Big data a big market

COMPUTING

International Data Corporation) expects the worldwide Big Data technology and services market to grow from USD3.2 billion in 2010 to USD16.9 billion in 2015. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% or about 7 times that of the overall information and communications technology (ICT) market.

Dan vesset, program vice president, Business Analytics Solutions, at IDC says: "The Big Data market is expanding rapidly as large IT companies and startups vie for customers and market share. For technology buyers, opportunities exist to use Big Data technology to improve operational efficiency and to drive innovation. Use cases are already present across industries and geographic regions.

"There are also Big Data opportunities for both large IT vendors and start ups," Vesset continued. "Major IT vendors are offering both database solutions and configurations supporting Big Data by evolving their own products as well as by acquisition. At the same time, more than half a billion dollars in venture capital has been invested in new Big Data technology."

IDC said the growth in appliances, Cloud, and outsourcing deals for Big Data technology will likely mean that over time end users will pay increasingly less attention to technology capabilities and will focus instead on the business value arguments. System performance, availability, security, and manageability will all matter greatly. However, how they are achieved will be less of a point for differentiation among vendors.

The report also noted that there is a shortage of trained Big Data technology experts, in addition to a shortage of analytics experts. It said this labour supply constraint would act as an inhibitor of adoption and use of Big Data technologies, and it will also encourage vendors to deliver Big Data technologies as cloud-based solutions.

"While software and services make up the bulk of the market opportunity through 2015, infrastructure technology for Big Data deployments is expected to grow slightly faster at 44% CAGR. Storage, in particular, shows the strongest growth opportunity, growing at 61.4% CAGR through 2015," said Benjamin S.Woo, program vice president, Storage Systems at IDC.