APAC organisations can see US$65bil productivity boost with data: IDC

• Ability to deliver actionable insights will differentiate data-driven leaders
• Shortage of skilled staff will persist, extending from data scientists to others

 
ASIA Pacific organisations that are able to analyse all relevant data and deliver actionable information can expect to achieve an extra US$65 billion in productivity benefits over their less analytically-oriented peers by 2020, according to IDC Asia/Pacific.
 
The research and analyst firm recently announced its top 10 predictions for big data analytics (BDA), highlighting how organisations will plan for the evolving landscape in the region.
 
“The majority of Asia Pacific organisations consider data as a strategic asset, but the ability to deliver actionable insights to decision makers quickly will differentiate the data-driven leaders in digital transformation,” its BDA senior market analyst Qiao Li said in an official statement.
 
The adoption of BDA will be accelerated by business disruption from digital transformation (DX) in the region, IDC Asia/Pacific said.
 
With the digitalisation of everything, the ability to make smarter, quicker, and more automated decisions and actions will increasingly become a competitive necessity, it said.
 
At the same time, barriers to entry will be lower as technology options are increasingly abundant with purpose-built tools that are designed for specific workload or use case, flexible pricing and deployment.
 
“While managing on- and off-premises data can pose new challenges, ‘data gravity’ will drive cloud-based BDA solutions as organisations adopt more adjacent solutions – for example, SaaS-based (Software-as-a-Service) customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning – over time,” said Chris Zhang , senior market analyst, Software, IDC Asia/Pacific.
 
“Spending on cloud-based BDA technology will grow three times faster than spending for on-premises solutions in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) by 2020,” she added.
 
In explaining the concept of data gravity, IDC Asia/Pacific said that the bigger the data set becomes, the greater the overhead the organisation takes on in its transport, storage, archiving, analysis, and search.
 
With small amounts of data, this overhead is not material. For larger amounts of data, the implications of data gravity become much more material. The bigger the volume, the greater the gravity and the harder it becomes to move the data.
 
More predictions
 
IDC also predicts that the next three to five years will see the following:
 
Cognitive computing: By 2020, 40% of all business analytics software will incorporate prescriptive analytics built on cognitive computing functionality.
 
Labour shortage: Shortage of skilled staff will persist and extend from data scientists to architects and experts in data management; Big Data-related professional services will have a 29% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in Asia Pacific by 2020.
 
In-memory computing: By 2020, 75% of databases (relational and non-relational) will be based on memory-optimised technology.
 
Distributed micro analytics: By 2020, distributed micro analytics and data manipulation will be part of 80% of BDA deployments.
 
Self-service: Through 2020, spending on self-service visual discovery and data preparation market will grow 2.5 times faster than traditional IT-controlled tools for similar functionality.
 
Data monetisation: By 2020, data monetisation efforts will result in enterprises pursuing digital transformation initiatives, increasing the marketplace's consumption of their own data by 100-fold or more.
 
Analysable data: By 2020, the high-value data that is worth analysing to achieve actionable intelligence will double.
 
In closing, IDC Asia/Pacific said it believes that as organisations realise benefits of data experimentation and innovation, the likelihood for them to become data-driven will increase.
 
This requires not only technology acquisition, but also close collaboration between IT and the line of business, and transformation of architecture and processes.
 
However, the lack of talent still remains to be the biggest obstacle to many Asia Pacific organisations.
 
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