The ‘State of Data Virtualization Report’ reveals that 60% consider data virtualization a strong alternative to data warehouse solutions, supporting massive growth expected in 2021.
Varada, a leader in data lake query acceleration, has released its first annual “State of Data Virtualization Report.” The report was commissioned by Varada, with design and analysis by Global Surveyz. It examines the data virtualization market at the beginning of what is forecast to be a period of rapid growth and reveals ways in which organizations are using data virtualization. The survey also takes into consideration the challenges that deter many organizations from fully adopting the data virtualization process.
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Key findings from the report include:
- Companies hold huge amounts of data across different platforms. Less than a quarter of respondents have under 5TB of data, and 34% have more than 10TB. Seventy percent (70%) are using the cloud vendor’s data warehouse, while 59% use SaaS data platforms, 55% use data lake platforms, and 45% are still using traditional data warehousing.
- Data Virtualization is growing in popularity and use cases. Sixty percent (60%) of organizations recognize that data virtualization is a strong alternative to traditional data warehouse solutions. The data also forecasts that the number of companies with more than half of their workloads on virtualization in 2021 will jump by more than 100%, from 28% in 2020 to 59%. The use cases for data virtualization vary, with more than half of respondents citing internal data applications, internal business intelligence, and customer-facing data and dashboards, too.
- …but many don’t realize its true potential for querying. The benefits for running queries are suffering from what might well be an education gap. A much smaller percentage (39%) of users are seeing the benefits of data virtualization for ad-hoc queries, a use case where data virtualization truly shines. On top of that, when asked to define data virtualization, just 19% described the ability to run queries without the need to model data, and only 17% of respondents defined it as a data lake query engine at all.
- Regardless of the TB, simplifying DataOps is a key benefit for all. Organizations of all sizes and with all types of data requirements recognize the benefits of simplicity in data virtualization as opposed to data warehouses. For enterprises with more than 10TB of data, the top benefit was cited as reducing and simplifying data ops, while those with less than 10TB of data love how all queries can run on a single platform – providing that all-important single source of truth.
- Organizations have a strong understanding of what’s standing in their way. Eighty-nine percent (89%) of organizations have challenges when it comes to migrating workloads to data virtualization platforms, despite the 60% who recognize how strong an alternative it is. For data virtualization to compete, solutions will need to tackle the main challenges head-on. These are: reducing the costs (63%) and the reliance on skilled staff (53%), eliminating the need to rewrite queries manually (63%), and improving the performance (47%).
- Without a fresh approach, data virtualization efforts may stall. Eighty-eighty percent (88%) of companies admit that these challenges are impacting their ability to migrate to data virtualization, and 24% indicate that they are being impacted severely.
“The rapid growth of data virtualization is exposing major cracks in the business foundation that supports the technology,” said Eran Vanounou, CEO of Varada. “This first-annual State of Data Virtualization Report highlights that organizations need a way to leap these hurdles and to embrace the data lake as a route to ensuring business agility and growth. Only companies who boost performance by adding automation and deep visibility will be able to become truly data-first.”
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