In my last blog, The Business Case for Big Data: Part 1, I suggested that this year businesses prepare for the changes that Big Data will bring to their companies. Not doing so would be unfortunate as the repercussions would likely cause a business to fall behind their competitors. Today we take a look at the EMC Global Data Science Study, to gain a better understanding of how and why Big Data will change the way business works, and offer some insight on ways to prepare for the coming “paradigm shift.”
66% Were Looking In All The Wrong Places
The EMC Global Data Science Study covered the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, and China. This study revealed and quantified a rampant scarcity across the globe of the prerequisite skills necessary for a company to capitalize on the opportunities found at the intersection of Big Data and data analytics! The survey revealed that the explosion of digital data created by mobile sensors, surveillance, medical imaging, smart grids, mobile phones, and social media —combined with new tools for analyzing it all—has created the opportunity to generate value and insights from the data.
“Only one-third of companies are able to effectively use new data to assist their business decision-making, gain a competitive advantage, drive productivity growth, yield innovation, and reveal customer insights. ”
Calling All Job Seekers
As such, the business demand for data scientists has quickly outpaced the supply of talent. The EMC Data Science Study respondents included nearly 500 members of the data science community. The community includes data scientists and professionals from related disciplines such as data analysts, data specialists, business intelligence analysts, information analysts, and data engineers, all of whom have IT decision-making authority.
Key Survey Takeaways
Here are 12 key takeaways from the survey in case you missed them:
- Informed Decision-making—Only 1/3 of respondents are very confident in their company’s ability to make business decisions based on new data.
- Looming Talent Shortage—65% 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.
- Barriers to Data Science Adoption—Most commonly cited barriers to data science adoption include: Lack of skills or training (32%), budget/resources (32%), the wrong organizational structure (14%), and lack of tools/technology (10%).
- Customer Insights—Only 38% of business intelligence analysts and data scientists strongly agree that their company uses data to learn more about customers.
- New Technology Fueling Growth—83% of respondents believe that new tools and emerging technology will increase the need for data scientists.
- Lack of Data Accessibility—Only 12% of business intelligence professionals and 22% of data scientists strongly believe employees have the access to run experiments on data. This undermines a company’s ability to rapidly test and validate ideas and thus its approach to innovation.
- Advanced Degrees—Data scientists are 3 times as likely as business intelligence professionals to have a Master’s or Doctoral degree.
- Augmenting Business Intelligence—Although respondents found an increasing need for data scientists in their firm, only 12% saw today’s business intelligence professionals as the most likely source to meet that demand.
- Higher-Level Skills—Data scientists require significantly greater business and technical skills than today’s business intelligence professionals. 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.
- Love the Work—The study discovered 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 technological 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.
- Involved Across the Data Lifecycle—Data scientists are more likely than business intelligence professionals to be involved across the data lifecycle–from acquiring new data sets to making business decisions based on the data. This includes filtering and organizing data as well as representing data visually and telling a story with data.
- Tools of the Trade—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.
Data Scientists Quotes
Some of the quotes that came out of the survey were indeed insightful and provided a glimpse into the future of Big Data:
“We live in a data-driven world. Increasingly, the efficient operation of organizations across sectors relies on the effective use of vast amounts of data. Making sense of big data is a combination of organizations having the tools, skills and more importantly, the mindset to see data as the new “oil” fueling a company. Unfortunately, the technology has evolved faster than the workforce skills to make sense of it and organizations across sectors must adapt to this new reality or perish.“
Andreas Weigend, Ph.D. Stanford, Head of the Social Data Lab at Stanford, former Chief Scientist Amazon.com
“Neither tools nor people alone can solve the challenges of Big Data. 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.”
Michael Driscoll, Ph.D. Boston University, Co-Founder and CTO at MetaMarkets
The Bottom Line
It is this author’s opinion that big changes are coming and there is a wealth of opportunity for those who are looking for a steady profession, just pick “Data Scientist” and you won’t have to worry about unemployment in this difficult economy!
