I have looked into the immediate twelve-month future of Big Data and the immediate future looked back and said “Be more goat”.

I have chosen this opportunity to socialize a few of my well considered, in-depth and informed forecasts for what will happen in the data universe in the coming era. Yes, that’s right, I use the term “will” and not “might be” deliberately, intentionally and unblushingly. After all we are entering the age of Big Data truth, infallibility and certainty.

For this piece I will again be casting sortes, consulting the Oracle of Delphi and indulging in scientific tasseography – with tea bags, and coming up no-doubt with absolutely reliable predictions for the business of Big Data in 2015 and, more importantly, the year of the Goat.

I know that old industry lags such as Larry Ellison, Bill Gates and even Gerald Bostock might pooh-pooh the idea that anyone can see clearly ahead in the Big Data game, and with such certainty, but I ask you, apart from Gerald, what do these people actually know about Big Data, or for that matter, IT?

Exactly!

So, here are my predictions for Big Data (more on Big Data here: Marty does Big Data and the Vs,) in the year of the Big Data goat.

The value of the big data economic universe will reach 125 trillion EUR

Amazing? But true. The Big Data economy of 2015 will make the industrial revolutions – with the attendant inventions, innovation and progress – look like a jaded walk in the park.

The revenue projection has been calculated by abstracting, enriching and then expanding the underlying financial and economic projection data until it became Big Data, and therefore usable, manageable and beneficial.

The forecast is reliably predicated on the wishes, desires and pure thoughts of the Big Data industry, and its high priests, evangelists and uncompromisingly loyal supporters.

The actual figure of 125 trillion EUR comes from market research specialists Aunt Dolly and Company, and it extrapolates the financial stats and economies of scale of three major Big Data players, namely Crock, Shlock and Barrel.

People will show amazingly less inhibition about using and sharing other people’s data.

That’s right, you read it here first. Big Data 2015 will herald an inflection point in the casting off of anti-social and anti-market and anti-consumer constraints that burden the sea-change renaissance that Big Data will undoubtedly deliver. The burdens of ethical and moral considerations in the use and abuse of data will be a thing of the past. For the greater common good we will abandon all market strangling and regulatory legislation, and other grave mischief wrought by meddling do-gooders, and embrace true market based service-oriented democracy.

It’s only right that people will show amazingly less inhibition about using and sharing other people’s data, without their permission or knowledge. It’s a free world, after all, and the concept of the ownership of any and all data is alien to us, or at least, should be. Just like the ownership of beer.

Machines will learn to take decisions based on Big Data

You read it here first. In 2015, machines will learn to support the decisions of the ‘right-thinking people’ and their ‘right-thinking orthodoxy’ by leveraging Big Data to the max.

Scary you may say. But don’t worry, I live in Europe, and it’s not as if we ever have had any problems with the instrumentalisation of reason, the manipulation of data or the interested abuse of what appears on the surface to be rational discourse – apart from a brief hiatus between the 1930s and 40s, when things were a tad awkward.

Everyone will be doing it

Just like everyone in the whole known world possesses a smart phone, internet connection, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, so too will this unstoppable momentum mean that everyone who is anyone will also be doing Big Data.

You’ve got petabytes of data, what do you do?

Easy! Just contact your friendly IT vendors and get with it. When it comes to Big Data, they are the fourth emergency service. They are there to help you out of such predicaments. Do you want 100 petabytes or more of storage and all the kit to process the data?  No worries.

What do you do if you think that you don’t have enough data to qualify as Big Data?

This is a little more complex, but I assure you that it makes absolute common sense.

Now if you have small data, what you need to do in these circumstances is to start at a more modest level. Order about 10 to 20 terabytes of storage, then copy all the data that you can get your hands on to that storage, even if you have to beg, borrow or appropriate, and then – and this is the part where Big Data magic comes into play – you hire an external data consultant to come in and replicate, duplicate and copy data on that storage until you actually occupy about 80% of the available storage capacity. Why 80% I here you ask? Simples, this is based on the famous 80/20 Big Data storage rule as expounded by Scunthorpe’s very own Alan Latchley, who elegantly stated that “the more data you have, the more faith there will be in data analysis outcomes”.

