24/7 Wall St. has released a list of the poorest counties in each state of the US, gleaning data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Data from the following resources were evaluated to come up with the results:

• Five-year estimated median annual household incomes from 2009 through 2013 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS)
• Five-year estimated educational attainment rates also came from the Census Bureau
• Annual unemployment rates for 2013 from the Bureau of Labor Statistic
• Figures on the percentage of populations that are classified as urban or rural from the Census Bureau’s 2010 decennial census

A special report announcing the list, points out that in each state, there was at least one county with a median annual household income more than $7,000 lower than the state’s median income. Virginia and Maryland had counties with median incomes over $35,000 lower than that of the state.

The figures also point out that McCreary County in Kentucky is most impoverished county with a household income of just $20,972 which is $22,064 below the state’s average of $43,036 – and less than the national average of $53,891, notes the Daily Mail. Rural populations are in the worst state of things in most of the suffering counties. However, in the Bronx and New York the poorest are still the urban population (household income: $34,388).

Read more here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Cumberland Falls, McCreary County by Frank Kehren)

All organization should make user experience a top priority.  After database, no software has become more strategic than a unified performance management platform.  If applications don’t perform to end user expectations, return on investment (ROI) and risk management objectives cannot be achieved.  Employee engagement falters, customer loyalty erodes and the company lags behind its peer group in financial performance and market valuation.

Applications have become the life blood of the business.  Enterprises increasingly rely on them to run their entire operations.  As companies seek to optimize their technology spend, more of the applications that users engage with will run in a service provider’s data center.  Tech-Tonics Advisors expects this trend will only continue as enterprises adopt DevOps practices and move more workloads to the cloud.

Meanwhile, users are increasingly accessing these applications with a mobile device.  Rising usage is being driven by the explosion in the number of apps available and the ease of accessibility.  Growing enterprise BYOD (bring your own device) programs is also causing users to spend more time on their devices.  Tech-Tonics projects this theme will continue as well, driven by DevOps and HTML5 adoption for cross-platform deployments.

These trends raise complexity and put more pressure on already resource-constrained IT teams.  Distributed architectures and modern applications require a finer granularity of performance data to gain operational intelligence across the entire application delivery chain.  Yet as more applications reside outside of the enterprise, more components along the chain are obscured from IT and line of business owners.

A Performance Platform Must Meet User Expectations

Nothing shines a light on an IT team’s success or failure as application and website performance.  But it’s no longer good enough for an application to work; it now needs to work to end-user expectations.

Users’ tolerance for poor application or website performance continues to shrink.  Failure at any point along the application delivery chain can turn a satisfied user into a frustrated one.  Once page loads take more than three seconds, frustration grows.  If that user is an employee, productivity drops and so does their engagement.

If the end user is a customer, the cost can be much higher in the form of eroded loyalty, lost business and damaged reputation.  Consequently, application downtime is no longer just a performance problem; it’s a customer service problem.

And service outages can be quite costly.  Depending on the industry sector, slow responsiveness or complete outage (brownouts or downtime) of a company’s most business critical application can cost between $100,000 and $1 million per hour.

Yet the more business processes come to depend on multiple applications and the underlying infrastructure the more susceptible they are to performance degradation.  This makes it more important than ever to monitor and manage the end user experience across all environments, including physical, virtual, cloud, mobile and mainframe.

Performance has historically been measured at the individual component or system level, such as a network device or connection, a firewall or load balancer, a database or a web application server.  As environments have become more complex, the sum-of-the-parts approach does not accurately reflect true user experience.  Analyzing or mitigating risk in only one component of the system does little to prevent disastrous events or failures.  In fact, they can be amplified, as one component affects another and then another, spreading risk throughout the system.

More enterprises have recognized the need for a new generation of performance analytics techniques that go beyond the scope of traditional monitoring tools, which were designed for smaller and more static environments.  They need to understand what levels of performance (i.e. speed and availability) are needed from their cloud-based and mobile applications in order to deliver fast, reliable and highly satisfying end-user experiences.

