RESEARCH & RESOURCES

Getting Data Governance Right is Top AI Priority, Komprise Survey Finds

Third-annual industry survey finds preparing for AI is leading data storage priority and unstructured data management challenge.

Note: TDWI’s editors carefully choose press releases related to the data and analytics industry. We have edited and/or condensed this release to highlight key information but make no claims as to its accuracy.

Komprise, a specialist in analytics-driven unstructured data management and mobility, has released the results of the Komprise 2023 State of Unstructured Data Management survey. The third-annual survey finds that IT and business leaders are largely allowing employee use of generative AI but the majority (66%) are most concerned about the data governance risks from AI, including privacy, security, and the lack of data-source transparency in vendor solutions.

As the generative AI marketplace expands and executives push for departments to leverage new solutions for competitive advantage, the need for an unstructured data governance agenda is strong; IT leaders cannot forsake data integrity and data protection nor risk faulty or dangerous outcomes from generative AI projects.

To cope, enterprises are restricting the AI tools and/or data employees are allowed to use, according to the survey. IT leaders are also pursuing a multipronged approach for mitigating risks of unstructured data in AI, encompassing storage, data management, and security tools as well as internal task forces.

The survey, conducted by a third party, gathered inputs from 300 global enterprise storage IT and business decision makers at companies with more than 1,000 employees in the United States and the U.K. It can be downloaded here (short registration required).

Survey Highlights

  • Most organizations (90%) allow employee use of generative AI but 66% of organizations cited top data governance concerns of preventing security and privacy violations, lack of data source transparency leading to unethical, biased or inaccurate outputs, and corporate data leakage into the vendor’s AI model.
  • Preparing for AI is the leading data storage priority in 2023, followed by cloud cost optimization.
  • The majority (40%) will pursue a multipronged approach to manage AI risk, encompassing storage, data management, and security tools.
  • Organizations managing more than 10PB of data grew from 27% to 32% this year, a 19% increase.
  • Half of organizations are managing 5PB or more of data, similar to 2022.
  • Nearly three-quarters (73%) are spending 30% or more of IT budget on data storage and protection, measurably higher than 67% in 2022.
  • The top unstructured data management challenge is moving data without disrupting users and applications (47%), followed closely by preparing for AI and cloud services (46%).
  • Most (85%) say that non-IT users should have a role in managing their own data and 62% already have attained some level of user self-service for unstructured data management.
  • Monitoring and alerting for capacity issues and anomalies led the pack for important future unstructured data management capabilities (44%).

“This year’s survey shows that in the blink of an eye, IT leaders are shifting focus to leverage generative AI solutions, yet they want to do this with guardrails,” says Kumar Goswami, CEO and co-founder of Komprise. “Data governance for AI will require the right unstructured data management strategy, which includes visibility across data storage silos, transparency into data sources, high-performance data mobility, and secure data access."

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