Scope of Big Data In India : The Future is Bright

“In God we trust, all others must bring data”

The famous quote, attributed to W. Edwards Deming, is literally what most businesses in the world today live by.

After all, we generate more than 2.5 Qn bytes of data every day, and this figure is going to only increase – thanks to IoT and other advanced technologies. For the uninitiated, IoT stands for Internet of Things, and it is basically a really bad name for an extremely simple concept.

The idea behind IoT is interconnecting the most commonly used devices and optimizing their usage to make our lives simpler. For instance, taking a very basic example, your electric teapot is linked to your alarm clock so that your tea is ready as soon as you wake up. But don’t be mistaken, IoT isn’t just limited to teapots and alarm clocks, and is instead a vast sea in itself – so if you’re interested, don’t forget to explore more!

Coming back to the discussion, such interconnection of devices over the internet surely increases comfort and convenience but at the cost of data. So, other than social media, search engines, and whatnots, even your electric teapot is a source of data.

This data, all of this combined, is precisely what forms Big Data.

And if you’re with us so far, you’d have realized how inevitable Big Data is, and how essential it is to know how to tame it – for the success of any business.

This enormous increase in data is what has given birth to Data Science, which has further branched into Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, and more. All of these technologies are for businesses to make sense of their heaps of data and derive insights from it.

Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the global Big Data and business analytics market stood at US$ 169 billion in 2018 and is projected to grow to US$ 274 billion by 2022. Moreover, a PwC report predicts that by 2020, there will be around 2.7 million job postings in Data Science and Analytics in the US alone.

These stats only reinstate the fact that the jobs in Big Data are increasing, and as Big Data increases, so will the opportunities. It’s because of that very reason that many mid-career professionals are switching to Big Data, and many freshers are aclimatizing themselves with Big Data tools and techniques to get a jumpstart in their career.

Now, if you’re either of the two, you might often wonder about the precise future of a career in Big Data. You might wonder if this Big Data wave will be shortlived, or is it here to stay.

Our stance is clear, and we’ve walked you through numerous statistics to support our claim. Now, let’s walk you through how the future looks for a career in Big Data.

1. Increasing demand for Data Analytics.

Not long ago, Peter Sondergaard of Gartner Research emphasized the importance of Data Analytics in the modern world when he stated:

“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.”

The amount of data we’re churning every minute is continuously increasing day by day. While Data Science gurus swear by the importance of data, what use will the data be to us if there aren’t enough professionals with Data Analytics skills? Who will analyze these massive quantities to data and transform them into a valuable business resource?

Since companies around the globe realize the true potential of data, the demand for skilled Data Analytics professionals is soaring.  To process this data, Big Data analytics is necessary.

The upward-sloping job trend graph for Big Data Analytics on Indeed.com depicts the steady increase in job opportunities in the field:

2. Increasing enterprise adoption of Big Data.

We have a lot of stats to back this one!

A Forbes piece authored by Louis Columbus – 2014 IDG Enterprise Big Data Research – states that in the next few years, enterprises will spend an average of US$ 8 million on Big Data initiatives.

According to the Peer Research ‘Big Data Analytics’ survey, it was found that Big Data Analytics was one of the top priorities of the participating companies – they believe that it can improve their overall performance.

The conclusion here is that more and more organizations across the globe are adopting Big Data technologies to enhance their performance.

3. Big Data finds application across various parallels of the industry.

Backing up the second point on our list, Big Data is omnipresent. It has found applications across the various sectors of the industry. According to a study by Wanted Analytics (2015), the biggest significant demand for Big Data professionals is  by Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (25%), Information Technology (17%), Manufacturing (15%), Finance and Insurance (9%), and Retail Trade (8%).

Source

4. Flexible career options.

When it comes to job positions and roles, Big Data is one of the most versatile career options. As Analytics is a crucial tool used in many different fields, you get a host of job titles to choose from including:

• Big Data Engineer
• Big Data Analyst
• Big Data Analytics Architect
• Big Data Solution Architect
• Analytics Associate
• Metrics and Analytics Specialist
• Big Data Analytics Business Consultant
• Business Intelligence and Analytics Consultant

From top names in the field such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and Pentaho to emerging startups – everyone is making use of Big Data Analytics and hence, creating the demand for skilled Big Data professionals.

5. Promises exponential salary growth.

As the Big Data market grows rapidly, so is the salary of professionals with expertise in Big Data and related technologies. According to a Forbes article on Big Data jobs (2015), the average salary for professionals skilled in Big Data is around US$ 1,04,850 along with other bonuses and compensations.

In India, a fresher with a Master’s degree in Data Science or Data Analytics or other such related fields of study can bag jobs with an entry-level package of Rs. 4 – 10 LPA, while candidates with around 3-6 years of experience in the area can fetch about Rs. 10 – 20 LPA. Moving to the higher end, professionals with 6-10 years of industry expertise earn about Rs. 15- 30 LPA, and those with over 15 years of experience can make as high as Rs 10,000,000 per annum.

The high salary is owing to the fact that there’s a huge gap between the demand and supply of professionals skilled in Big Data and Data Science.

To conclude…

Stressing the importance of Big Data, Geoffrey Moore had once stated:

“Without Big Data, you are blind and deaf in the middle of the freeway.”

Thanks to Big Data, the industry landscape is transforming. But like we said earlier, data is of no use unless there’s someone to decipher it and unravel the hidden patterns within. Businesses need insights from Big Data, and this is precisely why they’re always on the lookout for skilled professionals in the field – individuals who can unlock the secrets that Big Data holds.

Big Data technologies like Hadoop and Spark are the buzzwords now. So, make sure you learn how to work with related tools Hive, HBase, MapReduce, Spark RDD, Spark Streaming, SparkSQL, SparkR, MLlib, Flume, Sqoop, Oozie, Kafka, Data frames, and GraphX, to name a few.

Rest assured, if you train yourself to acquire the right skills, you will grow to become a vital asset to any organization invested in Big Data. You will grow as the company grows.

If you are interested to know more about Big Data, check out our Advanced Certificate Programme in Big Data from IIIT Bangalore.

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