Investment in big data technologies continues to swell, according to a survey by Gartner, which found that 73% of respondents have invested or plan to invest in big data in the next 24 months. This is up from 64% in 2013.
The survey also indicates organizations are starting to get off the fence about their big data investment — the number of organizations stating they had no plans for big data investment fell from 31% in 2013 to 24% in 2014.
The Gartner survey of 302 Gartner Research Circle members worldwide, which was conducted in June 2014, was designed to explore organizations' technology investment plans relating to big data, stages of big data adoption, business problems solved, data, technology and challenges and compare the results with those from previous years.
"Big data investment continues to be led by North America, with 47% of organizations reporting investment, up from 37.8% in 2013," said Nick Heudecker, research director at Gartner. "All other regions experienced increases in investment over the last year."
However, this increased investment has not led to an associated increase in organizations reporting deployed big data projects. Like 2013, much of the work today revolves around strategy development and the creation of pilots and experimental projects.
"Last year, we said 2013 was big data's year of experimentation and early deployment," said Mr. Heudecker. "So is 2014. In 2013, only 8% of organizations reported having big data projects deployed to production. This has increased to 13% in 2014, and while still relatively small, represents a sizeable increase. However, the 6% drop in organizations still gathering knowledge about big data and the 7% increase in pilots and experiments indicate that organizations are evolving in their understanding and willingness to explore big data opportunities."