IT teams need to adapt a more strategic, holistic approach to assure user experience.  A comprehensive performance analytics platform provides visibility across the entire application delivery chain – from behind the firewall and out to the Web, including third-party cloud providers and mobile apps.  The business cases for such an approach are customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.  User experience that meets customer expectations is the key to employee engagement and building customer loyalty.

Our recently completed study of S&P 500 companies http://tech-tonicsadvisors.com/user-experience-linked-to-financial-returns/ establishes a clear link between a strategic approach to user experience and financial performance.   Revenue growth, margins, valuations and share price performance were all higher for these companies relative to their respective peer group.  These companies outperform because they provide consistently outstanding user experiences that help their customers succeed.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

Gabriel Lowy is the Founder of Tech-Tonics Advisors. During the past 16 years, he has been consistently recognized as a leading technology analyst, including Forbes.com Best Analysts in America (#4 in 2010; #1 in 2004) and The Wall Street Journal Best of the Street (#2 in 2003). Gabriel has held senior technology research analyst positions with several Wall Street firms, including Mizuho Securities USA, Noble Financial Group, Inc., Collins Stewart LLC, Credit Lyonnais Securities USA and Oppenheimer & Co. His views can be found here.

(Image credit: MS)

Apache Hadoop Technology pioneer for Big Data Deployments, MapR, revealed that in November this year, the number of enterprises subscribing to MapR has crossed 700. The growth is not limited to new customers alone, as the outfit saw a dollar-based net expansion rate of more than 200% for the quarter ended September 30, 2014, owing to existing customers increased current subscriptions, reports MapR.

“We’ve built a mature, fast growing company based on an innovative technology platform that helps some of the world’s largest companies harness the power of data and a business model architected for long-term success,” explains John Schroeder, CEO and co-founder of MapR. “We’re extremely confident we’ll continue to execute on our vision, clearly positioning our customers for continued growth and success in this quickly expanding market.”

The press release announcing the development also highlights few other notable events in its business strategy:

• Teamed with SAP to integrate the real-time deep analytics of SAP HANA with the production-ready, top-ranked MapR Distribution including Apache Hadoop.
• Expanded partnership with Teradata, the big data analytics and marketing applications company, in which Teradata will integrate the MapR Distribution and services to create best-in-class unified solutions for data warehousing, Hadoop, discovery platforms, and NoSQL.
• Continued growth in vertical markets.   As of November 2014, MapR has one or more customers in eight vertical markets that have purchased more than one million dollars of MapR software and services.  These vertical markets are advertising/media, financial services, healthcare, internet, information technology, retail, security, and telecom.
• Added former EVP and CMO of Sun Microsystems, Anil Gadre, as Senior Vice President of Product Management. Gadre brings more than 20 years of experience building and marketing innovative enterprise software products.

A recent survey of conducted by TechValidate indicated a majority of MapR customers experienced payback in less than 12 months and greater than 5X returns on their investment.

Read more here.

(Image credit: MapR)

A new Tech-Tonics Advisors study links user experience to financial returns. Companies that take a unified approach to gain better visibility into user experience outperform their peer group in revenue growth, profitability and market valuation. Our conclusion is that ensuring applications perform to user expectations should be a top priority at every company.

We surveyed senior IT people at S&P 500 companies.  Responses from 121 companies (24% of the list) shows that delivering superior end-user experiences – to customers and employees – has become the differentiator between companies that win customer loyalty and market share and those that don’t.  This translates into numbers that C-level management – including CIOs – and investors can appreciate.

Of the 121 respondents, 44 (36%) say they have adopted a unified approach to performance management.  Tech-Tonics then reviewed the financial performance of these companies relative to their peer group.  We chose public companies for the study due to the availability of data disclosed in SEC filings, quarterly earnings conference calls and at investor conferences.  We looked at results between 2010 and 2013.  These companies outperform their peer group in the following ways:

• Their revenue growth is 15% faster than the peer group average. We believe this is largely attributable to higher customer satisfaction ratings and loyalty (as measured by the percentage of revenues coming from existing customers versus new ones);

• Their operating margin is 17% higher than the peer group average. We attribute this partially to operating efficiencies gained through improved user experience throughout the organization;

• Their higher profitability is rewarded with multiple valuation premiums of up to 29%. If a sector’s price/earnings (P/E) ratio is 17, then the unified approach company’s P/E is 22.  On a $10 billion base market capitalization, this equates to an incremental $2.9 billion in market value;

• Their unified approach to user experience led to 41% stock market outperformance. If peer group average appreciation between 2010 and 2013 was 67%, then shares of outperforming companies rose by 95%.

