Big data trends in 2015

An increased interest in big data and advanced analytics was evident in 2014, forcing companies of all sizes to react if they want to remain competitive. More and more businesses have been seized by the phenomenon, also reflected by hiring trends: According to a HR data analytics provider, the demand for IT project managers with big data expertise has increased by over 120% in the past 12 months.

Difficulties in finding the necessary talent will be a major influence on big data trends in 2015. Without possessing the skills and the resources, organizations will not be able to make the most of big data and advanced analytics. And according to a recent Gartner report, 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies are still not fully prepared to exploit big data.

There is a keen interest by organizations to be able to analyze their own data more easily. Therefore, 2015 is likely to see a trend towards platforms that allow anyone to identify, predict and quickly respond to the opportunities hidden behind large data sets.

This need has been addressed by visual data discovery and interactive visualization tools. When raw data is depicted through graphics, it becomes much easier to recognize patterns, dependencies, and inconsistencies and thus to make sound evidence-based decisions. Consequently, visualization tools that feature simple interfaces and do not require any particular coding knowledge or significant training are clearly on the rise. In fact, IDC, an IT market intelligence provider, predicts that visual data discovery tools will be growing 2.5 times faster than rest of the business intelligence (BI) market.

Until recently, Big Data and analytics (BDA) solutions were available only to large corporations that could invest in on-premise solutions and proprietary platform architectures. Therefore, IDC is also predicting that investments in cloud-based solutions available to anyone are likely to grow three times faster than for on-premise solutions over the next five years.

Growth is also predicted for trading with big data. Apparently, 70 per cent of large organizations already purchase external data and 100 per cent will do so by 2019. Therefore, more and more organizations will begin to monetize their data by selling it.

So will Big Data continue to be a big deal in 2015 or even become the revolution so many are predicting? Due to the growing demand for fact-based decisions, the ability to connect dots in ways that would have been hard to imagine only a few years ago certainly promises a bright future. However, as many companies are beginning to realize, the revolution lies in improved statistical methods rather than the exponential growth of raw data. Insights that create business results are generated by linking datasets in new ways. And creative approaches to visualizing data are often more beneficial to the process of creating knowledge and adapting to opportunities and challenges than computational capacity.