Aussie businesses poised to tap into the power of big data analytics

Australian businesses are set to boost big data analytics investment in 2018 as they seek to better harness data capabilities, the International Data Corporation (IDC) has found.

The IDC’s 2017 Asia Pacific Software Survey, which was published last year, canvassed the approach of IT decision-makers across the region regarding software implementation in the coming 12–24 months, including 200 Australian IT executives. It found big data analytics is a primary area of focus for Australian businesses.

The study found 41% of the Australian respondents have already undertaken some form of big data analytics initiatives, while 50% of respondents stated they are set to increase big data analytics investment in the next year.

“To add in a bit of context, cloud deployment models, which is another hot topic among IT executives, has a rate of 48% that will increase investment on it,” said IDC senior market analyst John Feng.

“On the top spot we have infrastructure and security software, on which 53% will increase investment in [the] next 12 months. Not surprising for the relatively more matured Australian market, where compliance and governance cannot be stressed enough.”

The IDC points to three factors helping to drive demand for big data analytics:

• Line-of-business’ increasing involvement in technology adoption, seeking greater clarity on everyday operations to derive deeper insights;
• The development of edge computing, enabling collection of richer datasets and a quicker turnaround time; and
• Cloud consumption model flexibility helping to bring the cost down.

“To take advantage of the demand for data analytics, vendors must ensure the data generated is ready for aggregated analysis and automatic processing,” Feng said.

“From a solution point of view, capability to integrate with multiple data sources and perform real-time, reiterative business-specific analytics that feeds back to the production process will be very appealing to end users.”