Big Data Analytics Trends 2015

In part one of our two-part blog series, we looked at Big Data Analytics Challenges for organizations. In part two, we will take a look at the Big Data Analytics Trends in 2015 and how these will impact the cloud and cloud service providers.

Big Data Analytics Trends 2015

In the next few years, Big Data will grow significantly. This is something that the corporate sector already understands, where 87 percent of enterprises believe Big Data Analytics will greatly alter the competitive landscape of their industries within the next three years. What’s more, 89 percent believe that a failure to adopt a Big Data Analytics strategy will seriously damage their market share and momentum. We take a closer look at 6 important Big Data Analytics Trends for 2015.

Enormous Job Creation

These predictions comes in a time where IT spending is increasing rapidly. Worldwide IT expenditure passed $3.5 trillion dollars in 2013, and this figure is set to increase further still in the coming years. Given the amount of money that corporations are investing in IT infrastructure, it is perhaps not surprising that Gartner foresees an extremely positive future for Big Data Analytics. The US information technology research and advisory firm believes that in 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs will be created globally in order to support Big Data. Gartner also considers that in the United States alone, 1.9 million new jobs will result from the increasing prominence of Big Data. They predict that every Big Data-related position created within the United States will also offer employment opportunities for three people outside of information technology; consequently, Big Data will be responsible for the creation of approximately 6 million jobs in the United States during 2015. This is a succinct demonstration of the vitality of the information economy.

Changing Strategic and Operational Goals

There will also be a shift in the way Big Data operates in 2015. Enterprises will increase their data initiatives and implement plans that include Big Data; plans that will potentially transform their organizations. This increasing level of knowledge and understanding of data in the commercial sector will mean that businesses will create IT budgets in 2015 based on their 2014 understandings.

This will lead to a steady evolution of strategic and operational goals related to Big Data. The first trend will be an increasing emphasis on systems of record. Huge amounts of Big Data are now stored by corporations, and this poses difficulties with understanding which elements of data are useful to their operations and which are not. Big Data will be used to answer key business questions, but collating this data meaningfully will continue to be a challenge.

Big Demand for Data Analysts, Business Analysts and Data Scientists

It has become clear that the best way to tap into this data is by using the qualities of their traditional system of record (SOR) data for queries. Throughout 2015, there will be a huge effort by commerce to link SOR data into Big Data repositories. This will enable easier navigation of data and the creation of important corporate insight.

There will also be an emphasis on data collection in 2015. This will be a shift from 2014, where companies neglected the collation and organization of documents and information as they scrambled to collect as much data as they could. This will change in the next 12 months, as companies look to build on the understanding of the data that they have acquired and developed. This shift will however increase the need to fill jobs for data analysts with specific library skills. Data analysts, business analysts and data scientists will be in great demand as the curation of data will become integral to Big Data Analytics over the next 12 months.

Businesses will Demand Real-Time Analytics

In 2015, in-memory analytics capabilities and demands from businesses for immediately actionable information will become an increasingly important theme. This will push businesses to expand Big Data efforts in real-time, instead of relying on batch reporting approaches which have become extremely popular.

Two of the biggest users of Big Data have been online retail organizations and supply chain management – and both will benefit from their increasing ability to deal with Big Data in real time. As the efforts of commerce continues to respond to Big Data indicators in a more sophisticated and speedy fashion , it will become feasible for managers to respond immediately to issues such as supply chain blockages.

The evolution of Big Data and real-time deployment means that the significant infrastructure problems such as supplier failures and internal disasters — which can massively affect the operation of a business, and ultimately cash flow — will be dealt with effectively.

Big Data Disaster Recovery will be in the Spotlight

Big Data Analytics Trends show that the way that Big Data is recovered will also evolve. Disaster recovery and business continuation plans — which has centered on the recovery of SOR data — will significantly evolve. As Big Data progresses to a real-time operation, the potential for businesses to utilize it within its disaster recovery and business continuation plans for applications, storage, and processing will grow exponentially.

Business Agility Pushes Big Data to the Cloud

The association between the cloud and Big Data is almost a symbiotic one, but 2015 will see this relationship being reassessed. At the moment, a majority of organizations are running Big Data applications over their in-house networks because of issues such as system latency and corporate governance. But, as the cloud develops and Big Data becomes ever larger, more and more companies will opt to host at least some of their support of Big Data and related applications in off-premises arrangements.

This will provide increased business agility, continuation and disaster recovery, as well as enabling native network systems to function more smoothly. This year, the notion of Big Data architecture will begin to be discussed in a context which will one day lead to both on-premises and cloud-based Big Data support being a primary facet of the technology.

2015 is the Year of Big Data Analytics

Gartner and ICS have interviewed IT executives in organizations of all sizes, and have concluded that the market for Advanced and Predictive Analytics software will grow massively in the coming years; approximately 50 percent by 2018. Spending on Big Data hardware, software and services will grow at a rate of 30 percent per annum between 2014 and 2018. Meanwhile, cloud-based business intelligence will also grow at a similar rate, reaching nearly $3 billion by 2018. Virtually all businesses will begin to utilize Big Data in the near future.

Three-quarters of IT executives are already aware that the way they manage their staff will need to evolve significantly in the next three years. By 2018, companies will require 50 percent fewer process-oriented staff, while digital business jobs will grow five-fold. These positions will include such roles as integration specialist, digital business architect, regulatory analyst and risk professional. ICS reports that in 2014 and 2015, the number of Chief Data Officers and Chief Data officers will be doubled.

As mobile payment systems such as Apple Pay become a multi-billion dollar industry in the coming years, Big Data will increasingly be used in order to both understand consumer data and target advertising at the public more effectively. As it becomes possible for Big Data to be utilized in real-time settings, this will greatly affect companies at large.

Since data is growing at extraordinary rates and users are demanding quick, effective analyses of this data, applications need a high performance infrastructure. In this respect, Cloud Spectator is an agency focused on IaaS performance and actively monitors 20+ of the largest IaaS providers in the world, comparing VM performance (which includes CPU, RAM, disk, internal network and workloads) and pricing.

With the rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations must be able to adapt to meet changing demands. IT must deliver services rapidly and efficiently, enable real time insight from data and drive more customer interaction. The right IT infrastructure is key to managing this new reality.

If you enjoyed Big Data Analytics Trends 2015, make sure you check out Part 1: Big Data Analytics Challenges.