Business intelligence software maker Jaspersoft polled 600 community members on their organizations’ use of big data, and found some interesting patterns in the sector.

The firm says that 62 percent of the respondents either already deployed a big data solution or plan to do so within a year’s time. Sixty seven percent of the participants were from seven industries: software, hardware, financial services, government, healthcare, biotech and telecommunications.

Jaspersoft broke down usage into a few other categories as well. As far as use studies go 48 percent of enterprises leverage big data to get a better insight into customer experience, while 37 percent use it to get a better understanding of these customers and 28 percent tweak their marketing campaigns based on their unstructured info. Twenty seven percent of the respondents cited financial risk analysis, and an equal number pointed at competition comparison.

Apps are the big data source 79 percent of the time, with CRM, financial applications and e-commerce solutions being the most common subcategory.

Jaspersoft reached several other conclusions, but two highlights stood out the most – first and foremost that 66 percent of the respondents said relational databases are their primary data store. This means that two thirds of the enterprises that were represented are not really doing big data analytics- they just think they do.

Thirty-five percent of the respondents that said they have no plans to deploy a big data solution cited a ‘lack of understanding’ as the biggest barrier holding them back from jumping on the bandwagon. However, based on Jaspersoft’s previous finding poor understanding of this technology is a much more wide-spread problem.

There’s a very strong reason the big data skill gap is a topic that is starting to raise a lot awareness in the ecosystem. Terradata recently released a report of its own that underscores some of Jasper’s own discoveries, while companies like Cloudera and HortonWorks already have big data training programs in place.