January 9, 2013 - In a newly released forecast, International Data Corporation (IDC) projects that the worldwide Big Data technology and services market will grow at a 31.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) – about seven times the rate of the overall information and communication technology (ICT) market – with revenues reaching $23.8 billion in 2016.

The Big Data market is emerging at a rapid pace and incorporating technology and services from a wide range of existing and new market segments. While 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 2012-2016 forecast period.

"The Big Data technology and services market represents a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar worldwide opportunity," said Dan Vesset, vice president for IDC's Business Analytics and Big Data research. "It is an important topic on many executive agendas and presents some of the most attractive job opportunities for people with the right technology, analytics, communication, and industry domain expertise."

Additional findings from IDC's research include the following:

• The growth of individual segments of the market varies from 21.1% for services to 53.4% for storage. The high CAGR for storage compared with other infrastructure components is attributable to the current dual use of storage in Big Data environments.
• A shortage of analytics and Big Data technology skills will drive a growing number of buyers toward cloud solutions and appliances. To address skills shortage, there will be greater focus on automation across the information management and analytic life-cycle, and more companies will look to outsource analytic services, not just technology.
• Big Data solutions for machine-generated data will begin to gain greater mindshare in the outer years of the forecast.

"IDC continues to enhance its market research and methodology for tracking Big Data trends," said Ashish Nadkarni, research director for IDC's Storage Systems and Big Data research. "On the infrastructure side, we added Big Data cloud infrastructure to this latest report coverage, and on the software side we provided additional breakdown of the three key segments of the Big Data software market."

The study, Worldwide Big Data Technology and Services 2012-2016 Forecast (IDC #238746) examines the Big Data technology and services market for 2012–2016 and describes IDC's definition of Big Data and the criteria and methodology for sizing the market. Further, the study segments the Big Data market into server, storage, networking, software, and services. Starting with this forecast, IDC is including a percentage of public cloud and infrastructure-as-a-service provider revenue that IDC believes makes up for the Big Data component running in that infrastructure.