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Five consumer technology trends for 2014

3. Big data for the little guy

Jon Simon/Feature Photo Service for IBM/File
A young fan explores the IBM Game Changer Interactive Wall at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. Big Data analytics and data visualization can bring stats, scores, and match analysis to life for fans of all ages.

  • By Gabriele Pansa Contributor

"Big data" matters. It is high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety information, and the next generation of technologies will be designed, therefore, to glean insights from these large volumes of data, by capturing, discovering, and analyzing it.

Big data is growing and will graduate from the early adopter phase in 2014 to become more valuable and actionable, according to Ovum, a London-based consulting firm.

Cloud-based services and tools will help democratize big data, giving even smaller businesses the ability to store and analyze big data for business insights.

Cloud computing will grow at a 17 percent compound annual growth over the next  three years, providing new levels of economies of scale, agility, and flexibility, able to deploy virtually unlimited computational power at low cost.

Finally, we are entering an era of big data “by the people, for the people.” Consumers who use social-media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, are generating near continuous streams of data about themselves.  The trick for companies will be to extract value by deriving insights from the data in order to tailor and sell better products and services to them.  Community-based and community-powered platforms will be the first to make sense of the masses of information.

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Mark Sappenfield
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