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Cognitive HPC Platforms Transform Big Data Analytics

There's an explosion of data being created by a variety of existing and emerging IT applications. Converting raw data into meaningful insights is a global trend that's driving demand for solutions. Western European revenues for Big Data and business analytics (BDA) will reach $34.1 billion in 2017 -- that's an increase of 10.4 percent over 2016.

Commercial purchases of BDA-related hardware, software, and services are likely to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.2 percent through 2020 when revenues will be more than $43 billion, according to the latest study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

"Digital disruption is forcing many organizations to reevaluate their information needs, as the ability to react with greater speed and efficiency becomes critical for competitive businesses," said Helena Schwenk, research manager at IDC.

Big Data Analytics Market Development

According to the IDC assessment, the shift toward cloud deployments, greater levels of automation, plus lower-cost storage and data processing platforms are helping to reduce the barriers to driving value and impact from Big Data at scale.

Banking, discrete manufacturing, and process manufacturing are the three largest industries to invest in Big Data and analytics solutions over the forecast period, and by 2020 will account for more than a third of total IT spending on BDA solutions.

Overall, the financial sector and manufacturing vie with each other for the largest share of spending, with finance just edging out manufacturing, accounting for 21.5 percent of spending on BDA solutions compared with manufacturing's 21.2 percent. However, the industries that will show the highest growth over the forecast period are professional services, telecommunications, utilities, and retail.

Western Europe lags the worldwide market in overall growth, with a CAGR of 9.2 percent for the region, while worldwide spending will grow at a CAGR of 11.9 percent. The highest growth is in Latin America, while the largest regional market is the U.S. with more than half of the world's IT investment in Big Data and analytics solutions.

The investments in the finance sector apply across a wide range of use cases. Examples include optimizing and enhancing the customer journey for these institutions, together with fraud detection and risk management, and these use cases drive investment in the industry.

However, IDC analysts believe that the mature manufacturing base in Western Europe will also invest in Big Data and analytics solutions for more effective logistics management and enhanced analysis of operations related data, which contribute significantly to improved cost management and profitability.

BDA technology investments will be led by IT and business services, which together will account for half of all Big Data and business analytics revenue in 2017 and throughout the forecast. Software investments will grow to more than $17 billion in 2020, led by purchases of end-user query, reporting, and analysis tools and data warehouse management tools.

Cognitive software platforms and non-relational analytic data stores will experience the strongest growth (CAGRs of 39.8 and 38.6 percent respectively) as companies expand and evolve their Big Data and analytic activities. Meanwhile, BDA-related purchases of high-performance computing (HPC) servers and storage will grow at a CAGR of 12.4 percent, reaching $4.4 billion in 2020.

Outlook for Big Data Analytics Growth

Very large businesses (those with more than 1,000 employees) will be responsible for more than 60 percent of all BDA spending throughout the forecast and IDC expects this group of companies to pass the $25 billion level by 2020.

IT spending on Big Data and analytics solutions by businesses with fewer than 10 employees is expected to be below 1 percent of the total, even though these businesses account for over 90 percent of all businesses in Western Europe.

IDC believes that these businesses need expertise and time to evaluate and adopt Big Data solutions, and will rely heavily on solution providers -- those with proven professional services expertise -- to guide them through implementation of this complex technology.

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