Published on the 03/12/2013 | Written by iStart

The dearth of skills has been fingered once again as the primary barrier to more successful deployments of big data analysis in Australia and New Zealand…

A new survey conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that 43 percent of Australian and New Zealand executives felt that a lack of data analysis skills was holding them back in terms of their ability to roll out big data programmes.

This goes some way to explaining why 36 percent of respondents said their company did not have a big data strategy, and 59 percent said little or no progress had been made with big data.

The survey, which was commissioned by Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), suggests that laggards may be missing out on significant benefits as 45 percent of respondents believed that big data analysis could boost revenue by 25 percent or more.

Finding the skills to make sense of big data remains a significant challenge. For Australia and New Zealand organisations it was the most often cited barrier, with 43 percent of respondents saying lack of in-house skills was hindering big data initiatives. Reports from Gartner, McKinsey & Co and Hudson have all cited the skills gap as a potential brake on big data initiatives.

HDS believes that to be successful with big data projects companies need to find data scientists able to combine the disciplines of business, statistical analysis and software development. It remains a tall order.

The Economist report also identified skills as a major problem for Chinese organisations, and skills shortages were also cited as an issue by 33 percent of Indian respondents, suggesting that the time-honoured approach to plugging an IT skills shortage by bringing in staff from the region on temporary work visas won’t fix this issue.

Adrian de Luca, HDS chief technology officer warned that “building an ecosystem of skills is going to take a long time,” although the company noted that university courses teaching big data are starting to emerge.

Someone also has to teach senior executives to take the business of data much more seriously according to Neville Vincent, senior vice president and general manager for Hitachi Data Systems, Asia Pacific who said that “executives have to understand that data is fundamental to shareholder value” and treat it with the same respect as any other capital asset.

The survey quizzed 500 managers from around the region, 166 of whom were based in Australia and New Zealand. Of these 79 percent claimed that effective use of data resources will differentiate successful firms from failing firms.