Big Data to be worth $28bn in 2012, will become ‘just data’ by 2020

If you’re of the opinion that Big Data is still some nebulous thing that you’ll need to think about some day, you’d best wake up kiddo. It’s here now and it’s big business.

The business of Big Data is essentially about mining the petabytes and exabytes of data we now deal with on a daily basis, using increasingly complex algorithms to make it useful. And according to tech research company Gartner, that business is set to be worth US$28-billion this year, growing to US$34-billion in 2013.

Gartner says that a large portion of the money going into Big Data right now is for the adapting of traditional solutions to big data demands — machine data, social data, widely varied data, unpredictable velocity, and so on.

The biggest impact however is being felt in social network analysis, with 45% of new spending each year.

“Despite the hype, big data is not a distinct, stand-alone market, it but represents an industry wide market force which must be addressed in products, practices and solution delivery,” says Mark Beyer, research vice president at Gartner.

“In 2011, big data formed a new driver in almost every category of IT spending. However, through 2018, big data requirements will gradually evolve from differentiation to ‘table stakes’ in information management practices and technology. By 2020, big data features and functionality will be non-differentiating and routinely expected from traditional enterprise vendors and part of their product offerings.”

Starting near the end of 2015, Gartner reckons that companies will begin embedding big data into the way it does business. Beginning in 2018, says Gartner, big data specialists will increasingly have less of a distinct advantage over traditional companies that have incorporated into their business structures.

“Because big data’s effects are pervasive, big data will evolve to become a standardized requirement in leading information architectural practices, forcing older practices and technology into early obsolescence,” says Beyer.

“As a result, big data will once again become ‘just data’ by 2020 and architectural approaches, infrastructure and hardware/software that does not adapt to this ‘new normal’ will be retired. Organizations resisting this change will suffer severe economic impacts.”