. For investment banks, achieving regulatory compliance often requires extensive data cleansing. The trouble for many banks, however, is that they can’t start cleaning their data until they know where it is stored.

Shahbaz Ali, president and CEO, Tarmin says, “Firms should be making the necessary investment in IT in order to address the challenges of today and to prevent future data storage and risk problems from occurring. With a continuously evolving industry driven by new technologies that advance the ability to manage and extract good data, it is time that boardroom executives focus on how their organization stores its data. Without the appropriate infrastructure in place to cope with future data storage demands, more and more budget will be poured into ineffective IT projects in an attempt to rectify the situation. It’s short-sighted to simply cut costs, good leadership understands what it takes to achieve long term cost savings.”