Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are two rapidly growing technological forces that often work together to collect data.

The promise of big data lies within the ability of an organization to use a connected device to compile data both internally and externally. The cost of doing big data analytics is predicted to go down this year, making it more feasible for organizations to collect marketplace or operations data.

Tech Pro Research conducted a survey in 2015 to find out how companies are using big data and the IoT. The topic was revisited in January 2016, in a new survey, to find out what has changed in this fast-evolving landscape.

In this year’s follow-up survey, Tech Pro Research looked at the same concepts as in 2015, including how what progress — or pitfalls — have been experienced using the IoT to collect data. Topics covered include:

• IoT collection of marketplace data
• IoT collection of operations data
• IoT budgets and employee staffing numbers
• Data security
• Benefits and drawbacks of IoT data collection

Who is using big data?

The first objective was to assess where big data is in use by assessing where implementations have been conducted. The survey found that 29 percent have deployed a big data solution, while another 61 percent have not. These are approximately the same figures as last year.

Company size matters, with the largest organizations much more likely to have undertaken a big data implementation than smaller organizations. In fact, respondents from companies with 1,000 or more employees have implemented big data nearly 1.5 times more often than those which have not (49% versus 35%), whereas only about one-fifth of smaller companies have put big data into place. Three-quarters of these organizations have no big data solution.

Region also mattered. Respondents whose organizations are in the Asia-Pacific region more often than not reported their organization had undergone a big data implementation — 19 percent higher than Europe, the second highest ranking. Conversely, big data is rare in Central/South America.

Who is using IoT?

Since big data goes hand-in-hand with IoT, Tech Pro Research also dug in to find out who is using IoT systems to collect marketplace or operations data. Just over a fifth (21%) of respondent organizations say they are using IoT and another 35 percent reported they will be starting soon.

As far as company size goes, only 33 percent of respondents from organizations with 1,000 or more employees indicated they had no current or planned IoT system implementations, compared to 59 percent, 47 percent and 46 percent for other organizations (ranked in descending sizes). As was the case with big data, the largest organizations were more likely to have implemented, or to be planning to implement, some kind of IoT system to collect external or internal data.

It is interesting to note, however, that unlike big data, IoT is least likely to be in use not in the smallest companies but the small-to-medium (50-249 employees) and medium-to-large businesses (250-999 employees. This demonstrates that IoT has more of a footprint in the smallest companies than big data, whereas the reverse applies in the middle two size ranges.

This article was originally published zdnet.com and can be viewed in full here 

(0)(0)