As technology manufacturers deal with falling PC sales, many companies are turning to their enterprise solutions and services businesses to shore up revenues. One of the solutions that shows the most promise is the burgeoning big data industry. As the information transmitted daily become too large for individuals or even small teams to parse, companies will increasingly see a need for solutions that make the information make sense.

Earlier this month, market research firm ABI Research predicted that big data spending will reach $114 billion by the year 2018. Today, research firm Gartner revealed new survey data showing that 64% of businesses are planning to or have already invested in big data.

“The hype around big data continues to drive increased investment and attention, but there is real substance behind the hype,” said Lisa Kart, research director at Gartner. “Our survey underlines the fact that organizations across industries and geographies see ‘opportunity’ and real business value rather than the ‘smoke and mirrors’ with which hypes usually come.”

Though a majority of business are planning their big data spending, only a small minority have actually implemented big data systems. Gartner’s survey, which looked at 720 organizations this summer, shows that less than 8% of survey respondents have already deployed big data solutions. According to the survey, the communications, banking, and services industries are ahead of others when it comes to big data, with 39% of media and communications companies already having invested in big data.

“For big data, 2013 is the year of experimentation and early deployment,” said Frank Buytendijk, vice president for research at Gartner. “Adoption is still at the early stages with less than eight percent of all respondents indicating their organization has deployed big data solutions. Twenty percent are piloting and experimenting, 18 percent are developing a strategy, 19 percent are knowledge gathering, while the remainder has no plans or don’t know.”