Clearly, a strategic approach to user experience assurance drives superior operating results and stock market outperformance.

The most represented S&P sectors among respondents were financials (banks, brokers, insurance, diversified), consumer discretionary (hard lines, apparel, media, restaurants), industrials (all manufacturing), healthcare (pharma, services and drug chains) and technology (hardware, software, IT services).  The breakdown by sector is below:

Source: Tech-Tonics Advisors

Among sectors, financials, technology, consumer staples and industrials have the highest number of responses for companies that have implemented a unified performance management strategy.  (We excluded sectors with fewer than 10 responses).

Source: Tech-Tonics Advisors

Companies with a unified approach to performance management and user experience also deploy a fewer number of tools.  The majority of these have consolidated onto a core platform from one vendor, with tactical deployments of other vendor solutions for specific use cases, departments or technologies.

The red bar depicts the average number of vendor tools deployed for all sectors: ten.  For companies within the sectors that have a unified approach, the green bar shows that the average number of tools deployed drops to seven.

Source: Tech-Tonics Advisors

Among the responding companies, IT is still responsible for most aspects of performance management – from servers to network to applications and websites.  However, in 24 companies, functional departments have been deploying tools independent of IT, but which they expect IT to support.  We believe that as technology budgets bifurcate to departments such as marketing, this is a trend that will continue.

A clear linkage has emerged with how improvements in customer experiences are driving financial benefits.  But in order to realize the benefits of engaged employees and satisfied customers, application performance must been stellar – consistently.

Through a unified approach to performance analytics, IT can help their companies leverage technology investments to discover, interpret and respond to the myriad events that impact their operations, security, compliance and competitiveness.  They must recognize that application performance problems are now customer service problems.  Understanding key fundamental business drivers and working in concert with application owners – and each other – IT teams can meet end-user performance expectations to enable strategic initiatives and positively impact financial results.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

Gabriel Lowy is the Founder of Tech-Tonics Advisors. During the past 16 years, he has been consistently recognized as a leading technology analyst, including Forbes.com Best Analysts in America (#4 in 2010; #1 in 2004) and The Wall Street Journal Best of the Street (#2 in 2003). Gabriel has held senior technology research analyst positions with several Wall Street firms, including Mizuho Securities USA, Noble Financial Group, Inc., Collins Stewart LLC, Credit Lyonnais Securities USA and Oppenheimer & Co. His views can be found here.

(Image credit: Tech-Tonics Advisors)

While computer gaming remains primarily male dominated, a new study has revealed that girls may be more skilled at making story-based computer games.

The research was conducted by the Informatics Department at the University of Sussex on secondary school students. They were asked to design and program their own computer game using a new visual programming language that shows pupils the computer programs they have written in plain English.

The study describes the design and evaluation of Flip, a bi- modal programming language that aims to help 11-15 year olds develop computational skills through creating their own 3D role-playing games. Flip has two main components: 1) a visual language (based on an interlocking blocks design common to many current visual languages), and 2) a dynamically updating natural language version of the script under creation.

This programming-language/natural-language pairing is a unique feature of Flip, designed to allow learners to draw upon their familiarity with natural language to “decode the code”. Flip aims to support young people in developing an understanding of computational concepts as well as the skills to use and communicate these concepts effectively.

Researchers Dr Kate Howland and Dr Judith Good revealed that girls wrote more-and more complex- scripts than did boys, and there was a trend for girls to show greater learning gains relative to the boys.

Dr Good stated: “Given that girls’ attainment in literacy is higher than boys across all stages of the primary and secondary school curriculum, it may be that explicitly tying programming to an activity that they tend to do well in leads to a commensurate gain in their programming skills.”

“In other words, if girls’ stories are typically more complex and well developed, then when creating stories in games, their stories will also require more sophisticated programs in order for their games to work.”

