A survey by QuinStreet released earlier this week shows a majority of enterprises are actively planning to add big data analytics within the next two years. Interestingly, the study shows that there are no stand-alone market leaders as of yet, and as such the sector is clearly a wide-open opportunity for new and established IT vendors alike. Research also found that there is now a trend in prioritizing the use of big data analytics among  U.S. businesses.

Highlights of the study include:

— 43 percent of respondents say that at this time they have no lead vendor helping them with big data analytics installations or plans for installations;

— 77 percent of respondents consider big data analytics a priority;

— 72 percent cite enhancing the speed and accuracy of business decisions as a top benefit of big data analytics; and

— 71 percent of midsized and larger companies have plans for, or are currently involved with, big data initiatives.

According to McKinsey Research, big data encompasses “data sets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.”  The top three big data analytics applications being considered for purchase are analytics databases, business intelligence tools and relational databases. Data sets of most interest to enterprises include traditional structured databases of inventories, orders and customer information; unstructured data from the Internet; social networking sites; and intelligent devices, such as smartphones and tablets.