infoTECH Feature

October 17, 2012

Big Data to Drive $28B in IT Spending: Gartner

Big data is going to have a big impact on IT spending across the globe – not only this year, but in 2013 and beyond, according to new research from Gartner (News - Alert).

In fact, big data is expected to drive $28 billion of worldwide IT spending in 2012, and next year, big data is forecast to drive $34 billion of IT spending.

But despite the hype surrounding big data, it’s not a standalone market.

The bulk of current IT spending is being allocated to the adaptation of traditional solutions to the demands big data poses, including machine data, social data, widely varied data and unpredictable velocity. In fact, just $4.3 billion in software sales will be driven directly by demands for new big data functionality in 2012, according to Mark Beyer, research vice president at Gartner.

“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,” Beyer said in a statement.

Last year, he said, big data became 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,” Beyer said.

In terms of specific market impact, Gartner said big data currently has the most bearing on social network analysis and content analytics with 45 percent of new spending each year. In traditional IT supplier markets, application infrastructure and middleware is most affected (10 percent of new spending each year is influenced by big data in some way) when compared with storage software, database management system, data integration/quality, business intelligence or supply chain management (SCM).

By the end of 2015, Gartner expects organizations to begin using their big data experience in an almost embedded form in their architectures and practices – and those that don’t will be adversely affected, Beyer said.

“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,” he added. “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.”

Additional information is available in the report “Big Data Drives Rapid Changes in Infrastructure and $232 Billion in IT Spending Through 2016.”




Edited by Braden Becker
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