Executives struggling with data governance while cloud remains a major challenge

Executives are struggling with data governance while cloud remains a major challenge, new research has revealed.

Organisations want their data in the cloud, but how do organisations plan on moving forward with cloud data governance? Zaloni released a report on the state of data governance in the enterprise, revealing that 65% of executives lack an understanding of data governance in the cloud.

The 2022 State Of Cloud Data Governance report from Zaloni uncovered the leading reasons why organisations invest in data governance tools and technologies, how they overcome challenges with proper data governance, and how to accurately measure the ROI of data governance initiatives.

Survey responses came from an array of data professionals who provided a wide range of experiences and perspectives related to on-prem, cloud, and hybrid data governance. The differing responses revealed interesting insights as one trend exposes what organizations see as the most valuable capability for data governance tools. Data quality was the clear winner with over 80% of respondents, followed by data cataloging and business glossary capabilities.

Though many data professionals can agree that implementing a data governance strategy within their organisation is crucial, the challenges they face to implement such strategies vary across the board.

In one of the final questions of the survey, participants were asked what the biggest challenge they were facing in traditional and cloud data governance was.

Survey responses show the need to close a skills gap within their organisation as the top answer chosen was: Skills needed to manage new technologies.

Ultimately, the question revealed a clearly defined industry trend where organisations seek more user-friendly data governance tools to suit non-technical employee skill sets better.

Highlights from the report include:

• 71% agree that data governance improves the time to get data for analytics
• More than two-thirds of respondents said lack of understanding around governance is the biggest challenge they face
• 40% said cloud-agnostic technologies provide them with the most flexibility
• Skills to manage new cloud technologies, growing cloud ecosystem complexity, and increased data sprawl were the three biggest challenges implementing data governance in the cloud
• Data quality, data catalogs, and business glossaries are the top three data governance capabilities organisations need most

"The findings of our latest survey reveal tremendous insight on the current outlook of traditional and cloud data governance strategies, tools, and perceptions within the industry," says CEO of Zaloni, Susan Cook.

"These findings show a consistent set of trends for the new year, making it clear that there is a big need to improve data governance strategies and provide solutions that accelerate time to analytics insight, improve data quality, and bridge the data literacy gap."