By Laurie Head
AIS Network Vice President
Big data, big data, big data. It may sound like an overused buzzword of the day, but it’s an incredibly important phenomenon that will have a lasting impact well into the future as large enterprises – particularly health care, banking, retail and educational organizations – focus their operations on developing more sophisticated big data tools and technologies to collect, manage and analyze large information sets.
Big data is a fast-growing market, and it has enormous potential to transform your organization (as it simultaneously transforms your customers, partners and competitors). Just how big is the big data market? Well, according to a recent report by Transparency Market Research, the global big data market was worth around $6.3 billion last year. The projections are staggering, however. Projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of about 41 percent, the big data market will be worth $48.3 billion by 2018. The research firm said that North America will be responsible for roughly 55 percent of the market through 2018, followed by Europe.
What is driving this market growth? Well, mostly, unstructured data. Conventional database management tools just don’t cut it when it comes to unstructured data, so better tools are required. “The exponential growth in the quantum of big data is leading to the development of advanced technology and tools that can manage and analyze this data,” confirms Transparency Market Research.
IDC industry research also supports the healthy growth of big data. IDC projects that the global market for big data technology and services will expand at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 32 percent between 2012 and 2016. Roughly speaking, that’s seven times faster than the information and communication technology market. IDC indicates that by 2016, we can expect to see revenue from the big data sector near $24 billion.
Unquestionably, big data is not just the trend of the moment. It’s here to stay. Companies will continue to capture, analyze and store enormous volumes of data. According to The McKinsey Quarterly, “In 15 of the U.S. economy’s 17 sectors, companies with more than 1,000 employees store, on average, over 235 terabytes of data—more data than is contained in the U.S. Library of Congress.”
It’s becoming increasingly clear that businesses that succeed in managing these enormous information sets, while grasping fully how to find value in them, will improve their ability to make strategic decisions and enhance their customer service. That’s a likely recipe for more business expansion and revenue growth.
So, what does this mean for the hosting industry and AIS Network?
The big data technology and services industry represents a global opportunity for companies like ours, not to mention job seekers with the right industry domain expertise. Increasingly, the spotlight will be on the hosting industry’s ability to host these new database technologies successfully and provide secure, reliable, easy-to-use online storage for massive amounts of data – much of it quite sensitive.
Because most of our clients have stringent security and compliance requirements tied to SOX, PCI, HIPAA and FISMA, they use our online storage for their big data needs. Rather than choosing to store their data on physical, local storage devices, most have opted to store it to a secure, remote database in the cloud that may be accessed via the Internet.
Cloud storage is rapidly becoming the go-to solution for managing and analyzing big data. It eliminates the need for unsecure physical storage devices and allows authorized employees, partners and vendors ready access to the data. It’s a convenient, collaborative and flexible solution to creating and managing a centralized, secure data store. Let us know if you’d like to learn more about online storage.
Are you interested in learning more about big data technologies and tools? Check out this conference, Big Data DevCon, which is scheduled to take place in Boston this spring.
Happy data crunching!