The young people, aged 12-13, spent eight weeks developing their own 3D, role-playing games, using software made available with the popular medieval fantasy game Neverwinter Nights 2, which is based on the popular Dungeons & Dragons franchise. By linking blocks together, a user can tell the game to print text, change elements of gameplay and start new missions when different events occur – like the slaying of a dragon.

An array of events in the game were used as triggers for the script – for instance, when a character is killed; or says something; or moves to a different part of the screen. Girls were found to use nearly twice any many triggers as boys. While boys stuck to the most basic trigger- when a character says something, girls used up to seven different triggers and created complex scripts with two or more parts and conditional clauses more successfully.

Underrepresentation of women in computing has been a pressing concern, with only 17% of CS graduates in UK being females in 2012. While the number of females taking up maths related subjects at school level has gone up. Not many girls have forayed into mainstream computer programming. Some attribute this to the portrayal of “nerdy boys” in media. However, with this new language, females can be motivated to explore programming by tapping into intuitive literary and narrative skills.

Read more here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Lindsey Galloway)

A new survey has revealed that there is a fast developing trend of cloud adoption by organisations.  Moreover, there is a fast developing trend of cloud adoption by organisations. The survey was carried out by the IBX data center and & colocation provider Equinix.

Of the 659 global respondents surveyed, 77% disclosed plans of deployment to multiple clouds next year. Similarly, 74% are anticipating growth in their cloud budget for 2015.

“What surprised us about this survey is how quickly multi-cloud strategies are becoming the norm worldwide,” notes Ihab Tarazi, Equinix CTO. “Businesses have discovered that colocation provides a meaningful ROI for WAN optimisation, and it is clear that multi cloud deployment will improve the ROI even more.”

91% of new cloud-based offerings are expected to be deployed in the next year, and 45% of deployment of new cloud-based apps will be carried out by third-party colocation providers. Utilising “interconnected data centres,” a majority (87%) believe cloud performance objectives can be met, and a healthy 85% point out that “direct connections to cloud providers are highly valued.”

The weightage of the findings is evident by the fact that respondents included IT executives (44%), IT managers (54%) and IT service providers (2%), on a global scale.

Read more here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Flickr)

Soonr is a  the leading online file sharing and collaboration service that empowers business teams to be productive and do business faster through secure access to any type of business content, anywhere, using any device. In a new study they revealed that while the majority of full-time employees access files remotely (89%), nearly three-quarters (73%) still do so via email, and less than a quarter (22%) are aware of a company-approved file-sharing system in their workplace.

Nearly three out of four full-time employees (74%) report that it’s important to their work to be able to share files easily with co-workers, partners and customers. Yet, two out of three full-time employees (67%) still struggle with ensuring files across teams and organizations are up-to-date, a large jump from 26% in 2013. Other top concerns impacting employees include:

•         Accessing files anytime (48%)
•         Sharing large files (47%)
•         Organizing files (44%)
•         Working on documents while mobile (41%)
•         Securing corporate data (33%)

The study indicates that the demand for remote file sharing varies across different industries. 85% of the full-time employees need to access files remotely across the nine industries surveyed. Each industry has varying concerns about sharing files securely, transfer of large files and secure remote access.

“With a full 59% of respondents feeling it is ‘important,’ or ‘very important,’ to be able to download or edit work files from a mobile device outside the office, addressing these concerns is paramount,” said Ahmet Tuncay, CEO of Soonr. “Solution providers can no longer rely on simple sync-and-share capabilities—employees need easy access to complete documents along with full editing capabilities under a range of conditions, even offline, in order to do their jobs efficiently.”

Soonr’s second annual Mobility in the Workplace Study examines the key factors impacting workplace mobility and business productivity in 2014. It also outlines how the needle is shifting on the biggest challenges being faced by employees in relation to access to documents and files, both in the office and on the road. The study found that:

• File sharing solutions would make work more productive, but most companies are unprepared with an IT-approved file sharing service, with only 22% reporting an approved service in their workplace
• Sales professionals are among those that find it most difficult to collaborate with others and could derive great benefits from secure file sharing
• IT professionals are concerned about the security of their data, with 45% reporting that it’s a challenge and 52% being concerned about the security and privacy of their own files
• CEOs see file sharing as a priority and nearly half (49%) have experienced difficulty themselves collaborating with partners and others outside their company.

