Big data picking up pace rapidly across Asia Pacific

• Asia Pacific big data market expected to grow from US$258.5 million in 2011 to US$1.76 billion in 2016
• New opportunities for data analytics in finance, network analysis, human genomics, healthcare and surveillance

THE big data technology and services market in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) is expected to grow from US$258.5 million in 2011 to US$1.76 billion in 2016, on the back of a 46.8% five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

The highest growth for the individual segments of the market is expected to come from storage (56.1%), followed by networking (55.8%) and services (48.3%).

“The big data market in Asia Pacific is building the momentum that will deliver a strong acceleration in two to three years’ time. Organizations that start that process now may find themselves with a 12-18 month competitive advantage over those who wait,” said Craig Stires, research director of Asia Pacific big data and analytics at IDC.

“Business use cases with measurable results include real-time crime prevention in financial services, and peer influencer mapping for churn prevention in telecommunications,” he added.

“Big data creates new opportunities for data analytics in finance, network analysis, human genomics, healthcare, surveillance, and many other areas; but also exacerbates some of the data-related issues of the past, including security and privacy, data quality, data integration, and storage,” said Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, program manager of Asia-Pacific big data and analytics, and next-gen enterprise applications research at IDC.

“CIOs should design an information strategy before undertaking a big data project.

“Big data requires organizations to rethink their technology architectures, processes, and skill sets in order to attain the real value of this phenomenon. Organizations that have already developed an effective business analytics program are positioned to be the first adopters of big data technology and approaches,” he added.

Opportunities for vendors will exist at all levels of the big data technology stack including infrastructure, software, and services.

The big data investments will be driven by business cases, which are largely defined by applied analytics and business process integration. The pull-through opportunities for infrastructure and adjacent software will be just as significant.

Additional findings from IDC’s study include the following:

• Asia Pacific has markets with unique traits, such as population ‘megacenters,’ distributed manufacturing hubs, and fluid regulations on data sharing, which are creating significant new opportunities with big data.

• The growth in appliances, cloud, and outsourcing deals for big data technology will likely mean that over time end users will pay increasingly less attention to technology capabilities and will focus instead on the business value arguments. Data governance, security, and storage are some of the fundamental areas that CIOs will need to increase focus on in the context of big data.

• Challenges introduced by big data are not only related to technology or processes, but also to people – in particular, the level of skills sets. Similar with the case of advanced analytics where there has traditionally been a shortage of skills, an inhibitor to growth of big data analytics tools could be the insufficient number of analysts with appropriate analytics skills.

In Asia Pacific, many organizations are starting to investigate the new technologies in order to capture, manage, and analyze data that is high in volume, velocity, or variety in an affordable way.

Although there are multiple scenarios that could unfold and many demand and supply variables remain in flux, IDC said it expects the market to exhibit strong growth over the next five years. – Newsbytes.ph