Investment in big data technologies continues to expand, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc., which found that 73 percent of respondents have invested or plan to invest in big data in the next 24 months, up from 64 percent in 2013. The survey also indicates organizations are starting to get off the fence about their big data investment — the number of organizations stating they had no plans for big data investment fell from 31 percent in 2013 to 24 percent in 2014.

The Gartner survey of 302 Gartner Research Circle members worldwide, which was conducted in June 2014, was designed to explore organizations' technology investment plans relating to big data, stages of big data adoption, business problems solved, data, technology and challenges and compare the results with those from previous years.

"Big data investment continues to be led by North America, with 47 percent of organizations reporting investment, up from 37.8 percent in 2013. All other regions experienced increases in investment over the last year," said Nick Heudecker, research director at Gartner.

However, this increased investment has not led to an associated increase in organizations reporting deployed big data projects. Like 2013, much of the work today revolves around strategy development and the creation of pilots and experimental projects.

"Last year, we said 2013 was big data's year of experimentation and early deployment. So is 2014. In 2013, only eight percent of organizations reported having big data projects deployed to production. This has increased to 13 percent in 2014, and while still relatively small, represents a sizeable increase. However, the six percent drop in organizations still gathering knowledge about big data and the seven percent increase in pilots and experiments indicate that organizations are evolving in their understanding and willingness to explore big data opportunities", said Nick Heudecker.

"Big data can help address a wide range of business problems across many industries and for the third year in our study, both enhancing the customer experience and improving process efficiency are the top areas to address. The most dramatic changes are in enhancing customer experience, especially in transportation, healthcare, insurance, media and communications, retail, and banking. Another area where we see an increase is using big data to develop information products, where organizations are looking to monetize their data. This is especially true among IT vendors, government and manufacturing", said Lisa Kart, research director at Gartner.