Big Data Market Growth Exceeds Expectations

According to the big data number crunchers at Wikibon, spending on big data hardware, software, and services added up to $18.6 billion in 2013. That’s about $500 million, or roughly 3 percent, bigger than it projected the market to be a year ago when it did its last forecast. On a year-over-year basis, actual big data spending grew 58 percent.

These are heady days to be in the big data market, to be sure. Where the wider, $2-trillion IT industry gets by on less than 10 percent growth, the big data market is red hot, and plotting a growth chart that should make it a $50-billion business by 2017.

Courtesy: Wikibon Big Data Vendor Revenue and Market Forecast 2013-2017

In his forecast, titled Big Data Vendor Revenue and Market Forecast 2013-2017, Wikibon analyst Jeff Kelly says big data vendors are better able to articulate their products and roadmaps, which creates more confidence in enterprise buyers. The products themselves are also maturing, he notes, especially with the addition of YARN to Hadoop, which “lays the foundation for Hadoop as a true multi-application framework,” he writes.

Progress has also been made in the areas of privacy, security and governance capabilities, Kelly writes, as well as improved backup and recovery and high-availability, specifically for Hadoop. Meanwhile, IT vendors of all types (big data and non) are partnering in such a way that it fosters better integration of tools and technologies, which leads to more adoption of big data technology.

While the smaller pure-play big data vendors are making inroads, megavendors like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, SAP, and Teradata still rule the big data roost. Big Blue remains at the top of the big data heap, with nearly $1.4 billion in big data bucks.

Meanwhile, Cloudera’s estimated revenues grew from $56 million in Wikibon big data forecast from last year to $73 million this year. Other big data vendors experiencing big revenues jumps include:

• Actian ($138 million in 2013 vs. $46 million in 2012);
• MongoDB ($62 million in 2013 vs. $36 million in 2012 as 10gen);
• Hortonworks ($55 million in 2013 vs. $18 million in 2012);
• Microstrategy ($13 million in 2013 vs. $144 million in 2012);
• Marklogic ($96 million in 2013 vs. $69 million in 2012);
• Tableau Software ($33 million in 2013 vs. $13 million in 2012).

Interestingly, software was the weak leg of the three-legged big data stool, with just $4.1 billion in spending, or 22 percent of the total. Professional services had the biggest chunk, with $7.4 billion (or 40 percent) in spending, followed by hardware, with $7.1 billion in spending, or 38 percent of the total.

To read the Wikibon report, go to http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Big_Data_Vendor_Revenue_and_Market_Forecast_2013-2017.

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