NEW YORK – The largest-ever global survey of the data science community, spanning the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India and China, finds that only one-third of companies are able to effectively use new data to assist their business decision-making, gain competitive advantage, drive productivity growth, yield innovation and reveal customer insights.

The EMC Data Science Study found that the explosion of digital data created by mobile sensors, social media, surveillance, medical imaging, smart grids and the like — combined with new tools for analyzing it all has created a corresponding explosion in the opportunity to generate value and insights from the data. As such, the business demand for data scientists has quickly outpaced the supply of talent. Respondents included nearly 500 members of the data science community globally including: data scientists and professionals from related disciplines such as data analysts, data specialists, business intelligence analysts, information analysts and data engineers globally, all of whom have IT decision-making authority.

“The Big Data era has arrived in full force, bringing with it an unprecedented opportunity to transform business and the way we work and live,” said Jeremy Burton, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, EMC Corporation. “Through the convergence of massive scale-out storage, next-generation analytics and visualization capability, the technology is in place. What’s needed to fully realize its value is a vibrant, interconnected, highly-skilled and empowered data science community to reveal relevant trend patterns and uncover new insights hidden within.”

The findings of the study are generally grim. Only 1/3 of respondents are very confident in their company’s ability to make business decisions based on new data. Only 38 percent of business intelligence analysts and data scientists strongly agree that their company uses data to learn more about customers.

There is also strong belief that data is not accessibile. Only 12 percent of business intelligence professionals and 22 percent of data scientists strongly believe employees have the access to run experiments on data – undermining a company’s ability to rapidly test and validate ideas and thus its approach to innovation.

83 percent of respondents believe that new tools and emerging technology will increase the need for data scientists. 65 percent of data science professionals believe demand for data science talent will outpace the supply over the next 5 years – with most feeling that this supply will be most effectively sourced from new college graduates. Although respondents found an increasing need for data scientists in their firm, only 12 percent saw today’s business intelligence professionals as the most likely source to meet that demand.

Data scientists require significantly greater business and technical skills than today’s business intelligence professional. According to the Data Science Study, they are twice as likely to apply advanced algorithms to data, but also 37% more likely to make business decisions based on that data.

Data scientists are more likely than business intelligence professionals to use scripting languages, including Python, Perl, BASH and AWK. Yet, Excel remains the tool of choice for both data scientists and business intelligence executives, followed closely by SQL.

The most commonly cited barriers to data science adoption include: Lack of skills or training (32 percent) budget/resources (32 percent), the wrong organizational structure (14 percent) and lack of tools/technology (10 percent).

The study did discover highly favorable attitudes toward the companies where they work. In fact, data scientists believe their IT functions are better aligned and better able to attract talent, are ahead in key technology areas like cloud computing and not surprisingly rate their company’s data analysis and visualization abilities very favorably compared to the views of business intelligence professionals.

“Neither tools nor people alone can solve the challenges of Big Data,” said Michael Driscoll,a data scientist with a Ph.D from Boston University,who is Co-Founder and CTO at MetaMarkets. ” They must work together and that is the promise of data science. Despite advances in software tools, the number of people with experience using these tools, and with real-life exposure to large-scale data sets, is small. Data science is a young field, and its growth will be fueled as much by technology as through the mentorship of new acolytes by leading practitioners.”

This column was written by Mark Cox of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMar.Com

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