Big Data: $16.9 Billion opportunity for IT Services and Consulting Industry

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International Data Corporation recently released its “Big Data technology and services forecast” predicting that Big Data market will grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9 billion in 2015, a compounded annual growth rate of 40% and “growth of individual segments from 27.3% for servers and 34.2% for software to 61.4% for storage”. So what is driving this growth in Big Data and how can IT Services and Consulting companies tap into this phenomenal growth opportunity of 40% CAGR, which according to IDC is “about 7 times that of the overall information and communications technology (ICT) market”?

As I indicated in one of my previous post titled Why Big Data Mining/Analytics is the New Gold Rush, Big Data is a key enabler for Social Business and without Big Data Mining/Analytics, a large or medium sized company can neither make sense of all the user generated content online nor can collaborate with customers, suppliers and partners effectively on Social Media channels. And both these activities, namely gaining insights from user generated content online and collaborating with customers and partners are critical for success in the age of Social Media. Big Data provides the critical backbone for Social Business leveraging advances in Cloud Computing, Mobile Platforms, Social Media, Ubiquitous broadband internet, Gaming technology and Data Storage and Analysis.

Because of the business requirement of analyzing vast amount of ever changing structured and unstructured Big Data almost instantaneously, companies will be hard pressed to do this on their own. But given the fact that Big Data stored in cloud can be accessed from anywhere the internet is available and can be analysed almost instantaneously by third party service providers, outsourcing companies can offer to their clients value added services in the area of Big Data analytics without heavy investments on the part of clients in specialized hardware and software as was the case with ‘traditional’ data analytics. This will bring down significantly costs (especially fixed costs) associated with building and maintaining analytics infrastructure and solution center. I expect all major IT Services and Consulting companies to invest heavily in building delivery capability in the area of Big Data/Analytics to tap into this opportunity.

Do you agree that Big Data is a great opportunity for IT Services and Consulting companies? Please do share your thoughts:

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.
Dr. Harish Kotadia has more than twelve years' work experience as a hands-on CRM Program and Project Manager implementing CRM and Analytics solutions for Fortune 500 clients in the US. He also has about five years' work experience as a Research Executive in Marketing Research and Consulting industry working for leading MR organizations. Dr. Harish currently lives in Dallas, Texas, USA and works as a Practice Leader, Data Analytics and Big Data at a US based Global Consulting Company. Views and opinion expressed in this blog are his own.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I like the term “big data” — glad it’s not another TLA.

    Wikipedia says:

    Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set.

    But now it seems big data means an industry too. In that context, it seems like an overly broad term, that apparently can mean everything from servers (per the IDC report you referenced), to the unstructured data that is generated by social networks to the analytics software used to make sense of all that data – structured and unstructured.

    So it’s an interesting term, but I don’t see it as a market so much as an analytics movement — Analytics 2.0?

    I do agree that there’s a big data element to Social CRM or Social Business. Social media monitoring depends on text analytic tools which are part of Big Data.

    So yes, there’s a good opportunity for IT consulting and services. It will be interesting to see if Social CRM software companies rebrand as Big Data.

    As Big Data becomes, um, bigger, what won’t be part of Big Data? This seems to be the fate of any popular buzzword.

  2. Thanks Bob for your comment, greatly appreciated:

    I agree that Big Data is an over used term. To me, what matters the most is Big Data is a key enabler for Social CRM and Social Business. I have written about it in the past, see following links:

    http://hkotadia.com/archives/4735.

    In fact, in one of my post written way back in June 2010 (link below) I illustrated a use case for Big Data in Social CRM/Business:

    http://hkotadia.com/archives/2698

    “Social Media channels are the front-end of CRM system, capture all relevant information from Social Media channels in the database and use Predictive Analytics and Knowledge Management tools to derive insights and help in decision making”

    As explained in the post, Big Data Analytics will help companies listen, learn and engage customers on Social Media channels. In fact without Big data analytics, Social CRM or Social Business is next to impossible for any large or medium sized business. This is what I have been highlighting in my recent posts.

    Hope this helps,

    Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.
    http://hkotadia.com/

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