According to research from VMware, organizations are increasingly using numerous clouds to help them extract money from data, but data sovereignty is a challenge.
According to a recent study released by business cloud software provider VMware Inc., by 2024, 95% of organizations in EMEA will be turning to their data as a revenue generator, with 46% seeing it as a significant source of revenue – up from 29% currently.
Nearly half (47%) of business and IT decision-makers in EMEA who participated in the study, titled The Multi-Cloud Maturity Index, strongly agree that using multiple clouds will allow them to maximize their data for innovation while addressing crucial issues like national and sector data sovereignty. In fact, data sovereignty is cited as one of the major issues confronting organizations, with 95% of respondents saying they are worried about it.
Many challenges involve using data – security and skills are two of the biggest.
However, the desire to derive more excellent value from data is not without difficulties. The biggest challenges continue to be security (35%), expertise (35%), the complexity of integrating various cloud platforms (31%), and segregated access to data (27%). If organizations want to use data to truly add value to their businesses, they must also strengthen their control over operational and cloud expenses, with 76% and 74% of respondents agreeing that this is an issue.
“The reliance on data to fuel innovation and drive competitive advantage is now the backbone of the digital business,” said Joe Baguley, VP and CTO of VMware EMEA. For organizations trying to gain an advantage from their data, being cloud innovative—the capacity to select the appropriate sort of cloud for the correct data, even extremely sensitive information that needs to remain within national borders—is becoming the de facto business model.
Businesses as a whole are benefiting from organizations that are fully utilizing the competitive advantages of leveraging various clouds to handle data. To succeed, companies must be able to regulate where their data is stored without sacrificing its security, compliance, or sovereignty and their choice of service providers. “Our Digital Retail Strategy 2026 is built on a ‘data-centric, digital-first approach,” explains Damien Cazenave, chief technology officer, and chief information security officer at global retailer Carrefour France. “Data, and the cloud it runs on, are at the heart of all our operations and value creation model. This digitization will improve the customer experience with greater personalization, increase operational efficiency at headquarters and stores, and positively affect the group’s revenue,” he added.
There is general agreement (86% of respondents) that using and managing various private, public, edge, and sovereign cloud types have more advantages than disadvantages. Nearly half (46%) and 46%, respectively, think that the use of multiple clouds has greatly influenced revenue growth and profitability. Only 4% of respondents actually believe multi-cloud is not essential for business success.
The influence of the data economy on the GDP of the European Union and the United Kingdom is anticipated to increase from 2.6% to 4.2% by 2025, which is even better news for businesses throughout Europe.
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