Major industry dynamics such as digital disruption are causing chaos and upheaval even in mature industries. To help navigate the changes that result, companies are placing an ever greater premium on data-driven insights. Put simply, the management and effective utilization of data have become essential for competitive survival — but the growing volume and diversity of data leave companies scrambling to effectively and efficiently manage, govern, and utilize it. Companies face four main data management challenges at the moment:
 
  • Highly skilled and experienced resources are expensive and difficult to find.
  • New technologies, such as SAP HANA or Hadoop, are challenging existing capabilities.
  • New sources of data are rendering existing information infrastructures inadequate.
  • Companies still lack maturity in managing and analyzing their data. For example, few companies have a fully-fledged information management strategy (just 13%, according to Forrester’s Q2 2013 Global Information Strategy And Architecture Online Survey).
 
Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps little surprise that demand for data management services is rapidly increasing as organizations look to third parties in an attempt to overcome some of these challenges. This is demonstrated by a recent Forrester survey of 135 data management professionals, which indicated that more than two-thirds of organizations expect their spending on such third-party services to increase by at least 5% over the next 12 months (with 26% expecting an increase of more than 10%).
 
More than two-thirds of organizations expect their spending on data management services to increase
 
In a recently published report, my colleague Gene Leganza and I explore this complex market in detail and highlight the different types of service providers.
 
This document is the first in a series of reports looking at data management services and the broader data services market. I look forward to sharing some of the insights from our research on this blog. I’m also interested in readers’ experiences, so please tell us: Are you working with a data service provider, or are you looking to do so in the future? If so, why?