Fifty-six percent of respondents indicated they will not be deploying big data analytics applications even beyond 2013, the survey of 255 IT professionals found. Half of those surveyed were data storage professionals at the analyst level; the other half comprised IT mangers, vice presidents and CIOs.

Survey respondents with no plans to roll out Hadoop or other big data analytics software said doing so requires a specific business case, and in most instances they didn't see a need for it, according to Marco Coulter, managing director of TheInfoPro's Cloud Computing Practice.

Plans to implement big data analytics

"For example, IT workers went around to their various business units to ask if anyone would like them to deploy a big data application, such as Hadoop, and they couldn't find any takers," Coulter said. "If you can't find the business case or the application, then it just becomes a technology looking for something to do."

Coulter said those companies rolling out big data analytics tend to be in the financial services and healthcare arena, where great amounts of data can be boiled down to reveal trends and best practices.