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FRAMINGHAM, MA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/08/12 -- IDG Enterprise -- the media company comprising of Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, CIO, DEMO, CSO, CIO Executive Council, ITworld, CFOworld and CITEworld -- releases the results from the 2012 IDG Enterprise Big Data research which delves into big data strategies and challenges as adoption increases. The research highlights big data initiatives as a high/critical priority for 59% of enterprise organizations (1,000+ employees) and 48% of small/medium (SMB) organizations ( < 1,000 employees). As a new technology trend, challenges are anticipated, in fact 60% of IT executives believe big data integration will be very/extremely challenging.

For this study, big data was defined as large volumes of a wide variety of data collected from various sources across the enterprise. Respondents indicated that the amount of data being managed per organization will increase by an average of 53% in the coming 12 to 18 months from 194.4TB to 296.7TB. The top sources contributing to this growth are customer databases, emails and word documents.

"The volume, variety and velocity of data is challenging organizations to quickly put a strategy in place to analyze, predict and monetize the value of data," said Bob Melk, SVP, group publisher & CMO, IDG Enterprise. "This research outlines how organizations are addressing this imperative and what solution areas IT decision-makers are investing in including data analytics, mining, warehousing, predictive analytics and visualization."

Big Data Adoption and Objectives Driving Investment

While respondents agree that big data initiatives are a high/critical priority, the big data trend is still in the early stages of adoption. Currently, 14% have already deployed/implemented big data projects and an additional 44% are in the process of implementing or planning to do so in the future. The speed of adoption aligns with the reliance organizational stakeholders have with the analytics big data can provide, which explains why CEOs (47%) are the number one supporter of big data initiatives. Organizations have multiple expectations driving big data investments, including: improving the quality of decision-making (52%), increasing speed of decision-making (47%), improving planning and forecasting (44%), customer retention (43%) and developing new products/services and revenue streams (42%).

Big Data Adoption Challenges

Organizations are facing numerous challenges with big data initiatives, with the average respondent citing more than five challenges, including: limited budget (45%), legacy issues (36%), security issues (34%), development time (34%) and growing demand on storage capacity/infrastructure (32%). Additionally, IT executives (42%) are concerned about identifying business areas and processes where big data can have the greatest impact, compared to 28% of line of business (LOB) employees. On the other hand LOB employees (47%) are concerned about making sure the human capital exists within the company are capable of supporting big data initiatives, compared to 32% of IT executives, which demonstrates a disconnect.