Survey: 32% UK media & gaming providers can’t guarantee ‘always on’
January 6, 2021
Despite a ferocious consumer appetite for on-demand experiences – live sport streaming, bet-in play options, online gaming – a third (32 per cent) of UK businesses in the media and gaming sectors admit they can’t guarantee an ‘always-on’ IT experience for customers.
The stats were revealed in a survey of IT decision-makers by Veritas Technologies, a global player in data protection, availability, and insights.
An overwhelming majority (97 per cent) of IT decision-makers said their organisation is now facing an increase in the amount of data that they need to regularly deal with, due to larger video formats and richer content, such as 4K. For 55 per cent, they consider this to be a significant increase in the amount of data.
Concerningly, only 19 per cent believe that their organisation has full visibility over unstructured data when considering their existing tools and processes. Meanwhile, three-quarters (75 per cent) of businesses admit that their organisation utilises in-house spreadsheets as part of their data management strategy. This is a highly ineffective way of managing data because businesses can’t update data correctly and in real-time, Veritas warns.
Despite struggling to cope with an exponential growth in data, UK businesses in the media and gaming sectors have turned their attention to slashing costs. Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of IT decision-makers rank making cost savings as one of the top three priorities for their business since the start of Covid-19.
Sandro Roppa, UK&I media and gaming specialist at Veritas Technologies, commented: “For media and gaming organisations, reliability and ‘always on’ IT are not just nice to have. These are essential parts of what customers expect to receive. Just minutes of downtime could lead to declining customer numbers and potentially millions wiped off the bottom line. The research revealed that, ultimately, many businesses don’t know what to do with their data and where to store it. And that problem looks set to intensify, with the likes of 4K and live streaming set to increase the demand on storage and compute.“
“Prior to Covid-19, the answer to this dilemma for many businesses was to simply buy more storage. But over time, this becomes an incredibly costly approach and does not take full advantage of the infrastructure already in place. It will also inevitably lead to such a complex IT environment that risk of failure starts to rise exponentially. Ultimately, businesses in the media and gaming sector need greater insight on the data, so they can better understand how much is being collected, how it’s being stored, and how it’s being used. Only then can they cut costs and optimise performance. With a highly demanding customer base, it’s essential that businesses, regardless of whether they’re in the broadcast, media, gaming or gambling industries, ensure that mission-critical applications are highly available, downtime is minimised and fast failovers are in place. A proactive approach ensures predictable availability, application resilience and storage efficiency across multi-cloud, virtual and physical environments,” Roppa added.