What IT issues give CIOs the most sleepless nights? Vendors seem to think that the Cloud, mobile, and social computing are the top concerns of IT. But a Wikibon/ServicesAngle survey of 216 IT professionals found that “data growth” and “excessive data growth” actually lead the list of specific issues, with related issues such as security, data protection, and compliance also on the list. Cloud, mobile, and social are further down the list.

The views of business leaders towards data have changed dramatically from seeing it as a constraint on business to recognizing the potential to find competitive advantage in Big Data analysis, writes Wikibon Chief Analyst David Vellante in his latest Wikibon Alert. But IT managers struggle with data management. He argues that the answer to these concerns will be “Big Data” projects but warns that “without sound data management approaches and a sensible data architecture, organizations will be constrained, and future value extraction for enterprises will be severely limited.”

IT faces two challenges in creating these projects – analytics and data value. Vellante says that vendors should address both themes in all messaging and use them to help customers “sell” Big Data projects internally. Big Data analytics today are immature, and the development focus so far has been on creating platforms and infrastructure to manage the huge volumes of data involved. This rightly raises concerns among both IT and business executives over their ability to derive the insights they seek from the data. This impacts the second issue, since data is only valuable to the extent that it can be used to derive insights. Other data value issues range from identifying what data to keep and what to throw away to creating an internal “culture of trust” so that business decision-makers will use the tools available and base their decisions on insights they derive from the data.

“Data”, writes Vellante, “is both an opportunity and a management imperative.” It is an opportunity to transform the organization and create strategic value that can drive revenue. Applying it to management can find new ways to control both cost and risk. ITOs need to demonstrate the business (i.e., monetary) value of data to get the budget to buy and build the systems they need to capture, manage, and analyze the Big Data that can transform the businesses they serve.

As with all Wikibon research, this paper is available in its entirety on the public Wikibon Web site. IT professionals are invited to register for membership in the Wikibon community. This allows them to comment on research and publish their own Professional Alerts, tips, questions, and relevant white papers. It also subscribes them to invitations to the periodic Peer Incite meetings, at which their peers discuss the solutions they have found to real-world problems, and to the Peer Incite Newsletter, in which Wikibon and outside experts analyze aspects of the subjects discussed in these meetings.