Usage of the cloud is witnessing massive growth in the UAE and is growing at faster rate than anticipated, according to chief information officers.
dubai — Dark data is a major challenge for UAE entities due to an exponential rise in data storage costs. Hence, there is a strong need to classify such data, according to chief information officers (CIOs).
Speaking at a conference of top CIOs organised by Khaleej
Times in association with Veritas on data protection, Harish Venkat, vice-president, global sales enablement, Veritas, said dark data is a big burden on company finances.
“Dark data is a big challenge for companies because the storage cost rises exponentially. Dark data is digital information that is not identifiable. According to Databerg, 81 per cent of data in the UAE is dark, which is a huge challenge for public and private sector entities,” he added.
According to global research firm Gartner, dark data is information that a company collects, processes and stores in the course of its regular business activity, but generally fails to use for other purposes.
Venkat stressed that disruption is happening daily as technology is changing businesses faster than ever. “Technology is a major enabler these days. The average life span of a company in the Fortune 500 list used to be 65 years and today, it’s just 17 years.”
Vinay Sharma, group IT head, Gulftainer, said there is a strong need for the classification of data for companies in the UAE.
“Data classification is a big thing. We need to classify among
personal, organisational and critical data and that classification is taking a little longer, which is a challenge for most organisations here. Once we have classified the data, then comes protection and for that, we have tools,” Sharma said at the conference.
Terence Sathyanarayan, director for IT, Drake & Scull, said the sheer amount of data being generated from Expo 2020 from a contracting and construction angle is phenomenal.
“Data is growing exponentially on a daily basis. There is a lot of backend data which eats a big chunk of a company’s sources. Around 80 per cent data is unclassified. The challenge for us is to know how the data is relevant and secured. AI and other new technologies are going to throw a lot of data at us, so we have to choose what is to be secured and what not,” Sathyanarayan added.
Gopi Krishnan, group chief disruption officer, Gems Education, said in the past 15 years, technology has changed the way people live, work and go about their daily routines.
“New technologies like AI, AR and VR are changing business models and creating opportunities and competitors that we never envisaged before. Technology is, was and will be an enabler. Customers are now becoming demanding too. So, companies have been forced to embrace technology transformation to cope with new challenges,” Krishnan said.
He stressed that CIOs can play
Dark data is a big challenge for companies because the storage cost rises exponentially
Harish Venkat, vice-president, global sales enablement, Veritas
a more important role as spending on ICT in the Mena region will reach $155 billion this year. “If we work together and take decisions based on our experiences, we can create a very powerful group,” he said.