2013 is the Year of Experimentation for Big Data

big-data_NEWSIt’s not surprising that big data, data science and machine learning are hugely dominant topics in the IT and business world. For the past few years, it seems that there’s been more articles, blogs and op-ed pieces about big data than you could keep track of. And with good reason – plenty of organizations across multiple sectors are rushing to invest in big data projects and related software solutions.

According to ZDNet, Gartner surveyed 720 members of the market analysis firm’s Research Circle, made up of business leaders in a wide variety of fields. It noted that there was an increase in the number of companies looking to make big data investments between 2012 and 2013, from 58 percent to 64 percent. The catch was that only 8 percent of respondents overall had begun implementing their big data plans, even among the 30 percent of those surveyed who had already made investments in them.

Respondents in most industry sectors stated that they planned to complete their investments in the next year or two years. Fields where this sentiment was most common included transportation, services, banking, media and communications. Frank Buytendijk, research vice president at Gartner made this observation:

For big data, 2013 is the year of experimentation and early deployment. Adoption is still at the early stages.

The survey had positive conclusions in terms of the reasons behind these companies’ investments such as improving customers’ experiences, better business process efficiency and increased understanding of customer needs.