Study Finds Big Data Concerns Among Business Executives

So what is big data, and why are businesses hesitating to use this technology? First of all, big data is just data, and knowing that seems to be a problem for a lot of people. Whether the data is collected using traditional or digital sources, using the information for ongoing discovery and analysis is what big data represents. Simply put, big data finds value in the information you have and provides actionable answers to relevant questions. The result of the “2013 Big Data in Business Study” by 1010data (News - Alert), provider of big data discovery and data sharing, reveals the challenges and progress big data faced in the past year in the business environment.

The study surveyed 158 U.S. business executives across industry sectors to find out which industries achieved the most success with big data, and the reasons businesses couldn't capitalize on this technology. Executives were also asked their views on Hadoop 2.0, a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage.

According to IBM (News - Alert), big data spans three dimensions: volume, velocity and variety. The volume is the massive amount of data enterprises are accumulating each and every day, which can go as high as petabytes. Velocity is the time in which the data can be analyzed to provide actionable information. The variety is all the information structured and unstructured that makes up the data. Knowing the basics and moving forward to determine if big data services can provide solutions for the organization is the challenge executives are facing.

Image via Shutterstock

Although businesses appreciate big data and the prospect of leveraging what it can provide, 62 percent of executives believe more education is required on how big data solves business problems. This goes hand-in-hand with 79 percent of executives that believed the technology hasn't reached its potential, and it will take one to five years in order to achieve this goal.

Regarding Hadoop 2.0 they said it had security and reliability concerns as well as expense of implementation and maintenance. Forty three percent admitted it was difficult to find talent and experience with this platform because it is new and not as stable as other technologies.

This research pointed out executives have a clear understanding of where big data will be of value to their organization, but their knowledge base of this technology seems to be slowing down wider adoption by businesses.

"This research shows that the business community has high expectations for Big Data with most believing that it will reach its potential in the next five years,” said Sandy Steier (News - Alert), co-founder and CEO of 1010data. “However, there is also significant concern with many existing approaches to analyzing Big Data, including the use of Hadoop, which has been incorrectly positioned as being synonymous with Big Data. Businesses believe Hadoop requires too much staffing, resources, and time to get the answers they need."