Big Data will drive $28 billion of worldwide IT spending in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2013, Big Data is forecast to drive $34 billion of IT spending.

Most of the current spending is used in adapting traditional solutions to the big data demands — machine data, social data, widely varied data, unpredictable velocity, and so on — and only $4.3 billion in software sales will be driven directly by demands for new big data functionality in 2012.

Big Data currently has the most significant impact in social network analysis and content analytics with 45 percent of new spending each year. In traditional IT supplier markets, application infrastructure and middleware is most affected (10 percent of new spending each year is influenced by Big Data in some way) when compared with storage software, database management system, data integration/quality, business intelligence or supply chain management (SCM).

"Despite the hype, Big Data is not a distinct, stand-alone market, it but represents an industrywide market force which must be addressed in products, practices and solution delivery," said Mark Beyer, research vice president at Gartner. "In 2011, big data formed a new driver in almost every category of IT spending. However, through 2018, big data requirements will gradually evolve from differentiation to 'table stakes' in information management practices and technology. By 2020, Big Data features and functionality will be non-differentiating and routinely expected from traditional enterprise vendors and part of their product offerings."

Big Data opportunities emerged when several advances in different IT categories aligned in a short period at the end of the last decade, creating a dramatic increase in computing technology capacity. This new capacity, coupled with latent demands for analysis of "dark data," social networks data and operational technology (or machine data), created an environment highly conducive to rapid innovation.

Starting near the end of 2015, Gartner expects leading organizations to begin to use their Big Data experience in an almost embedded form in their architectures and practices. Beginning in 2018, Big Data solutions will be offering increasingly less of a distinct advantage over traditional solutions that have incorporated new features and functions to support greater agility when addressing volume, variety and velocity. However, the skills, practices and tools currently viewed as Big Data solutions will persist as leading organizations will have incorporated the design principles and acquired the skills necessary to address Big Data concerns as routine flexibility.

"Because Big Data's effects are pervasive, Big Data will evolve to become a standardized requirement in leading information architectural practices, forcing older practices and technology into early obsolescence," said Mr. Beyer. "As a result, Big Data will once again become 'just data' by 2020 and architectural approaches, infrastructure and hardware/software that does not adapt to this 'new normal' will be retired. Organizations resisting this change will suffer severe economic impacts."