Big data is becoming increasingly important for both tech companies and businesses in general, that’s why Microsoft has decided to take a week-long look at how big data is used it today’s enterprise environment.
To get this examination into gear, the company released the massive infograph seen at the bottom of the page here. The infograph shows results of the 2013 Global Enterprise Big Data Trends survey. For those that don’t know, this was a Microsoft-led survey that polled 280 IT decision-makers for companies across the globe.
The results indicated that 62% of those surveyed work in businesses were they store 100TB of data, 32% of them believe that this number is going to double in the next two or three years. It is hard to imagine this much data, especially when it wasn’t too horribly long ago that a 40GB would have been considered MASSIVE. Things change quickly, don’t they?
Microsoft also indicated that 75% of midsize businesses are implementing big data-related solution within the next 12 months. So who is utilizing big data the most? Actually quite a few types of businesses, though IT departments certainly lead the pack with 52-percent. Customer care makes up for 41 percent of big data, 23 percent for financing and then 23 percent for marketing as well.
In another post, Microsoft talked about real life examples of businesses storing, using and analyzing big data. One of their leading examples was the Cincinnati Zoo. What does a zoo use big data for? Analyzing ice cream sales, of course. I thought that was a bit odd, as well, but I suppose it makes sense– zoos are in the business of making money after all.
Using big data, they were able to see what points and times icecream sales best. Using this information, the zoo opened up more ice cream carts earlier in the day.
The use of big data continues to grow in importance for the enterprise environment. There is a reason why movies that portray the future, like Minority Report, have businesses and even governments driven by big data and its analyze: it is important to the future. Do you work for a business that utilizes big data storage and analysis? Share your thoughts about the future of big data in the enterprise world below.
