Attivio Survey Exposes Disconnect Between Big Data Excitement and Organizations’ Ability to Execute

Attivio, the Data Dexterity Company, announced the findings of a recently commissioned survey of Big Data leaders, which revealed a strong confidence that corporate Big Data strategies are headed in the right direction (94 percent). However, this enthusiasm is blunted by the fact 64 percent of respondents said that process bottlenecks prevent large data sets from being accessed quickly and efficiently. This dissonance highlights a growing gulf between the desire to embrace Big Data and their ability to operationalize it.

Aimed at assessing the extent to which companies are leveraging Big Data effectively within large corporations, the survey highlighted a polarity between the importance placed on Big Data within firms and the roadblocks to executing efficiently due to technology limitations. Nearly one-third (31 percent) of respondents shared that they lack the technical capabilities to have visibility across Big Data sources.

Further examples of the polarity between corporate commitment and Big Data reality include:

• 98 percent of respondents stated that their firms were committed to grounding their decision-making in data, while only 23 percent felt that their firms were extremely successful in making data-driven decisions
• 78 percent of respondents reported that a member of their C-Suite is responsible for driving their ability to compete on analytics, yet 41 percent felt that data was too siloed within functions to be accessible when they needed it

This survey underscores exactly why Chief Data Officers now have a seat at the executive table,” said Stephen Baker, CEO of Attivio. “Enterprises are competing on an incomplete view of their data; they cannot adequately see or unify data across their silos. The need for immediate visibility into the right information continues to be the last mile in establishing these organizations as true data-driven companies.”

Additional key data points from the survey include:

• Highlighting the need for greater investment, 59 percent of respondents felt that their legacy data storage systems require too much processing to meet today’s business requirements
• The perception of a dearth of data scientists is real and 66 percent of respondents felt that finding and hiring Big Data analytics talent is difficult
• The struggle between IT and BI can be seen as 59 percent of respondents stated that “shadow analytics” leads to data governance problems

The Attivio survey was fielded between April 21^st-May 5^th, with 150 senior (director level or above) decision makers polled from firms with 5,000 or more employees. More detailed findings from the Attivio Big Data Survey are available on Attivio’s blog.

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