Consumers Don’t Like Businesses That Hoard Data
- By Paul Mah
- April 11, 2023
A recent study by Veritas Technologies found that 58% of consumers in Singapore (49% globally) believe organizations should delete their online information when it is no longer needed.
Indeed, nearly half the respondents said they would vote with their feet and stop buying from companies that knowingly cause environmental damage by failing to control how much unnecessary or unwanted data it is storing.
The “Consumer Sentiment on Enterprise Data Sustainability 2023” report surveyed 13,000 consumers from 11 countries in February. The research covered consumers across Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, the UK, the US, and Japan.
Concerned about environmental impact
Half of the respondents from Singapore (46% globally) were concerned about data centers contributing to global energy-related pollution emissions, according to the study. 66% of consumers in Singapore (59% globally) say they desire more focus from organizations on mitigating the environmental impact of online data storage.
Among others, this could include encouraging customers to close unused or inactive accounts and providing guidance on deleting obsolete information.
According to Veritas, half of the data stored by enterprises are redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT), and another 35% is "dark" with unknown value. On that front, the research found that 52% of Singaporean consumers (51% globally) are concerned about the energy waste and environmental pollution caused by online data storage.
Andy Ng, vice president and managing director of Asia South and Pacific Region at Veritas Technologies, noted that organizations must not treat ROT or dark data as an inevitable outcome of digitalization. According to him, the average organization contributes more to pollution by storing unneeded data than by retaining data they believe to be useful – only 15% of data stored globally is business-critical.
As many consumers are passionate about reducing their carbon footprint, organizations need to adopt environmentally-conscious data management practices, even if they outsource their storage to public cloud providers.
Ng noted that the issue is even more important given the finding that half the consumers polled are willing to stop buying from companies that fail to address this issue. The risk of not identifying and eliminating unnecessary data is hence too significant to overlook.
“To lead the way for Singapore’s decarbonization journey, business leaders need to be more conscious about the environmental impact – burgeoning but often overlooked – of their business operations,” said Ng.
“Data centers run 24 hours a day and by 2030 are expected to use as much as 8% of all electricity on the planet. It’s easy to forget that data centers are mostly fossil fuel-powered and generate about the same amount of CO2 as the airline industry.”
Image credit: iStockphoto/vchal
Paul Mah
Paul Mah is the editor of DSAITrends, where he report on the latest developments in data science and AI. A former system administrator, programmer, and IT lecturer, he enjoys writing both code and prose.