Structured vs Unstructured Data
According to Gartner (via Research World, 2025), 80–90% of all newly generated enterprise data is unstructured, and it’s growing three times faster than structured data.
This includes many text documents, media files like audio and images, and other formats that resist categorization. Unstructured data now represents the vast majority of enterprise information assets – yet in many organizations, it remains undergoverned, poorly monitored, and operationally invisible.
This imbalance poses a growing risk. While unstructured data expands in both volume and strategic value, much of the infrastructure built to manage, secure, and move data still centers on structured systems. As a result, critical business functions like collaboration and automation are increasingly fueled by data that falls outside traditional control frameworks. The implications are clear: Unstructured data is no longer peripheral. It’s core infrastructure and should be treated as such.Unstructured data encompasses information that does not conform to a fixed schema, making it incompatible with traditional relational databases.