What IT Teams Want Their CIOs to Know About Big Data Projects

More than half of Big Data projects aren’t completed because those charged with implementation are usually the last to be consulted, according to the results of a new survey.

In fact, 81 percent of companies included Big Data/advanced analytics projects among their top five IT priorities for 2013, according to the report, “CIOs & Big Data: What Your IT Team Wants You to Know,” as commissioned by cloud services provider Infochimps.

“It isn’t surprising to find that 55 percent of Big Data projects aren’t completed and many more fail to achieve their objectives – often those charged with implementation are the last consulted,” Jim Kaskade, CEO of Infochimps said in a statement. “We created this report as a resource to give CIOs insight into the too-often overlooked views of those charged with the heavy lifting.”

The report is based on Infochimps’ survey of more than 300 IT department employees, 58 percent of which are currently engaged in Big Data projects. The study also identifies pitfalls that implementation teams encounter, as well as could avoid, if top management had a more complete view. According to Infochimps, CIOs who want their projects to succeed should consider the following perspectives from IT staff:

Siloed Data a Leading Challenge: Respondents said that the most significant challenge they face when working with Big Data is accessing the data siloed in various business applications across the organization (76 percent). In addition, inaccurate scope was listed as a top reason why IT projects in general fail (58 percent).  

“Companies need to start with the business problem first to properly scope their projects,” Kaskade said. “Too many organizations are building Big Data platforms intended to meet the entire organization’s needs. Unless they understand specific use-cases first, many will find such an approach falls short.”

IT Staffers Want to Focus on the Application Layer: Respondents were much more interested in focusing on the application layer than on infrastructure. “Departments will find the greatest return on investment when their time is invested honing the front-end for business agility and value, and not spent managing the back-end,” Kaskade explained.

Critical Requirements for Big Data: Respondents ranked as the top five most critical requirements for Big Data platforms are as follows:

 1) Ability to scale

2) Ease of management

3) Flexible architecture

4) Speed to deployment

5) Security

Big Data Takes Commitment: When asked what single thing they wanted their CIO to know, participants offered valuable insight on subjects ranging from combining batch and real-time analysis to overall vision. However, the theme of time remained at the forefront, indicating a desire to remind CIOs of the level of commitment required by Big Data projects.

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