Organisations, at the same time, will look to ISPs, IT consultants and resellers to spell out what the specific benefits of broadband will be.

The survey was a companion to events on big data and broadband in Wellington and Auckland, run by the publications and sponsored by storage solutions provider EMC. The survey showed that 87 percent of the mostly CIO respondents believe ISPs are responsible for educating the business community, while 79 percent say it is their IT consultants' job.

Panellists participating in the Wellington event on March 6, however, speculated that while broadband promises New Zealand companies improved business efficiency through the aggregating and analysing of larger data sets, shortcomings in dealing with current big data issues must also be improved and may impede uptake. This is independent of whether we are talking about terabytes or petabytes, the panellists said.

Big data is "more of a concept" than an absolute size measure, says panellist Ullrich Loeffler, IDC country manager, and that just because New Zealand isn't home to operations the size of Google or WalMart, it doesn't mean the term is irelevant here.

The essence of big data, adds Michael Whitehead, CEO of data analysis company Wherescape, is that data is the source of the organisation's operation and improvement, rather than a by-product of that operation.New Zealand organisations, however, have yet to grasp the value of their current data operations, says EMC country manager Phil Patton. We're moving to the point where the technology is available so a corner dairy in New Zealand can mash together data on past buying patterns with a weather forecast for a hot day and predict how much extra ice-cream it should order, he says.