Leading up to the Analytics 2013 conference, we’re going to dive into some of the big topics in the industry.

Up first, the hurdles to using analytics and big data effectively in your organization. We reached out to some of our conference speakers and sponsors to get their take on this question.

"Probably the most difficult barrier in using analytics for big data is to properly define the problem upon the huge amount of information available. Techniques may be an issue in developing analytical models toward big data. Algorithms with good performance should be chosen against the ones which is time and resource consuming. High Performance Computing also must be put in place when available. In normal data we usually try different techniques to estimate the most accurate models. Big data might be a problem in this approach. So HPC may allow us to keep using the same good and old try and error approach." Carlos Andre Reis Pinheiro, KU Leuven, Belgium

"There are books written about this now: (lack of) analytical leadership, centralized data and analytics activities, you name it. I think the key driver though is cost. Most companies or their departments are still stuck in “spreadsheet hell” and big data or even analytics is pie in the sky. They still need to organize their data, regardless of size, prior to performing analytics. i.e., they need to make a massive investment into infrastructure and staff, and that is a hard pill to swallow. Also, analytics does not mean big data. Analytics can be performed effectively on “regular size” data, the reader can interpret what that means in their own setting, and then grow into big data as organizational appetite for this information grows. Additionally, as a practitioner, for me to convince leadership to invest into big data systems – I have to show big ROI, bigger than what analytics is providing currently. Unfortunately, ROI does not increase as dramatically as the cost to work with big data." Dmitriy Khots, West Corp.

"The biggest hurdle I have observed is not that business doesn’t appreciate the value of big data. In fact, almost everyone knows big data is out there and we can use advanced analytics & data mining to find very valuable business insides. However, not everyone has the “right” expectation on what we can get from data or what questions big data analytics really can answer." Jack Chen, Dell

What are some of the big questions facing your business? Leave us your comments.

For a more in-depth conversation on these topics, join us at Analytics 2013 in Orlando on Oct. 21-22.