Computerworld

State of Big Data: Industry shift underway as 90 per cent of enterprise jumps on board

The promise of Big Data arrives.

Enterprise Big Data strategies are delivering key benefits to organisations despite noted challenges in implementation with nine in 10 organisations experiencing or anticipate seeing, more effective targeted marketing and selling campaigns.

The results of a global study commissioned by CA Technologies show that additionally, 88 per cent see or anticipate increased revenue, despite 92 per cent of respondents citing obstacles to their Big Data projects.

The study, titled The State of Big Data Infrastructure: Benchmarking Global Big Data Users to Drive Future Performance, revealed the top five major obstacles to overcome for successful big data project implementation.

These include: insufficient existing infrastructure (32 per cent), organisational complexity (27 per cent), security/compliance concerns (26 percent), lack of budget/resources (25 per cent), and a lack of visibility into information and processes (25 per cent).

Yet the benefits clearly outweigh the obstacles as 84 per cent of large organisations have already, or plan to, implement a Big Data project within the next year.

Managers cite improving customer experience (60 per cent), acquiring customers (54 per cent) and keeping up with competition (41 per cent) as critical business factors and major drivers for deploying Big Data projects.

“This research uncovers the promise of Big Data and its application to a broad range of organisational priorities,” says David Hodgson, general manager, Mainframe, CA Technologies.

“While organisations face challenges in tackling complexities associated with implementation efforts, the results overwhelmingly demonstrate that companies are committed to developing and deploying fully integrated Big Data strategies.

“By overcoming the obstacles, companies can successfully compete in the application economy.”

According to the survey, companies see Big Data as an important aspect of digital transformation in the application economy.

Respondents report already seeing, or anticipating, benefits of increased revenue (88 percent), improved competitive positioning (92 per cent), ability to provide new products or services (94 per cent), and more effective targeted marketing campaigns (90 per cent).

Additional key findings revealed:

• Virtually all (98 per cent) respondents acknowledge that major investments are required to allow their Big Data projects to work well.

• More than half (56 per cent) of respondents see scaling existing projects to address more data sources as a major priority for their Big Data projects.

• The majority of Big Data projects are independent, with one in five organisations having a project limited to a single department or area.

As explained by Hodgson, the amount of data organisations have has increased by an average of 16 per cent in the last two years, which is predicted to rise by a further 24 per cent in the next two years.

“The benefits of implementing Big Data projects as a way to succeed in the application economy ultimately outweighs the challenges for businesses,” he adds.

“On average, respondents have experienced improvements of up to 21 per cent due to successful Big Data projects.”