Big Data Emerging at Rapid Pace Across AsiaPac

The AsiaPac (excluding Japan) big data technology
and services market is expected to grow from $258.5 million in 2011 to $1.76 billion in 2016, on the back of a 46.8% five-year CAGR, according to the
study, APEJ Big Data Technology and Services 2012-2016 Forecast and Analysis,
(Doc#AP2670106X) by IDC Corp.

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 AsiaPac is building
the momentum that will deliver a strong acceleration in 2-3 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 AsiaPac 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."

"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. CIOs should design an information strategy
before undertaking a big data project," said Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, program manager
of AsiaPac Big Data and Analytics, and NextGen Enterprise Applications Research
at IDC. "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."

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 the 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:
AsiaPac has markets with unique traits, such as
population mega-centers, 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 AsiaPac, 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 expects the market to
exhibit strong growth over the next five years.