Spending on big data and business analytics (BDA) solutions is forecast to increase 10.1 percent to $215.7 billion in 2021, according to a new update to the Worldwide Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC).
The forecast shows that BDA spending will gain strength over the next five years as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for global BDA spending over the 2021-2025 forecast period will be 12.8 percent.
“As executives seek solutions to enable better, faster decisions, we’re seeing healthy BDA spending across all industries. Leveraging data for insights into everything from internal business operations to the customer journey is top of mind and of strategic importance,” said Jessica Goepfert, program vice president, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC.
Banking, discrete manufacturing, and professional services industries will account for one third of all BDA spending in 2021.
Process manufacturing, telecommunications, and federal/central government will deliver nearly $47 billion in spending this year.
While the telecommunications industry will see the fastest growth in BDA spending over the five-year forecast, all but one of the 19 industries covered in the Spending Guide are expected to deliver double-digit growth.
Over half of all BDA spending in 2021 will go toward services with IT services accounting for more than $85 billion of the total and business services making up the remainder.
The second largest segment of BDA spending this year will be software, which will see investments totaling $82 billion.
Almost half of this total will go to three types of applications – End-User Query, Reporting, and Analysis Tools, Relational Data Warehouses, and Nonrelational Analytic Data Stores – with the remainder spread across the 13 remaining software categories. Software will also be the fastest growing segment of BDA spending with a five-year CAGR of 15.1 percent.
United States is the largest market with more than $110 billion in BDA spending this year. Japan and China are the next two largest markets with BDA spending forecast to reach $12.4 billion and $11.9 billion, respectively. The United Kingdom is the only other country expected to surpass $10 billion in BDA spending this year.
Argentina is forecast to see the fastest growth in BDA spending over the forecast period with a five-year CAGR of 21.2 percent. China’s CAGR of 20.1 percent will enable it to become the second largest market by the end of the forecast.