Big Data Market To Be Worth $46 Billion By 2018

The global big data market is forecast to show a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent – jumping from $14.87 billion (£9.6bn) this year to $46.34 billion by 2018, according to a new report from research firm MarketsandMarkets.

The major force driving this market is the constant need among enterprises to upgrade their business processes and enhance performance and efficiency, the report said. Other key forces include the continuous rise of unstructured data, and the demand to provide advanced and predictive analytics.

Competitive advantage

Companies providing hardware and software IT solutions are looking forward to gaining a better competitive advantage in this growing market, thereby creating sophisticated analytical solutions and data management platforms for the enterprises, the report said.

The services segment continues to be the largest segment in terms of consulting and integration and deployment services, according to the company. The software segment is growing at healthly clip, and MarketsandMarkets forecasts that it will show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.7 percent through 2018.

The interior of the new Aruba data centre in Arezzo

North America is expected to be the biggest market in terms of revenue contribution, while emerging economies such as the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America are expected to experience increased market traction with high CAGRs. MarketsandMarkets expects that the increasing big data market in the developing economies will further enhance overall market growth.

MarketsandMarkets projected that the predictive analytics market will grow from $1.70 billion in 2013 to $5.24 billion in 2018 – showing a CAGR of 25.2 percent. The global predictive analytics market is driven by the emergence of the massive amount of data being generated and innovative technology implementations, according to the report.

Predictive analytics

Business enterprises’ focus has changed from traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions to predictive analytics because they understand the importance of data and its analysis for the future, the report on predictive analytics said. The transformation of BI to predictive analytics gives new opportunities to the big players as well as new startups in this market, the report said.

Predictive analytics, however, is not without its challenges. MarketsandMarkets said the lack of awareness about predictive analytics and the time-consuming process involved with it are major issues restraining the enterprises to implement predictive analytics solutions in their business processes.

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Originally published on eWeek.