Big Data: It’s Not Recycled BI

Experton Group’s current market prognosis indicates that the worldwide market for Big Data will have trebled by 2016. In four years, it will exceed 15 Billion Euros.

The market for new solutions will gain 36% every year, increasing from 3.3 billion euros in 2011 to 15.7 billion euros in 2016. Germany alone plans to invest 350 million euros in Big Data by 2016. According to the Experton Group, Big Data will be one of the strongest areas of investment in the next years.

2013 and 2014 will be the Big Data years

The peak of growth in the market is expected to occur in 2013 (38%) and 2014 (40%), due to the infrastructure investments. In the following years, a small decline is expected: in 2016, the rate will fall back to 31%. The reason for this is twofold: the fall of prices in technology, and increasing employment of internal employees. In four years, more companies will be able to implement Big Data projects independently and will no longer need external support.

The Experton Group defines two major areas of investment. First, the IT and network infrastructure need to be upgraded and adapted. New application and delivery concepts like SaaS and laaS are increasing the amount of data created in corporate networks, which creates the need for better bandwidth and acceleration services.

The second area of investment is in database and analytics techniques. This is already taking place. In the last 24 months, over 30 new Big Data Start ups have been invested in, in order to refine technologies and services.

According to Experton Group Senior Advisor Carlo Velton, “Specialized Big Data providers are responsible for round about eight per cent of global expenses and investments and confirm that Big Data is a new market segment, not a recycled form of ‘BI’.”

Looking at the distribution of Big Data investment across the areas of hardware, software and services today, it is clear that the current market is focusing more strongly on infrastructure and software. Still, improvements on the server, storage and network side, as well as the licensing of new software solutions and tools, are basic requirements for Big Data projects in most companies. Only in 2016 will the services area be the strongest market.

This blog originally appeared at  Business Innovation from SAP