“Productivity hurdles vary across industries and job roles, and it’s important to keep this in mind when coming up with a strategy for working most effectively and securely in different locations,” said Tuncay in a company press release. “The workplace has not only become more scattered and mobile, but also more sophisticated. Enterprise file-sharing and cloud solutions need to meet these rising demands.”

Soonr has its headquarters in Silicon Valley, California with offices in UK and Denmark. Embraced by users and endorsed by IT, Soonr delivers its service to over 150,000 paying businesses worldwide in 134 countries, through a network of cloud service providers, VARs,MSPs and systems integrators. Built on a highly scalable and secure  infrastructure that is Type 2 SOC (Service Organization Controls) audited against SSAE 16 standards as well as HIPAA and PCI DSS compliant, Soonr operates geo- redundant data centers in four jurisdictions including the US,Canada, EU and Australia.

(Image credit: Soonr)

Selligy, a sales tools innovator, has revealed in its 2014 Sales Analytics Survey that the sales industry is on the cusp of a data-driven revolution, early last week.

“Most sales leaders have been staring at the same CRM reports for a decade, and this survey shows that a wave of change has started,” points out Nilay Patel, Selligy CEO and co-founder, “Sales leaders have always valued hustle. Now they’re starting to measure it.”

The survey declares that, “CRM cloud analytics is crossing the chasm,” as a major fraction of firms have deployed cloud analytics or are in the planning process of doing it. It turns out that 46 percent of respondents at Dreamforce either already have (19.2 percent) or plan to implement (27.3 percent) new cloud analytics with their CRM within the next year.

However, 16.5 percent would probably not implement cloud analytics in the next year and 37 percent needed more information before any action in this regard.

Selligy’s study of CRM data found that 79 percent of sales records in typical CRM systems have no data tracking the activities the salesperson performed as a result, companies can’t use CRM data to perform basic analyses of what (and who) is working in sales engagements, reports a press release announcing the survey.

Early adopters of cloud analytics have started to address these “long-standing data gaps.” Respondents that plan to use new sales analytics tools within the next year are also those who most often require their salespeople to log calls (73 percent), emails (69 percent) and tasks (70 percent) into CRM.

Apparently the data-driven sales revolution influences the accuracy of sales forecasts as well as the management of sales performance, pointing to a significant gap between the needs of sales leaders and current CRM data.

Selligy believes that apart from tracking “what salespeople did last week,” organisations will need cloud analytics tools to help optimize the sales process by guiding salespeople while improving strategy of sales performance for sustained competitive advantage.

Dreamforce 2014, saw Selligy conduct the survey on the floor to find that investment in cloud analytics has started to take off, and that the companies leading the charge are also addressing a long-time CRM blind spot: the sales process.  It further points out that data-driven sales methods can dramatically alter how teams are managed by leaders.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Salesforce)

Axcient, a cloud-based Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS) provider, has announced the results of an independent survey that investigates the current state of backup and disaster recovery with SMBs, essentially focused on evaluating the impact of cloud backup solutions.

Conducted by market research company Dimensional Research and commissioned by Axcient, the study, questioned 453 IT professionals across US and Canada, to capture data on current trends and experiences with business backup and recovery. The online survey carried out in October 2014 saw professionals included IT executives, IT team managers, hands-on IT professionals and consultants, and represented a wide range of industry verticals, working at companies with 50 and 1,000 employees.

“Complete backup and protection is imperative for all companies, regardless of size,” explained Diane Hagglund, senior research analyst at Dimensional Research. “Given the staggering benefits of cloud-based backup and recovery solutions demonstrated in this survey, there is clear value in fully transitioning to a single, comprehensive cloud-based solution. Although cloud-based backup and recovery is still early in adoption, the recovery market is ripe for innovation, and cloud is the next frontier. I look forward to seeing how this market grows in the coming years.”

