Ocient’s Annual Survey Shows Cloud Priorities Dipping 10% YoY, as Costs, AI Commitments, and Energy Concerns Soar
Ocient, the leading data analytics software solutions company, today released its third annual Beyond Big Data report,titled Reaching New Altitudes. The report reveals a significant shift in enterprise data analytics and management strategies as cloud costs and energy consumption become critical concerns, and companies increasingly prioritize their artificial intelligence spend. The report, which surveyed more than 500 IT and data leaders managing data workloads of 150 terabytes or more, highlights that fewer IT leaders are prioritizing cloud-only solutions, and enterprises are instead focusing on solutions that will help address these rising challenges.
Key Findings from Reaching New Altitudes
- 100% of IT and data leaders agree that increasing the volume of data analyzed by their organization near-term is important.
- Only 25% of respondents report prioritizing cloud-only data analytics solutions in the next 12-18 months, a significant 10% drop from 2023.
- While data speed and security remain crucial, sustainable energy consumption and cost have emerged as top priorities.
- 64% of enterprise leaders cite “surprising” cloud costs as the leading factor impacting their ability to predict spend accurately.
- More than half (53%) of respondents say energy consumption is a top concern.
- Nearly a third (31%) cite reducing energy consumption as a motivator to switch or upgrade data warehouse or database solutions.
- 93% of IT and data leaders plan to make AI investments in the next 12-18 months.
“Ocient’s survey indicates a growing recognition among IT leaders that current cloud costs and energy consumption are unsustainable,” said Brad Shimmin, Chief Analyst, AI and Data Analytics at Omdia Research. “Enterprises are pivoting to more energy-efficient solutions as they prepare for an increase in data volume and complexity over the next one to three years.”
“As data volumes continue to explode, enterprises are facing a dual challenge: rising costs and growing energy consumption. To harness the full potential of data while mitigating these risks, leaders must fundamentally rethink their data analytics strategies. The latest Beyond Big Data report confirms this shift and highlights the critical significance of sustainable, energy-efficient data analytics and management solutions,” said Chris Gladwin, CEO of Ocient.
Additional findings from the report indicate that as companies evaluate their cloud spend more critically, questions remain about how they will support their freshly committed AI deployments. More specifically:
- 67% say the scalability of their existing data analytics solution(s) is a challenge.
- 63% are challenged by a lack of staffing to support their increasing AI/ML workloads.
- 59% cite data movement and pipelines as one of their biggest AI/ML related challenges.
As AI adoption accelerates, the strain on data infrastructures that support these workloads increases, driving up both costs and energy consumption. This rapid increase in AI/ML workloads demands more computational power, which directly correlates with rising energy needs, particularly for data centers handling these intensive tasks.
The International Energy Agency projects that global data center energy consumption will rise from 500 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2023 to more than 800 TWh by 2026, representing a compound annual growth rate of 17%. By then, data centers are expected to consume more energy than France and Germany combined.
With the enterprise data landscape rapidly evolving, Ocient’s Beyond Big Data: Reaching New Altitudes report provides critical insights for IT and data leaders across industries as they navigate the critical decisions ahead. Learn more about this year’s findings by downloading the full report here.
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