More than two-thirds (69 percent) of IT decision makers from New Zealand businesses believe that data analytics are important to their current business strategy, with a further 41 percent already incorporating big data into everyday business decisions.
According to a sponsored survey by EMC, covering 200 CIO and senior IT professionals within small and mid-market businesses, key findings reveal that over a third 41 percent have upgraded their IT systems to allow for integrated analytics demonstrating that big data has finally started to move beyond the hype and into the very fabric of today’s enterprise.
However whilst this is a silver lining, 64 percent of respondents agree that businesses need access to data lakes to help support ongoing business and consumer insights.
Business data lakes are quickly becoming a popular way to store large data assets from multiple sources, ready to be mined and unlock the value of big data.
“Our research validates that big data is no longer only a concept and IT leaders are starting to fully appreciate the potential transformative value data analytics can bring to the enterprise,” says Arron Patterson, CTO, EMC New Zealand.
“Already businesses are investing time and effort to include data insights into everyday corporate decisions and see how this information can be extended into the wider business.”
Echoing Patterson’s comments, Ed Hyde, CEO, Qrious says the findings of this report correlate very closely with what the Spark New Zealand owned company are also seeing in the Kiwi market.
“Senior leaders intuitively understand the potential of data driven innovation but feel there is a gap between this potential and capability to deliver,” Hyde says.
“Qrious in partnership with EMC is well placed to help kiwi businesses deliver value via our high performance platform, expert data science capability and valuable data sets.”
Resource is still the biggest hurdle
The survey found the biggest barrier in analysing data is resource capability (39 percent) and not having the right expertise (31 percent) at hand.
A further (64 percent) of respondents believe there is a skills gap in the market when it comes to big data with another (64 percent) believing the government needs to do more in educating young people about data analytics and its importance.
Already institutes such as the University of Otago and the University of Auckland offer programmes in data science, the first of its kind, to help lessen this gap. But is it enough?
“The rapid growth of unstructured data represents a significant challenge for many organisations today,” Patterson adds.
“Because of this there is growing need for people with the skills to manage large data streams and to turn them into tangible information.
“Now that businesses across the country have an appetite for big data, we need to educate the younger generation about the importance of data analytics and the value it can bring to New Zealand.”