Gaurav Dhillon argues that data silos are a major impediment to effective use of data:
The greatest stumbling block our respondents identified as hindering their attempts at better utilizing data is one that has existed for some time but seems to have worsened as data volumes have grown – data silos. Only 2 percent of our respondents considered their business to be completely effective at data sharing – for the rest, data silos are a real problem.
The causes for this are numerous, and span inconsistency of systems being used (42 percent), different data formats (38 percent), and a lack of coordinated data strategy (37 percent). On top of this, over a third highlight a lack of technology integration (36 percent) and/or legacy technology barriers (36 percent) as blocking attempts to effectively share data.
My first response is to say that this is in part due to the growth of microservices architecture, which seems to push data siloing. But at the same time, this has been the case for a long time, so I don’t think it’s either a necessary or a sufficient explanation.