With a new year comes new changes in the world of big data. While it’s impossible to say with complete certainty what this year will hold, the trends in IT and big data that have started years earlier and began steamrolling in 2014 will shape much of what is likely to occur in 2015. Here are several predictions and trends to keep an eye on this year.
The Need for Data Jobs Will Grow
According to a piece by Bernard Marr, this year, the big data world will see a growth in jobs by about 4.4 million people globally. However, with current big data growth, jobs will need to expand at an even more accelerated rate to keep up the with needs of big data across businesses. Those with big data knowledge like IT professionals should continue to expand their skills to become indispensable and those looking for a lucrative career change should certainly consider the ever-enlarging world of big data.
IT Professionals Will Take Better Advantage of Self-Service Big Data
IT professionals at the workplace are not expected to be the only ones handling big data in 2015 according to industry predictions by John Schroeder, the cofounder and CEO of MapR. Instead, data analysts, data scientists, and other employees at the workplace will also have their respective hands in the pie. Schroeder notes that this is a positive development, since IT professionals no longer have to create centralized data structures alone but can instead move to a big data infrastructure that is more efficient and effective for more employees.
Data Privacy Will Come Into Play
Of course, with the spread of so much big data comes natural concerns about the privacy of such information. It seems that in today’s time that no company is safe from the dangers of hacking, as even big-name brands and celebrities have seen their personal information breached and leaked to the world. To combat this, Timo Elliot for ZDNet notes said that encrypting information will become as popular as ever in 2015. In fact, encrypting files, documents, and other information that’s meant to stay private will probably become the norm this year and not just an extra protection measure.
Data Lakes Will Continue to Transform
Data lakes, according to Schroeder, became a paramount facet to big data in 2014. IT professionals favored these hubs because they contained a large amount of information easily, and most workplaces preferred them due to the affordability of data lakes compared to other storage systems. Data lakes will not dry up this year. Quite the opposite, as these data hubs are slated to transform to be even greater indicators of changes that display as instantaneously as they occur. IT professionals should familiarize themselves further with data lakes to keep abreast of these predicted changes.
New Hadoop-Like Technology Will Develop
IT professionals likely already know Hadoop inside and out, but other technology like the popular algorithm may pop up throughout the course of the year. Schroeder notes in his predictions that Intel had already tried to create similar technology back in 2013 but eventually relented and joined forces with the Cloudera technology instead, which is quite similar to Hadoop. Schroder assumes that other open source software like Hadoop will materialize in 2015 and that Hadoop will continue to get stronger and gain more distribution support.
