JPL currently dedicates 10 percent of its IT budget to big data, but Soderstrom says that will increase as the amount of data increases.

Most of the survey respondents expect big data technology to become mainstream in their organizations in the next three years, either in multiple parts of the business (48 percent) or in one department, division or business unit (24 percent).

But there are pessimists, too: A minority of those polled predict big data will remain experimental (16 percent) or will "fizzle out after the hype dies down" (5 percent).

in CIO's Data Management Drilldown.