Published on the 11/07/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Four out of five Australian enterprises have already deployed or are planning to launch a big data analytics initiative in the coming year as they search for their secret sauce…
A survey of more than 300 Australian organisations by analyst IDC has revealed that a third consider big data analytics either essential or critical to their organisation. However the research revealed a broad spectrum of maturity – some projects are very much at the experimental phase, while only three per cent of organisations surveyed have a full-blown big data campaign in place.
The research also revealed that the IT department is no longer in the driving seat. IDC found that c-suite executives were very switched on to the power of big data, and rather than the IT department being called on to devise a big data strategy, it was increasingly being devolved to the lines of business to make use of data collections as they saw fit. According to Shayum Rahim, head of software research and big data for IDC Australia, within five years IT departments may not be involved at all as lines of business take over big data analysis.
Rahim said that although Australian enterprises appeared to be lagging their US and UK peers in adoption of data analytics – only three percent of local organisations hold data collections greater than 100 terabytes – he said that Australian enterprises were more inclined to include a greater variety of data in their analysis, sourced from smartphones, social media and geospatial sensors.
“All of this data ends up in the digital universe and is downloaded and that’s where organisations are finding more value,” in terms of their search for competitive advantage, he said. He acknowledged that when he first saw the 80 percent big data intention figure he had been sceptical and believed organisations were simply talking about data analysis on static databases – but he said that the organisations were taking in geospatial and social media data and using it for predictive modelling that “a normal data base analyst would not be able to do”.
This however highlights the skills challenge in this field. Rahim said skills in this area were “thin on the ground” and building up a skills base could take a generation. However he said innovative vendors were starting to develop tools which would allow companies to begin big data analysis without necessarily having to build comprehensive teams of big data scientists.
