Almost half (45 per cent) of respondents to a study conducted by Vanson Bourne for CA Technologies said that their current infrastructure is unable to support and help them fully deploy big data initiatives.
Other business complications included organisational complexity (31 per cent), difficulty in justifying a return on investment (27 per cent) and security or compliance concerns (25 per cent). A lack of the right internal skills was also an issue for 25 per cent of respondents.
This is despite more than half of the respondents indicating they had already implemented big data projects.
Responses from Australian senior managers broadly aligned with their global counterparts but there were three major differences.
Only 1 per cent of Australian respondents believe their companies are not experiencing big data challenges (8 per cent globally); and 7 per cent believed a 'risk-averse' corporate culture is an obstacle (10 per cent globally).
Finally, only 12 per cent of local managers believe the level of understanding around the needs and benefits of effective big data strategies within their companies is a hindrance (21 per cent globally).
Read more:Intelligent machines part 2: Big data, machine learning and its challenges
Chris Wilson, VP, solution sales, Asia-Pacific and Japan at CA Technologies, said Australian organisations are facing challenges in tackling infrastructure complexities during the implementation process.
"However, the results indicate they have the appetite to overcome the obstacles in order to fully develop and implement big data strategies that will deliver business results," he said.
Similar research conducted last November by Telsyte also found that big data projects are being held back by the high cost of setting up infrastructure to support the capturing of potentially hundreds of millions of data points each day.
Read more:Cloud infrastructure to reach $775m by 2019: Telsyte
Follow CIO Australia on Twitter and Like us on Facebook... Twitter: @CIO_Australia, Facebook: CIO Australia, or take part in the CIO conversation on LinkedIn: CIO Australia
Follow Byron Connolly on Twitter:@ByronConnolly
Read more:A quick rundown of how deep neural nets work