Big Data Initiatives Being High/Critical Priority for 59% of Enterprise, 48% of SMBs

IDG Enterprise, the media company comprising of Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, CIO, DEMO, CSO, CIO Executive Council, ITworld, CFOworld and CITEworld, releases the results from IDG Enterprise Big Data Research 2012 which delves into big data strategies and challenges as adoption increases.

There was 1,428 respondents on an online questionnaire from the audience base of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, ITworld, and Network World sites, email, and LinkedIn forums.

The research highlights big data initiatives as a high/critical priority for 59% of enterprise organizations (1,000+ employees) and 48% of SMB organizations (<1,000 employees).

As a new technology trend, challenges are anticipated, in fact 60% of IT executives believe big data integration will be very/extremely challenging.

For this study, big data was defined as large volumes of a wide variety of data collected from various sources across the enterprise.

Respondents indicated that the amount of data being managed per organization will increase by an average of 53% in the coming 12 to 18 months from 194.4TB to 296.7TB. The top sources contributing to this growth are customer databases, emails and word documents.

"The volume, variety and velocity of data is challenging organizations to quickly put a strategy in place to analyze, predict and monetize the value of data," said Bob Melk, SVP, group publisher and CMO, IDG Enterprise. "This research outlines how organizations are addressing this imperative and what solution areas IT decision-makers are investing in including data analytics, mining, warehousing, predictive analytics and visualization."

Big Data Adoption and Objectives Driving Investment
While respondents agree that big data initiatives are a high/critical priority, the big data trend is still in the early stages of adoption. Currently, 14% have already deployed/implemented big data projects and an additional 44% are in the process of implementing or planning to do so in the future.

The speed of adoption aligns with the reliance organizational stakeholders have with the analytics big data can provide, which explains why CEOs (47%) are the number one supporter of big data initiatives.

                                 CEO Leads Support of Big Data Efforts

Organizations have multiple expectations
driving big data investments, including:

• improving the quality of decision-making (52%),
• increasing speed of decision-making (47%), improving planning and forecasting (44%),
• customer retention (43%) and
• developing new products/services and revenue streams (42%).

Big Data Adoption Challenges
Organizations are facing numerous challenges with big data initiatives, with the average respondent citing more than five challenges, including:

• limited budget (45%),
• legacy issues (36%),
• security issues (34%),
• development time (34%) and
• growing demand on storage capacity/infrastructure (32%).

Additionally, IT executives (42%) are concerned about identifying business areas and processes where big data can have the greatest impact, compared to 28% of line of business (LOB) employees. On the other hand LOB employees (47%) are concerned about making sure the human capital exists within the company are capable of supporting big data initiatives, compared to 32% of IT executives, which demonstrates a disconnect.

"There are so many possibilities to exploit data for business advantage, however like the majority of edge technologies security is a key concern," said Melk. "The top focus for managing data security is protecting data from theft and misuse and controlling access to data sets. For now, 58% of organizations are storing sensitive data on-premise and not using cloud technology; however as cloud technologies mature, I anticipate a migration to cloud models."

To mitigate these challenges, organizations are laying the ground work to manage big data initiatives, with more than a third of respondents investing in additional server hardware, developing or buying software applications and network bandwidth. Additionally, appropriate staffing and skill sets are a necessity for big data investments. While most organizations have data base programmers (62%), business analysts (56%), engineers (51%) and data analysts (47%), organizations are planning to hire data architects (30%) and data analysts (29%).

Key findings include:

• Organizations are facing challenges with big data implementations, especially enterprise organizations given the exponential data growth rate compared to SMB organizations.
• Big data is in the early stages of adoption with 44% of respondents in the process of implementation or planning to do so in the future.
• CEOs are focused on the value of big data and are partnering with IT executives who will purchase/management/execute on the strategies.
• Organizations are facing numerous challenges with big data initiatives and limited budgets tops the list.
• Organizations are investing in additional sever hardware, developing or buying software applications and network bandwidth in preparation for big data initiatives.
• In the next 12-18 months, organizations plan to invest in skill sets necessary for big data deployments, including data architects (30%), data analysts (29%), database programmers (26%), directors or managers of analytics (26%) and research analysts (26%).
• More than half (53%) of respondents indicated there is no clear thought leader in the big data solution space.