Another major issue corporations face is the inability for workers to find information vital to do their jobs. Instead, legacy backend systems often silo corporate data. And in an age where a Google Search can sometimes produce inane information, users want an easy conduit to corporate information in the form of a simple and effective internal search engine.

From 80% to 90% of corporate information is not accessible because employees don't know where it is -- or if they do know where it is, they don't have authorization to access it, Hinchliffe said.

That's where big data and map reduce technologies such as Hadoop come in. They can be used to categorize data into usable information that can be accessed with simple search technology.

For Long Island University, embracing mobile apps and easy access to data meant deploying 16,000 iPads to students over the past two years. The University plans to deply another 4,000 iPads before next fall.

George Baroudi, CIO and chief business process improvement officer of Long Island University, said he sees student iPads in the same vein as banks that gave out toasters in the 1980s for opening a certificate of deposit.