EMC reveals strong Big Data adoption trends in Oz

Australian companies believe that Big Data will give rise to improved decision making and will have a significant impact on companies’ competitive differentiation and ability to avert risk.

That's according to a survey of IT decision makers attending EMC Forum in Australia last week, with 85% of businesses surveyed reported that better uses of Big Data will lead to better decision making.

“Big Data will enable businesses to finally get a true view of customers rather than what has been achieved to-date, namely a company view of a customer," says Alister Dias, VP and MD ANZ, EMC.

Key findings include:

• 52% of respondents believe that Big Data will be a key factor in determining winners and losers in their industry

• 23% have already achieved a competitive advantage as a result of Big Data analytics technology

• 52% believe that successful industries will be the ones using Big Data tools

• 47% of respondents also agree that Big Data technology will prove vital in identifying and protecting against cyber attacks

• 72% agree that data center automation will be crucial to innovation and agility over the next three years.

However, in Australia:

• 33% of companies surveyed have no current plans for implementing Big Data technology

• While budget was the most important factor for overall business decision making, the most common reasons cited as inhibitors to Big Data adoption were: business culture unready for Big Data (25%); no clear business case or proven ROI (22%) and too costly for today’s environment (22%)

"Businesses want and need to understand how their customers are talking to them and what they are saying about them," Dias adds.

"Big Data provides, for the first time, a common language for incredibly valuable, but disparate information to be analysed in conjunction with a company’s current understanding of their customers.

"Big Data technologies, systems, process and techniques will help derive value from data and enable companies to compete on a global scale.

"What this survey shows, is that Australian companies have virtualised, they are moving to the cloud and they are ready to embark on the journey to fully understand their customers.”