Cloud and Big Data: Gaining a Competitive Edge Posted on : Jan 12 - 2018

Cloud computing and Big Data are, in 2018, essentially the perfect marriage.

So it's no surprise that analysts and enterprise IT decision makers agree: 2018 will see a flood of big data projects moving into the public cloud.

In a report titled, Move Your Big Data Into the Public Cloud: You Won't be Able to Keep Up With Customers If You Don't, Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins wrote, "Public cloud adoption is the No. 1 priority for technology decision makers investing in big data."

A separate Forrester survey, commissioned by Oracle and Intel, found that 80 percent of the 431 organizations surveyed want to move their big data and analytics initiatives to the cloud.

And IDC has predicted, "By 2018, new cloud pricing models will emerge for specific analytics workloads, contributing to five times higher growth in spending on cloud versus on-premises analytics solutions."

Why the sudden rush to the cloud?

First, most enterprises have experienced success with initial on-premises big data projects. 2017 data from NewVantage Partners found that 95 percent of the executives surveyed had undertaken a big data project, and 80 percent described those initiatives as successful. As a result of that early success, many want to expand their use of big data tools. And that means more big data software spending. IDC has forecasted that the big data analytics software market will achieve a 10.6 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years as companies grow their investments.

However, enterprises haven't been completely happy with their on-premises big data options. Most big data projects involve Hadoop, which is notoriously tricky to use. According to Gartner, "The complexity and questionable usefulness of the entire Hadoop stack is causing many organizations to reconsider its role in their information infrastructure. Instead, organizations are looking at increasingly competitive and convenient cloud-based options with on-demand pricing and fit-for-purpose data processing options."

Analysts say those companies that have been among the first to migrate big data to the public cloud have been experiencing advantages. Hopkins warned, "While most firms think they have time to migrate, disruptors steal customers by leveraging big data cloud innovation such as serverless analytics and artificial intelligence (AI)." He advised enterprises, "You must immediately shift your big data investment from on-premises or hybrid toward public cloud." View More