Enterprises still slow to democratize big data

The vast majority of enterprises (84%) finally have a clue about big data, according to a new CA Technologies survey. These same companies report higher revenue and better insight into customer requirements.

These are great, if unsurprising, results.

What is surprising, however, is how few of these companies are actively working to expand access to data among their employees. After all, if data is only as useful as the questions we ask of it, expanding the population of people asking questions seems like a good idea.

Despite 92% of the enterprises surveyed still struggling with their big data projects, a whopping 90% “are experiencing or anticipate seeing, more effective targeted marketing and selling campaigns.” This, in turn, is generating cash. According to the report, 88% of enterprises see or anticipate increased revenue.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that enterprises may be getting their priorities all wrong as they move forward:

By building data infrastructure as an elastic cloud service, and focusing that service on as broad an audience as possible, enterprises will discover far bigger benefits from their data than a few data scientists laboring away in some data center ever will.