Big data is big loser in priorities survey

Big data gets a lot of buzz in the press, but it might not be getting much more investment from feds in the coming year. More than half of the IT decision-makers who responded to a recent survey said their big-data funding levels would shrink or stay the same in fiscal 2014.

Only 28 percent of IT leaders plan to invest more money in big-data analytics next year, according to a survey of 400 IT decision-makers at the local, state and federal levels conducted by Cisco Systems and Clarus Research Group. (Read our earlier story on the report.)

Meanwhile, 48 percent plan to maintain current funding levels for big-data projects or programs, while 8 percent said their agencies would cut such funding and the rest were not sure.

In fact, big data ranked dead last in funding interest among IT-related investments.

Cybersecurity is the area in which most of the respondents (59 percent) planned to increase spending, with cloud computing and networking not far behind. Big data rated the lowest of the eight technology categories that the survey measured.

Larry Payne, vice president of Cisco's U.S. federal market, said he had expected more interest in investing in big data and related technologies.

Given the large amount of data agencies produce and the analytics necessary to make that data useful, one would think big data would rate higher than it did in the survey, he said.