60 percent of UAE Consumers Threaten to Abandon Businesses That Pollute by Hoarding Unnecessary Data 

Veritas Technologies, the leader in secure multi-cloud data management, today announced new research that indicates more than half of UAE consumers (59%) think it’s the responsibility of the organizations that store their information online to delete it when it’s no longer needed. They’re also prepared to vote with their feet if businesses don’t cut back on data-related pollution: 60% said they would stop buying from a company if they knew it was willfully causing environmental damage by failing to control how much unnecessary or unwanted data it is storing.

The research, which polled 13,000 consumers around the world, also found that 52% of UAE consumers said it concerns them that between 1 to 2% of global energy-related pollution emissions are caused by data centers. In response, seven in ten UAE consumers (71%) said they would like to see more focus from organizations on controlling the negative impact of online data storage on the environment. This could include organizations encouraging their customers to close unused or inactive accounts and issuing guidance on deleting obsolete information they no longer need or want.

Ramzi Itani, Regional Director of Emerging Region at Veritas Technologies, said: “Beyond the costs of storing data, the hidden costs of its environmental impact should be at the top of every business leader’s agenda. 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.”

The new research also found that 60% of surveyed consumers in the UAE said it concerns them that online data storage wastes energy and produces environmental pollution when, on average, half of the data enterprises store is redundant, obsolete or trivial (ROT) and another 38% is “dark” with unknown value, that is according to separate Veritas research in which IT decision makers reported the percentages of ROT, dark and business critical data within their organizations.

Ramzi Itani, Regional Director of Emerging Region at Veritas Technologies

Itani added: “Organizations should not underestimate the environmental impact of poor data management practices, even if they are outsourcing their storage to public cloud providers. Our research shows that consumers feel passionately about reducing their carbon footprints, yet the average organization continues to generate pollution by storing data they know is not needed rather than just the data they believe to be useful—on average, just 15% of data is business critical. With the UAE government’s future-focused strategies to target climate change and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, we are fortunate that steps are being taken to address widespread environmental concerns in the region in the longer term. Nevertheless, with nearly half of UAE customers saying they would stop buying from companies that fail to get a grip on the challenge, the risk for businesses of not identifying and eliminating unneeded data is simply too great to ignore any longer.”