The explosion of Big Data — the practice of using vast amounts of information to make better business decisions — has led to big predictions for the business analytics industry.
In a March report on the booming market, analyst firm MarketsandMarkets expects the industry to grow by 25.8 percent, to $16.5 billion in revenue, by 2018.
This high growth rate is driven largely by companies’ need to deal with the massive amounts of data available to them, in formats both structured — already organized, often in a database — and unstructured — data that is not collected in any organized manner.
More businesses have started using cloud-based technology in recent years as a response to this trend, but the transition poses some challenges. Both traditional business intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions are working against high operating costs, a lack of available IT expertise, and the mobility of their employees. For their part, BI vendors are working to use new and innovative ways of delivering business analytics services to companies.
The trend is also benefiting from a greater number of educational institutions offering courses in Big Data and modern-day business analytics. In fall 2013, Northern Kentucky University will begin offering the first Bachelor of Science in Data Science in the region, citing the sharp growth in data science jobs expected through 2018. NKU is joined by other schools responding to the needs of the industry, including New York University, which recently announced its new Initiative in Data Science and Statistics. The initiative will include a new Center for Data Science and graduate degree programs devoted to the specialties within the field. Meanwhile, major analytics software vendor IBM is partnering with The Ohio State University on a completely new analytics center dedicated to advancing research and data skills; the center will create 500 new analytics consultant jobs.
Companies also plan on making changes. The MarketsandMarkets report indicates that 13 percent of companies had cloud-based business analytics or business intelligence services in 2012, a number expected to increase to over 50 percent in the next five years. Total revenue in the market is expected to grow from $4.3 billion to $16.5 billion. Analytic solutions and cloud business intelligence tools are expected grow by around 31 percent annually.
North America is expected to remain the largest market for such services, following by Western Europe and Japan.
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