The research shows that customer care, marketing and sales departments are the areas most likely to want a big data project. Microsoft’s “Global Enterprise Big Data Trends: 2013” study questioned 280 IT decision-makers, and found that although the IT department is currently driving most of the demand for big data, other departments are increasingly interested in big data. 52 per cent of current projects still arise in the IT department, but customer care accounts for 41 per cent, sales 26 per cent, finance 23 per cent and marketing 23 per cent of new projects.

Nearly 90 per cent of companies surveyed by Microsoft have a dedicated budget for big data projects. 13 per cent of companies have already deployed some projects, and another 17 per cent of companies are in the early stages of researching projects.

More of the results are included in this infographic:

 Source: Microsoft

Big data projects are still seen as tricky, with half the companies surveyed saying the growth in the volume of data is the biggest challenge. Other difficulties were reported as the need to use business intelligence tools that don’t fit together, and not having tools that would give insights into the meanings behind the data.