Big Data is getting bigger every day – be it the investment, popularity, dependency or growth. Within a significantly short period of time, big data evolved from being a ‘buzzword’ discussed at thought leadership seminars to be the next big revolution that has redefined the manner in which businesses function. In fact, IDC predicts that Big Data and business analytics market will grow to $203 billion by 2020 from $130.1 billion in 2016.

So as big data grows, what are the biggest trends that will define the industry? Over the years, IrisLogic has worked with a great many clients to deliver Big Data & Analytics solutions and here are some patterns that have emerged:

1) Insight Driven Business Decisions: Employing, understanding, and managing big data analytics has now become universal and something most successful companies rely on heavily.  But companies are now moving beyond just data management to drawing relevant insights from mountain piles of data. The focus is now on mining data effectively to uncover trends, patterns, and predictions to facilitate evolved customer experience, give businesses a competitive edge, benchmark competition, deploy advanced security (which typically requires fast storage and high storage capacity), and enable operational efficiency.

2) Collaborative business insights: Analytics will not remain the prerogative of a select few departments like Marketing & Sales but are permeating across the entire organisation. Companies are integrating insights from across departments to understand the dynamics of business operations and reveal ways and means to increase efficiency, growth and productivity while eliminating redundancy.

3) IoT and Machine Learning: Millions of internet connected devices from wearables to machines generate gold mines of data on a daily basis. Big data analytics allows for better feedback and proactive actionable insights that encourage companies to deploy machine learning techniques and IoT to smoothen day to day operations.

4) Cloud Analytics: The cloud becomes more and more ubiquitous as companies continue to opt for cloud-based solutions. However, International Institute for Analytics (IIA) predicts that companies will increasingly embrace the power of cloud analytics, where data analytics, data models, and processing software rest in the cloud. This will especially be true for small business entrepreneurs.

5) Database Security: Business will continue to search for and invest in the most secure solution that averts the risk of data breach and losses. Database security has been a prime business concern over the last few years as our dependence on technology continues to increase. With the growing adoption of big data analytics, big data needs to be secured and cyber security will garner more attention and will be a major area of investment. According to the ‘Cybersecurity Market Report’ by Cybersecurity Ventures, cyber security spending will top $1 trillion from 2017 to 2021.