Dubai: A third of companies in the world 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, according to a latest report by EMC Corporation.

The survey revealed 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.

Andreas Weigend, Ph.D Stanford, Head of the Social Data Lab at Stanford, former Chief Scientist Amazon.com, said, "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."

EMC Corporation unveiled the global survey of the data science community. Spanning the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India and China, the EMC Data Science Study reveals and quantifies a rampant scarcity across the globe for the prerequisite skills necessary for a company to capitalize on the opportunities found at the intersection of Big Data and data analytics.

The EMC Data Science Study 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.

Michael Driscoll, Ph.D Boston University, Co-Founder and CTO at MetaMarkets, said, "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."

Only 1/3 of respondents are very confident in their company's ability to make business decisions based on new data. About 65 per cent 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.

Most commonly cited barriers to data science adoption include: Lack of skills or training (32 per cent) budget/resources (32 per cent), the wrong organizational structure (14 per cent) and lack of tools/technology (10 per cent). Only 38 per cent of business intelligence analysts and data scientists strongly agree that their company uses data to learn more about customers.

About 83 per cent of respondents believe that new tools and emerging technology will increase the need for data scientists while only 12 per cent of business intelligence professionals and 22 per cent 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.

Jeremy Burton, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, EMC Corporation, say, "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. 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."