Data silos haven’t gone away. Here’s what every organization’s next move should be.

Dealing with what should be "yesterday's problem"

Every moment wasted just trying to get the right data represents resources diverted from decisions, missions, and outcomes.

In commercial settings, the tally of that time spent becomes expensive. In national security and critical infrastructure, it becomes a matter of life and death. 

Part of the disconnect is how we talk about silos.

We treat them as org chart problems like marketing vs. engineering, program office vs. operations. Unfortunately, the walls are just as often technical. 

Meaning specialized databases, application-level logic, and bespoke integrations that don’t speak the same language. 

Why haven’t we been able to dismantle these data silos?

If breaking down silos were just a matter of asking teams to “collaborate more,” the problem would have been solved decades ago. 

The reality is more entrenched. Data silos are cultural as well as architectural.

At their core, silos are the result of the very systems designed to manage and protect data. Specialized databases, each optimized for a particular function, become self-contained islands. 

Applications built to serve specific departments embed unique business logic that resists translation. 

Over time, even the connective tissue (think ETL pipelines, middleware, custom integrations, etc.) becomes hardened, reinforcing the walls instead of lowering them.

Silos also form naturally as organizations grow and adapt:

• Departmental independence: Each unit optimizes for its own mission, selecting tools and platforms without cross-functional alignment. What begins as efficiency calcifies into fragmentation.
  
• Legacy systems and acquisitions: Mergers and decades of investment leave enterprises with overlapping, outdated platforms. The cost and risk of replacing them often outweighs the appetite for modernization.
  
• Disparate technology stacks: New solutions are layered on top of old ones. A best-in-class procurement tool here, a security platform there. Soon the organization is running half a dozen “standards,” none of which truly interoperate.

These forces are why silos persist. They aren’t simply the result of poor communication; they are a structural feature of the technical environment. And dismantling them requires a fundamentally different approach to how information is modeled, shared, and accessed.

Data silos aren’t simply the result of poor communication; they are a structural feature of the technical environment. And dismantling them requires a fundamentally different approach to how information is modeled, shared, and accessed.

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The erosion of organizational effectiveness and profits

Data silos cut directly into how organizations function day to day, eroding productivity, slowing decisions, and stalling innovation. 

Productivity drain

A full 79% of knowledge workers report that their organizations are siloed, and 68% say their work is negatively impacted because they lack visibility into cross-functional projects. Instead of executing, teams spend their time duplicating efforts, reconciling mismatched inputs, or waiting on someone else to surface critical information.

Decision-making paralysis

When processes are fragmented, decisions drag. 46% of employees say poor business processes cause decisions to take longer and increase the risk of making the wrong call. When it comes to data issues specifically, that $3.1 trillion dollar problem boils down to an average of $12.9 million annually per organization, according to Gartner. 

What’s more, that figure doesn’t capture the downstream cost of missed opportunities or delayed responses.

Innovation barriers

For organizations attempting digital transformation, silos are a nearly universal obstacle. 98% of IT leaders report some level of challenge with siloed data, and 81% say it directly hinders transformation efforts. Instead of enabling agility, the technical environment becomes a constraint, limiting the organization’s ability to adapt, modernize, and innovate.

Silos are not passive inefficiencies. They are active barriers to effectiveness, undermining both immediate execution and long-term strategy. In environments where speed, accuracy, and adaptability define success, whether in business or national security, these barriers can be the difference between staying ahead and falling behind.

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Three places where breaking down silos is mission-critical

The costs of data silos are universal, but certain domains feel them more acutely than others. Defense, national security, and large-scale enterprises operate in environments where the ability to share and act on information is mission-critical. Three battlegrounds stand out where silos must be dismantled.

1. Autonomous systems integration

There are a plethora of autonomous platforms in operation today, from unmanned aerial vehicles to automated logistics systems. Unfortunately, in many cases, they’re also operating in isolation. Each collects valuable data, but without a clear way to integrate, that information stays trapped within the system. Analysts and operators are forced to work with partial pictures, piecing together fragments instead of commanding the full view.

It’s obvious where the promise of breaking silos lies: a continuous flow of information between systems and personnel. In defense and aerospace, for example, integrating telemetry, maintenance logs, and mission data across platforms not only streamlines operations but also reduces redundancy, increases safety, and enhances mission readiness.

2. Supply chain security

Supply chains have become both an operational lifeline and a national security risk. The challenge grows when data about suppliers, vendors, and contractors is fragmented across multiple systems. Each database offers a sliver of visibility, yet none provides the full threat picture.

In the national security space, this fragmentation is a major vulnerability. Comprehensive threat assessment requires unified data visibility across procurement, logistics, and security systems. Without it, organizations are left blind to gaps and unable to proactively mitigate risks.

3. Government and enterprise efficiency

Solving complex problems at scale, whether delivering government services or managing multinational operations, requires accessible information across disciplines within and outside of the organization. Yet bureaucratic information walls and incompatible systems still impede collaboration.

The result is slower innovation, duplication of effort, and scale challenges that grow with organizational complexity. Breaking silos here will take a lot more than technical integration. They’ll need to enable cross-boundary information flow that aligns agencies, departments, and partners around a shared mission.

Across these battlegrounds, the common thread is clear: silos slow progress and actively undermine mission objectives.