Back in summer of 2014, we launched the results of a survey on Java 8, which provided us a lot of information we were looking for but also contained a small, golden nugget of data that we didn’t expect: that out of more than 3000 developers surveyed, a shocking 17% of them reported using Apache Spark in production. Whoa

Typesafe's Spark survey reached 2,136 developers, data scientists, and other tech professionals, and shed light on adoption and usage trends for the Big Data tool. Such results included the findings that:

• 13% of respondents currently use Apache Spark, while 31% are evaluating Spark and 20% plan to use Spark in 2015.
• 78% of Spark users hope to use the tool to solve issues with fast batch processing of large data sets.
• Low awareness and/or experience is currently the biggest barrier for users implementing Spark effectively.

Other results look at adoption of individual Spark modules, how Spark is used to process users' data, which languages are important to users' Spark installations, and how users load their data into Spark. The survey also looks at how Spark support can be improved in the future.

For all the results of Typesafe's Spark survey, take a look at Typesafe's full report. Based on their results, it seems like Spark adoption will continue to rise for users looking to deal with big data needs.

And for more information on Big Data tools, check out DZone's 2014 Guide to Big Data, as well as the DZone Apache Spark Refcard.