When ESG asked respondents the number of times a typical data set is stored and copied, two key trends emerged. First, as already discussed, in the aggregate, organizations are experiencing significant “copy sprawl.” Second, CIOs are alarmed at the amount of copies they have under management: on average, respondents holding a senior IT title estimate that 6.76 copies is typical versus middle management and staff who estimate 5.18, on average. Executives are more acutely aware of the problem than IT rank and file, which is logical as they are paid to understand the bigger picture.

As noted, 73% of respondents reported their organization stores data in two or more public clouds today. These multi-cloud organizations report that “copy sprawl” is certainly not an on-premises-only phenomenon. When ESG asked respondents if their organization stored redundant copies of the data that is cloud-resident, 82% answered “yes” (see Figure 3). Sixty-one percent (61%) of respondents reported that redundant copies were stored on another public cloud and 38% reported redundant copies were stored in the same cloud as the copied data. In either case, the high degree of data redundancy within and across clouds results in budget wastage.

Data growth, redundant storage practices, and multi-cloud realities all contribute to MDF, but so do organizations’ data center solutions. Different proprietary platforms are not engineered to share information or present data in a unified manner to end-users. The result is yet another silo in which insight can be trapped. When ESG asked respondents how many separate vendor solutions their organization uses across all of its secondary data operations, the average number was five (see Figure 4). Once again, enterprises appear to have the greatest degree of fragmentation with a significantly higher number of vendors reported compared to their midmarket counterparts (5.5 versus 3.8, on average).

The research clearly shows that organizations today are dealing with extremely fragmented data assets, but why does that matter? ESG delved into the ramifications of MDF in a series of questions and the summarized findings in Figure 5 are noteworthy.

ESG asked respondents what percentage of administrators’ day-to-day tasks are dedicated to managing their organization’s secondary data, applications, and copies across on-premises and cloud environments. The answer: 42%, on average (see Figure 6). If 42% of a typical IT admin’s job is managing fragmented data, then 42% of their cost is ultimately wasted in non-productive, non-profitable endeavors.

Worse, 49% of respondents surveyed believe that MDF leads directly to overworked employees. If you consider that we know employees seek intelligent, meaningful tasks as a condition of employment and job satisfaction, we are essentially killing ourselves by continuously demanding skilled workers to perform menial, mundane jobs.

ESG asked respondents if they felt their organization had problems getting a holistic view of their data because of the numerous fragmented silos in the environment. The answer? A resounding yes: 82% reported the affirmative. Having 82% of organizations believing that MDF creates a data visibility challenge means that we are not even able to see—let alone leverage—all of the data assets in our organization. How can we be confident in our decision support systems if we are not able to see or access all of the data? The answer is we can’t. At best we are flawed. At worst, we are wrong.

Beyond impacts to decisioning efficacy, respondents reported additional challenges associated with MDF, most often that it leads to wasted IT budget (see Figure 7).