By Anil Chopra, Group Editor PCQuest and CIOL

A survey to understand CIOs' understanding and plans of using Big Data and associated technologies. 50 CIOs of large enterprises responded, out of which

48 percent said that Big Data is considered a strategic investment in their organizations. Another significant chunk either didn’t know enough about the

technology or had the familiarity but didn’t really know how to leverage it

Big Data Usage Survey

Big Data has High Potential, but Requires Greater Awareness

Big Data technology is no longer a mystery. Thirty eight percent of the large enterprises CIOs in India are mostly familiar with it, while another 18 percent are completely familiar. Out of these responses also, a majority of the CIOs were from very large organizations with 1,000+ employees. The ones that were not familiar with the technology were from the relatively smaller organizations with 500+ employees.

Yes, Big Data is Considered a Strategic Investment

When we asked CIOs whether Big Data was being considered as a strategic investment in their organizations, 48 percent responded with a “yes”. Only 28 percent said no, and another 24 percent didn’t answer. We got our reasons when they answered our next question on their plans for deploying Big Data technology.

Big Data has High Potential, but Requires Greater Awareness

Fifty percent of the CIOs we surveyed were either already using or planning to leverage Big Data in the near future. There’s plenty of scope for Big Data penetration in large enterprises, because only four percent of the CIOs said point blank that they had no plans of using it in the near future. The remaining, which is a whopping 36 percent either knew the technology but didn’t know how to leverage it or they didn’t know enough about the technology to really give an answer.

Oracle is the Most Familiar Big Data Brand

In this question, respondents were allowed to tick all the vendor names they were aware of, and even mention other names if they knew more. Oracle got the highest votes, followed by EMC and IBM tied for the second spot. SAP followed closely followed by HP. Interestingly, Apache Hadoop, despite all the excitement and noise around it, was not as familiar, receiving only 8% of the responses.

Big Data is Considered Expensive

Twenty six percent of the CIOs said deploying Big Data involves high costs, and another 20 percent find it difficult to justify the investment to their management. Costs aside, there’s a strong need to generate more awareness about the true value of Big Data and how it can benefit an organization. All other factors come later.

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