Mid Tier Consulting Firm: Big Data Fear
October 12, 2016
I love it when mid tier consulting firms become contrarians. Navigate to “Gartner Warns Big Data’s Bubble May Burst As Enterprises Cut Investment.” The write up informed me:
Gartner has found. In its latest survey of 199 technology executives, the analyst firm found that many companies have struggled to obtain insights that make a real difference to their bottom line.
I don’t want to get into the Statistics 101 lecture about sampling, but keep in mind that there may be some wobbles in who was asked and who answered the “survey.”
Let’s assume that the mid-tier outfit did a pretty good job with its 199 objective respondents. I learned that:
the number of companies that are planning to invest in Big Data in the next two years has fallen by 6 percent, from 31 percent in 2015 to just 25 percent this year. Another telling statistic is that while roughly three-quarters of companies have invested, or are planning to invest, in Big Data, the overwhelming majority of those firms remain stuck at the pilot stage.
The write up points to another mid tier outfit’s research which suggests that Big Data may not be the home run that some pundits assert. Is Big Data doomed? Nah, a third mid tier outfit predicts that the Big Data market will grow “three times as fast as the overall information technology market.”
Whew. For a moment I thought the sky was falling.
Several observations:
- Fear sells.
- Uncertainty sells.
- Seemingly authoritative research sells.
What’s the common factor? The mid tier outfits are working overtime to generate interest in their services. Perhaps the economy is putting some pressure on the mid tier folks. Go with fear.
Even snakes flee from earth tremors. There may be Big Data to quantify that fear as long as one can point and click, not think about data integrity, and have to do math. I love it. 199.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2016
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