10 Predictions from Experts on Big Data

Source : Evolven Blog

With the growing volume, velocity, and variety of data, businesses will be increasingly challenged for how to access, transform, and integrate unstructured data - Big Data - from a variety of sources and convert this data into actionable information for competitive advantage.

So here are 10 Big Data predictions from experts at Forrester, Gartner, Ovum, O'Reilly, and more on how the Big Data realm will develop and impact business.

1. New Big Data Talent Will Enter the Marketplace  Ovum expects to see an increase in a supply of talent with a lowering the skills threshold for implementation of new big data management platforms. By Tony Baer, Principal Analyst, Software - Enterprise Solutions, Ovum  2. Enterprise Hadoop Deployments Will Rapidly Expand  Users all over the world and in most industries have invested aggressively in the Hadoop analytics technology and stand poised to bring their Hadoop clusters on line in the coming year. The size of the in-deployment clusters will almost certainly grow at least tenfold in 2012 as companies roll new data sources, new analytic challenges, and new business applications into their Hadoop initiatives. By James Kobielus, Senior Analyst Serving Business Process Professionals, Forrester 3. Analytics Vendors Will Start Getting into Big Data  Very few vendors will have a comprehensive blueprint or framework for big data, most will be providing point solutions, and that's fine. In this early wave, big data suites as such really don't exist and it's up to companies to curate a set of capabilities. By Dion Hinchcliffe, Executive Vice President of Strategy, Dachis Group 4. Data Science Teams Will Start To Evolve Repeatable Processes As data science teams become a recognized part of companies, expect to see a more regularized expectation of their roles and processes. One of the driving attributes of a successful data science team is its level of integration into a company's business operations, as opposed to being a sidecar analysis team. Integrated data science teams will need their own versions of these tools to collaborate effectively. Data science teams will start to evolve repeatable processes, and hopefully agile ones. By Edd Dumbill, program chair for the O'Reilly Strata Conference and the O'Reilly Open Source Convention  5. More than 85% of Fortune 500 organizations will Fail To Effectively Exploit Big Data  For Competitive Advantage Most organizations are in no shape to handle the technical and management challenges posed by big data. "Collecting and analyzing the data is not enough -- it must be presented in a timely fashion so that decisions are made as a direct consequence that have a material impact on the productivity, profitability or efficiency of the organization." As a result, most won't be able to exploit available data for competitive advantage. By Daryl Plummer, Managing VP and Gartner Fellow  6. Enterprise Deployments of Big Data Systems Will Lead To Focused Results  Data hype turns to focus. Big data, massive parallel processing, advanced analytics, eventually consistent NoSQL databases, etc. are arriving that recognize that the chaos of exponentially growing data will never be managed. Leading firms in 2012 will let go and learn to live in the chaos, focusing on what they can control. The data hype will continue, but enterprise deployments of big data systems will lead to focused results for the front-runners. By Brian Hopkins, Principal Analyst Serving Enterprise Architecture Professionals, Forrester  7. IT Developers will Require a Wider Range of Skills and New Tools to Manage Big Data Environments  As Big Data projects are rolled out using a mix of new Hadoop capabilities in combination with existing data management environments, IT will inevitably need more dedicated training. Additionally, IT resources will have an increased desire to use standard SQL in conjunction with MapReduce to improve productivity levels and maintain operational costs, which will be the ultimate goal of most IT organizations in 2012. By Liz McMillan, Associate Editor of Ulitzer New-Media Platform, Wireless Business and Technology  8. Big Data tools aren't enough  Having Big Data tools won't be enough, enterprises will need to know what questions to ask, actually ask them, and then translate that into strategy or tactics. Even though Big Data is still developing, the growth suggests that the industry needs to develop talent with big data skill sets: 140,000 to 190,000 skilled Big Data professionals will be needed in the US alone, over the next five years. By Deloitte  9. Big Data Will Show Far More Granular Detail Than Ever Before  With big data analytics, expect to see far more granular detail than ever before. For example, most 360-degree customer views today include hundreds of customer attributes. Big data can bump that up to thousands of attributes, which in turn provides greater detail and precision for customer-base segmentation and other customer analytics, both old and new. By Philip Russom director, TDWI Research  10. Data warehousing Will Emerge as Core Focus for IT  The role of data warehousing for IT, or "big data," is emerging as a core focus for both vendors and IT adopters seeking more effective ways to apply mature data warehousing techniques to the business of IT. One of the more interesting, emerging areas is social data analytics—both for IT and beyond IT—as businesses seek to apply techniques such as sentiment analysis, geo-location, behavioral, social graph, and rich media social data to better understand everything from customer likes and dislikes and more effective risk management, to leveraging social media within IT as a foundation for problem resolution and requirements definitions.  By Dennis Drogseth, Vice President, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)