

Kable Global ICT Intelligence: Identifying the benefits, challenges and outlook for Big Data.
Less than half of organisations are currently using a Big Data platform in their organisation, despite the majority identifying implementation as a way to make their business more data-focused.
Analysis from research firm Kable, shows that 47% are already using a Big Data platform, but around 75% of executives from medium-sized companies believe a platform could make their business more focused with their data.
Executives in Asia-Pacific are leading the way in adopting the platforms with 60% of respondents already using a platform. This leaves both North America (47%) and Europe (44%) significantly lagging behind.
Surprisingly 29% of executives with business operations in North America are not aware about Big Data platforms.
Seeing as North America is often regarded as ahead of the curve with its adoption of new technologies it is surprising that such a large percentage remain unaware.
The key factors behind deploying Big Data solutions are strengthening customer services and relationships by better understanding consumer behaviour (70%) and improving decision making and business strategy (65%).
Close behind this is enhancing productivity and profitability by developing actionable business insight and knowledge base (64%).
The report says: "Companies are setting new priorities that focus on building customer trust, transparency, and business capabilities for higher profitability.
"Therefore, companies adopt the big data platforms to study the massive amounts of data on their customers and introduce new offerings for specific target segments, such as location and demographics."
For Big Data to be successful, it must produce tangible returns on the investment. The Kable report identifies that 26% predict a 0-25% ROI over the initial two years, while 22% expect a 26-50% return.
Only a small number (6%) expect between a 51-100% or more than a 100% return, with just 3% expecting a negative return.
In Asia-Pacific, Apache-Hadoop and NoSQL are expected to gain prominence within the industry but concerns regarding interoperability with other platforms, combined with complexity, lack of skill set and privacy and security issues, continue to concern organisations.
Europe is also leaning towards Apace Hadoop and No SQL, however, North America is looking more towards Advanced SQL/NewSQL.
North America’s main reason for choosing this path is due to the ability to support diverse content formats (84%) and Data volume handling capacity and scalability (71%).
Europe has very split priorities with interoperability (62%) as the main factor, with data volume handling capacity and scalability, security and reliability and ease of operations jointly tied on 60%.
The research is based on the surveyed opinions and expectations of 88 global IT industry executives surveyed in June 2015.
The full report can be accessed here.