The era of big data is here. Multi-petabyte data warehouses, social media interactions, real-time data feeds from sensors, geospatial information and other new data sources, not only confront organizations challenges but also opportunities. More and more companies are therefore already begun to formulate their big data strategy or already presenting their first big data success cases.
The biggest question facing companies are the lack of big data specialists. A report released by e-skills UK, the employer body for the digital industries, and SAS predicts that demand for big data specialists is set to rise to 69,000 jobs over the next five years in the UK alone. The report said that the huge shortage of big data specialist is due to third of UK large businesses (6,400) plan to implement big data analytics program in next five years. Hadoop currently is leading as one of the best tool for big data analytics.
The report “Big Data Analytics: Adoption and employment trends,” found over 90 percent companies believe business can strive to profit through increasing the skills of their big data analytics users. CIOs should also realize that the real value of the data should come from high-end analytics, attributable to the increasing data volumes, taking into account the speed with which they have, and the wide diversity and variety of structured and unstructured data.
The rise in the number of big data users is likely to increase even further and the report said the number of users is set to rise dramatically to around 644,000 by 2017. Big data analytics skills are a priority for UK businesses, alongside areas such as cyber security, e-commerce and mobile computing.
The report further said that over 70 percent of organizations said they find it challenging to hire the specialists they require. Business sectors across the economy are being transformed by data, analytics and modelling. It is estimated around 94 core big data users in every large UK organization implemented a big data analytics programme, who use specific big data tools such as dashboards, key performance indicator data or market analysis.
The UK now has the opportunity to take a lead in the global efforts to deal with the volume, velocity and variety of data created each day. To do this, UK need to ensure the government, academia and businesses work together to further develop the skills available today and actively support programmes that nurture development in the next generation.
The e-skills UK recognize big data analytics skills are a strategic priority for UK businesses. These are skills upon which companies of all sizes will be reliant in future, and in which the UK has global leadership potential. For this reason, e-skills UK is bringing employers and educators together, to develop industry-led apprenticeships, degree courses and professional development opportunities, which will raise the skill levels of existing workers and increase the supply of new entrants with specialist expertise.