$16.1 Billion Big Data Market: 2014 Predictions From IDC And IIA

As 2013 draws to a close, it is time for industry analysts and pundits to present their assessments of the year in order to predict where Big Data is headed in 2014. Forbes recently came out with a useful summary of predictions from IDC and IIA which could serve as a balanced road map for planning and budgeting in the following year. Here a top-level set of predictions:

IDC predicts that the market for big data will reach $16.1 billion in 2014, growing 6 times faster than the overall IT market. IDC includes in this figure Infrastructure (servers, storage, etc., the largest and fastest growing segment at 45% of the market), services (29%) and software (24%). IDC commented that the benefits of big data are not always clear today (indeed, BNY Mellon recently asked its 50,000 employees “for ideas about how to harness the power of Big Data”). IIA predicted that companies will want to see demonstrable value in 2014 and will focus on embedding big data analytics in business processes to drive process improvement.

The Forbes article touches on many important areas of big data: the dearth of talent in the field, expansion of the services part of the market, the direction of VC investments, security, technological directions, blurring of the boundaries between high-performance computing and big data, and automation. The results of the IIA poll below are somewhat telling for how the industry seems positioned to progress in the following year.

IIA_Poll-Results