The applications of big data continue to be an ongoing transformative force across a number of industries, including telecom. RCR Wireless News rounds up some of the 2015 predictions and recent reports that give insight into the latest trends and areas of movement and focus in big data.
1. IDC has said that big data is part of its so-called third platform consisting of cloud, mobile, social, big data and “Internet of Things” technologies, and that this year will mark a shift to the “innovation stage” with an “explosion of innovation and value creation on top of the third platform’s foundation.”
IDC’s predictions for big data in 2015 include a total market for software, hardware and services growing to $125 billion.
“Rich media analytics (video, audio and image) will emerge as an important driver of big data projects,” according to IDC, “and big data supply chains (i.e. data as a service) will grow in importance as cloud platform and analytics vendors offer clients value-added information from commercial and open data sets. Elsewhere, IDC expects to see important new developments in cognitive/machine learning and IoT analytics.”
2. IoT is one of the primary drivers for analytics, as a data source and as an avenue to define the customer experience. In an Accenture survey, 66% of IT and business leaders felt that “smart objects” would have a “high” or “very high” impact in helping their companies gain competitive advantage or improve their market position. Tangentially, Gartner found that 89% of business leaders it surveyed believe that customer experience will be their primary basis for competition by 2016. Gartner has also said it expects that by 2017, more than 20% of customer-facing analytics deployments will provide product tracking information that leverages IoT.
3. Subscriber data management for mobile operators will reach a $2 billion market by 2019, according to Infonetics Research. The need for analytics for voice over LTE and subscriber information is driving the growth, Infonetics said, and the market grew by 29% between 2013 and 2014.
“Voice over LTE is continuing to drive SDM spending in developed markets as operators look to manage their subscriber data over multiple network domains. We expect the adoption of voice over Wi-Fi to have a similar effect,” said Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics Research, in a statement. She went on to add that “momentum around big data and analytics has the potential to have an even more significant impact on the SDM market, as operators seek to break down the data silos that exist within their organizations and better leverage subscriber data to improve the customer experience and drive additional revenue.”
4. More growth will come as companies in various verticals continue to develop their digital strategies through a combination of new business models, a new digital workplace and new operational processes, according to Frost & Sullivan. The firm noted that digitization trends and the concept of “working from anywhere, anytime” will be impacted by big data analytics and that “help optimize the operational flows and improve the revenue margins in companies.” For instance, Frost & Sullivan said that big data analytics can help retailers increase margins by more than 60%.
5. But to what extent is advanced analytics and machine learning in a stage of overheated hype that is sure to lead to disillusionment? For perspective on that, check out Gartner’s most recent 2015 Hype Cycle examination, which charts the predicted peaks and valleys for a number of emerging technologies. IoT, advanced analytics and machine learning are all still riding high – at least for now.
Gartner’s 2015 Hype Cycle (Source: Gartner)
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