Key findings of the survey chart the following findings:

Backup is critical, but incomplete for most organizations

• Unscheduled downtime has significant business implications
• Applications matter: mid-size companies are backing data and critical applications as well
• Backup has moved beyond just mission-critical, but there are still gaps

Major business interruptions do happen, and IT is held responsible

• Major IT failures are a fact of life; especially for small companies
• Only 7 percent were very confident that they could recover operations within two hours
• Recovery is very disruptive to the IT team
• Mid-level IT staff are held responsible for lost data
• 50 percent say someone could lose their job if data is lost

Fragmented backup tools cause significant problems

• 90 percent of SMBs have multiple backup and recovery tools
• Most have backup and recovery tools with duplicate functionality
• More than half use different tools to back up physical and virtual servers
• Multiple tools are needed to support all environment backup
• 91 percent report challenges using multiple backup and recovery tools
• 71 percent report using multiple backup tools can increase risk

Cloud recovery is desirable, with a growing market

• One-third use cloud-based backup and recovery
• 89 percent see value in cloud-based disaster recovery
• 74 percent use a non-cloud based secondary site for recovery
• 79 percent of those with a non-cloud secondary site would make a change if they had resources

The entire Dimensional Research survey report can be accessed here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: Axcient)

Press Release: Global business intelligence (BI) software firm Phocas Software has ranked on top of its competitors in 13 categories and scored outstanding results in 26 others in its two peer groups ad-hoc reporting and visual discovery in the latest findings from the world’s largest survey of business intelligence software users.

The BARC BI 2014 Survey findings, released this week, ranked Phocas on top in key areas in the visual discovery peer group including:

• Business benefits – such as increased employee satisfaction and better business decision making
• Mobile BI use – how many sites use Mobile BI with their business intelligence tool
• Cloud BI – access their data from a secured internet environment
• Project Length – how long it takes to implement the product
• Performance Satisfaction – top ranked Visual Discovery Vendor in performance satisfaction
• Recommendation – reflecting satisfied users willing to endorse the product to their peers

“Our strong performance in BARC BI 2014 demonstrates that Phocas is an innovative business intelligence software solution which continues to evolve and set the standard”, Phocas Co- Founder Myles Glashier said.

“Our aim is to provide a simple BI tool that allows our customers to increase their profits, uncover new sales opportunities and make data driven business decisions. Our results in BARC BI 2014 are testament to the fact Phocas is returning excellent value to our clients”.

Phocas Software’s Mobile Business Intelligence tool was particularly successful, leading the field in both the ad-hoc reporting and visual discovery categories.

“We decided in 2012 to focus on creating an innovative and accessible mobile BI solution. We were quick to respond to the emergence of tablets in the marketplace and these results are indicative of our dedication to create a high performing mobile BI tool”, Glashier said.

The BARC BI 2014 survey was completed by users of 34 business intelligence software tools including customers of Tableau and QlikView.

BARC’s research found that “Phocas customers rate the tool very highly across a number of categories in The BI Survey 14, and are willing to recommend it even more frequently than users of rival data discovery products such as Tableau and QlikView”.

Founded in 1999 in the United Kingdom by Chairman Paul Magee and Australian Myles Glashier, Phocas serves over 1,000 customers across the globe. In the 2013/2014 financial year, Phocas grew by 47% in the United States and by 20% in the Australian and United Kingdom markets.

Phocas Software is developed in Australia and its head office is located in Coventry, United Kingdom.

(Image credit: Phocas Software)

This post is sponsored by Phocas Software. 

NewVantage Partners has released its third annual Big Data Executive Survey for 2014 and it turns out that Corporate investment in Big Data has been growing.

This year’s results provide compelling evidence that Big Data and analytics continue to be rapidly adopted within the corporate mainstream.

Corporate investments in Big Data are set to rise, from 35% to 75% by 2017, for fundings greater than $10MM, and a remarkable 6% to 28% for investments greater than $50MM.

