Big Data Survey Finds 75% of Businesses Yet to Reach Production

Seventy-five percent of businesses have yet to successfully deploy big data analytics solutions to gain business-impacting insights, despite 65 percent increasing their investment in analytic services and technologies in 2014. These findings are part of “Analytics 2014,” Lavastorm’s second annual survey on analytic usage, trends, and future initiatives. The survey featured responses from 495 C-level executives, business analsyts, data scientists and analytics professionals. The full survey can be downloaded for free by visiting: http://ww2.lavastorm.com/Analytics-2014-Survey.html

Yes, businesses are more committed to implementing big data analytics than ever before, but, far too many are still struggling with how to maximize the benefit,” said Drew Rockwell, CEO of Lavastorm. “These survey results underpin how investing in analytics is just the first step. It’s organizations that go the next level by removing complexities from the analytics process and empowering others in the organization, namely business analysts, that are going be able to turn data insights into actionable business enhancements for long-term success.”

Key findings from the survey are:

Big Data Analytics Must Involve Others (Not Just Data Scientists) for Long-term Success

• Nearly 73 percent of analysts (business analysts and data analysts) are not currently using big data tools or do not know what big data tools are being used by their company, compared to just 39 percent of data scientists.
• This shows that analysts are largely “in the dark” when it comes to big data technologies and the work that their company is doing to leverage those sources. Yet, data scientists, who are generally in R&D or IT groups, are much more involved.
• The troubling aspect of this is that big data projects may be treated as science projects and not a business-impacting capability.
• The best business results will only be obtained when the business is heavily involved in the planning and analysis.

Investment in Analytics Growing Rapidly

• 64.4 percent of respondents indicated that their company is investing more in analytics in 2014, with 20.5 percent indicating their company is increasing its investment significantly.
• This is consistent with other industry research that indicates that analytics and business intelligence will remain a top priority of CIOs in 2014 and several years to come.

World is Dividing into Big Data “Haves” and “Have Nots”

• Only 12.6 percent of respondents said their company has completed several big data projects that are now in production.
• Big data is maturing, but the majority of companies are still sitting on the sidelines watching, planning and evaluating.
• A shortage of analytic professionals was the number one concern for people in organizations that are just experimenting with or planning for big data.
• This could indicate that organizations yet to take the big data plunge may be held back because of the lack of big data skills available to them.

Data Quality Concerns On the Rise

• 48 percent of respondents are working on data quality, a significant increase over the 27 percent that reported working on this last year.
• This is likely due to increased use of new data sources, especially big data sources.
• This is why 35 percent of survey respondents who are increasing analytic investments in 2014 said their company is also investing in data management (including integration, quality, ETL and enrichment).

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