Though 48 percent of companies have invested in big data in 2016 — up 3 percent from 2015 — those who plan to invest within the next two years fell from 31 to 25 percent in 2016, a new Gartner survey has found.
“Investment in big data is up, but the survey is showing signs of slowing growth with fewer companies having a future intent to invest,” Nick Heudecker, research director at Gartner, said in a statement.
The big issue is not so much big data itself but rather how it is used. While organisations have understood that big data is not just about a specific technology, they need to avoid thinking about big data as a separate effort.
The Gartner survey on big data found that nearly three quarters of respondents said their organisation has invested or is planning to invest in big data and several remain stuck at the pilot stage.
Only 15 percent of businesses reported deploying their big data project to production, effectively unchanged from last year (14 percent).
One explanation for this is that big data projects appear to be receiving less spending priority than competing IT initiatives.
Only 11 percent of respondents from organisations that have already invested in big data reported that their big data investments were important, while 46 percent stated that they were less important that other IT initiatives.
This could be due to the fact that many big data projects don’t have a tangible return on investment (ROI) that can be determined upfront. Another reason could be that the big data initiative is a part of a larger funded initiative.
When it comes to big data, many organisations are still finding themselves at the crafting stage. Industrialisation and the performance and stability guarantees that come with it — have yet to penetrate big data thinking.