“Our 2014 Big Data Executive Survey shows a remarkable surge in Big Data investment in the last three years,” explains NewVantage Partners CEO Randy Bean. “The majority of executive respondents characterize Big Data as highly important or mission-critical to their organization, reflecting the value that organizations believe they can realize from Big Data initiatives. The term Big Data itself has become common enough to be used loosely, but the large corporate world takes its payoffs very seriously, as proven by this enormous jump in investment. ”

Key statistics point out:

1. Executives are invested in Big Data.

The participation of 125 senior corporate executives representing 59 Fortune 1000 companies and industry leaders demonstrates the level of commitment to Big Data from the top of the house. Executive C-suite sponsorship is perceived as critical to business adoption.

2. Big Data is Becoming Mainstream.

67% of executives now report that they have Big Data initiatives running in production within the corporation. Executives report that their corporate investments in Big Data are projected to grow from 35% to 75% by 2017 for investments greater than $10MM, and by an astounding 6% to 28% for investments greater than $50MM.

3. Business-IT Partnership is Key to Big Data Adoption.

88% of executives cited the importance of a strong business-IT partnership, with 77% citing business leadership and sponsorship, and partnership and organizational alignment as being the most critical factors in ensuring successful adoption of Big Data initiatives within the corporation.

4. The Chief Data Officer is an Emerging Role.

43% of executives report that their organization has established a Chief Data Officer (CDO) function. This represents a dramatic jump from 2012, when only 19% of executives reported that their organization had established a CDO role, and from 2013 where the number had grown only slightly to 26%.

5. Big Data is a Business Issue.

Executives see Big Data as providing significant business benefits – greater insight and learning, the ability to obtain answers and make decisions faster and in a more informed manner, greater agility and flexibility. Only 4% see technology selection as being critical to successful Big Data adoption.

Respondents include Fortune 1000 senior business and technology executives who have a vested interest in the success of an organization’s data and analytics, and Big Data, initiative, reports the NVP press release. C-executives and business unit chief executives, representing top organizations including  American Express, Aetna, Fidelity Investments, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser  Permanente, Lincoln Financial, and Wells Fargo, comprised 42% of the respondents.

The entire survey can be found here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia

(Image credit: MuseScore)

The third annual study into the big data skills gap in the UK economy, carried out by the Tech Partnership has revealed the escalating need for Big Data skills.

The study dubbed, “Big Data Analytics: Assessment of Demand for Labour and Skills, 2013-2020” provides a detailed analysis of the current UK market and projected changes up to and including 2020 and has been sponsored by Business analytics and Business Intelligence software provider, SAS. With more than 1,000 UK employers of various sizes as respondents, the survey outlines:

• current and future job vacancies.
• the difficulty of recruitment.
• remuneration trends and
• overall future demand.

Statistics point out that by 2020, the big data workforce is expected to grow by around 346,000 professionals, pushing the rate of job growth in big data up to 160 percent, with approximately 56,000 big data job opportunities to fill each year up to 2020.

Inevitably, there is also a shortage of skills in big data, with recruiters reporting that 77 percent of big data positions were either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ difficult to fill, pushing salaries in big data to £55,000, around double the average UK full time permanent wage and 24% higher than the average IT position. Furthermore, IT vacancies have witnessed a 9 percent drop, while the want for big data staff has gone up by 41 percent.

The spread of big data roles advertised shows that between 2012 and 2013, 96 per cent of all advertised big data positions were in England and that six in ten (63 per cent) were based in London, the government funded body revealed.

Mark Wilkinson, Managing Director, SAS UK & Ireland, explains:

“Big data is on the cusp of going mainstream as the Internet of Things takes hold, and government, businesses and individuals look to use information to make better and faster decisions. We believe that big data is the ‘new oil’ that will power the information economy – and big data analytics will refine this ‘new oil’ so valuable insights can be extracted that inform business decision-making. SAS has already invested more than £100m in the UK to support universities and develop the next generation of big data professionals. This year we took it even further offering a free university edition of our software to all students – backed by online training and community support.”

Tech Partnership Director, Karen Price, noted that although big data is a highly significant growth area for the UK economy there still remains a skill shortage, and talent mining is of utmost importance to help enterprises grow.

“The Tech Partnership recognises that investment in education and training opportunities is vital to securing a strong talent pipeline for the digital economy, and it is fantastic to see that SAS are making this commitment to develop skills in the industry,” she added.

The detailed study is available here.

(Image credit: Flickr)