FRAMINGHAM, Mass., March 7, 2012 – International Data Corporation (IDC) today released a worldwide Big Data technology and services forecast showing the market is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9 billion in 2015. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% or about 7 times that of the overall information and communications technology (ICT) market.

"The Big Data market is expanding rapidly as large IT companies and startups vie for customers and market share," said Dan Vesset, program vice president, Business Analytics Solutions at IDC. "For technology buyers, opportunities exist to use Big Data technology to improve operational efficiency and to drive innovation. Use cases are already present across industries and geographic regions.

"There are also Big Data opportunities for both large IT vendors and start ups," Vesset continued. "Major IT vendors are offering both database solutions and configurations supporting Big Data by evolving their own products as well as by acquisition. At the same time, more than half a billion dollars in venture capital has been invested in new Big Data technology."

Additional findings from IDC's study include the following:

• While the five-year CAGR for the worldwide market is expected to be nearly 40%, the growth of individual segments varies from 27.3% for servers and 34.2% for software to 61.4% for storage.

• 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. System performance, availability, security, and manageability will all matter greatly. However, how they are achieved will be less of a point for differentiation among vendors.

• Today there is a shortage of trained Big Data technology experts, in addition to a shortage of analytics experts. This labor supply constraint will act as an inhibitor of adoption and use of Big Data technologies, and it will also encourage vendors to deliver Big Data technologies as cloud-based solutions.

"While software and services make up the bulk of the market opportunity through 2015, infrastructure technology for Big Data deployments is expected to grow slightly faster at 44% CAGR. Storage, in particular, shows the strongest growth opportunity, growing at 61.4% CAGR through 2015," said Benjamin S. Woo, program vice president, Storage Systems at IDC. "The significant growth rate in revenue is underscored by the large number of new open source projects that drive infrastructure investments."

IDC methodology for sizing the Big Data technology and services market includes evaluation of current and expected deployments that follow one of the following three scenarios:

• Deployments where the data collected is over 100 terabytes (TB). IDC is using data collected, not stored, to account for the use of in-memory technology where data may not be stored on a disk.

• Deployments of ultra-high-speed messaging technology for real-time, streaming data capture and monitoring. This scenario represents Big Data in motion as opposed to Big Data at rest.

• Deployments where the data sets may not be very large today, but are growing very rapidly at a rate of 60% or more annually.

Additionally, IDC requires that in each of these three scenarios, the technology is deployed on scale-out infrastructure and deployments that include either two or more data types or data sources or those that include high-speed data sources such as click-stream tracking or monitoring of machine-generated data.

The study, Worldwide Big Data Technology and Services 2012-2015 Forecast (IDC #233485) examines the Big Data technology and services market for 2010–2015. IDC defines Big Data technologies as a new generation of technologies and architectures designed to extract value economically from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by enabling high-velocity capture, discovery, and/or analysis. Further, the study segments the Big Data market into server, storage, networking, software, and services segments.

About IDC

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 100 countries. For more than 45 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

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