Not only that, the advent of next generation Big Data will mean that almost anyone will be able to do equations (see also Consider this: Did Big Data Kill The Statistician?)

Marty’s Tip: This will be the hottest and most prevalent Big Data trend of 2015.

Big Data will democratize skills and demonetize property

Do you look up to the demigods of Big Data evangelism? Do you want access to all the prohibitively expensive and costly published opinion, business and technical tomes on Big Data? Are you exasperated by not being able to fulfil your Big Data potential? Do you want instant skills?

Well, fret thee no more, dear reader.

In the year of the goat everyone who wants to, will be able to become a Big Data guru, Big Data whizz or Big Data big cheese. As I have explained elsewhere (7 New Big Data Roles for 2015) there will be a plethora of new roles and responsibilities in what will be a burgeoning 125 trillion euro Big Data economy.

Moreover, in the same modern spirit of benefaction as the democratization of data (it will no longer be considered as property, no matter what its provenance, content or context), so too will there be a gradual removal of intellectual capital rights – an abusive and dated piece of legislation for sure.

The first artefacts to benefit from this market based enlightenment will be the plethora of business, technical and methodology books on the very subject of Big Data. During 2015 all Big Data content will become free for all. No price, no royalties, no profit, no nothing.

Big Data will explain the meaning of life

In 1879, Leo Tolstoy, in the midst of a mid-life existential crisis of melancholia, asked himself the question: “What is the meaning of life?”

We have not been in a situation to satisfactorily answer this question until now, as we stand at the cusp of 2015, and the revolution ion Big Data.

If we all hoard all of the data that crosses our paths, and then unite this data in a Universal Big Data Repository – a database so very large it will make the data that the Large Hadron Collider people collect seem like mere grains of sand in the Sahara desert – we will surely, with the aid of big data science, big queries and the mastery of grown-up ‘equations’, discover at last the mystery of the world and the meaning of life.

One of my favourite poets Hermann Hesse, wrote in his work Verliebt in die verrückte Welt: Betrachtungen, Gedichte, Erzählungen, Briefe, that “I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I’ve got.”

In another place and in another time, Albert Camus wrote that “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

But what did he or Hesse know about Big Data or big data scientists? I’ll tell you what they knew about Big Data, if for nothing else, in order to save you from the inconvenience of having to search the internet for the obvious answer yourself. What did they know? Nothing! Absolutely nothing, at all!

Businesses and organizations will find previously untapped big data talent

By the end of 2015 there will be 4.4 billion people employed around the globe in big data management and analysis roles (see 7 New Big Data Roles for 2015). Yet this will not be enough to carry forward over to 2016. By the end of next year more than 1200% of businesses across the pond will have big data strategies in place or will be planning their 3^rd and hopefully the most successful iteration of Big Data, according to a survey conducted by my Aunt Dolly.

Moreover, the number of colleges, universities and gin joints offering courses related to big data science, equations, colours and shapes and other life-changing skills, will help to reduce the current shortage of skills, knowledge and experience.

If Big Data should fall behind

Now, for a start, I must state that Big Data will not fail, no matter what some grossly irresponsible data architecture and management professionals may claim (here’s one of the very worst of detractors here: Big Data is Dead! – yes, absolutely shocking isn’t it?)

However, in the hugely unlikely case that people fail to deliver Big Data benefits, we can quickly shift the focus and attention to what some people describe as unstructured data.

So, if you and your organisation find yourself all Big Data upped with nowhere to go, then you might like to go out on the town with content analysis, which will always require a lot of storage and computing power, especially if the text is duplicated to the nth degree, and then analysed to death, without rest or remorse.

The Internet of Things will turn pro

Hunter S. Thompson, classical exponent of gonzo inspired unstructured data, famously said that “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”. And nowhere is this now more evident than in the field of Big Data, Data Science, equations and the internet of all things sacred and profane.

There exists a surfeit of wearable and data-inclusive devices on the open market these days. Some are interesting, some are fascinating and some clearly faddish and lacking in practical Big Data usage. That said, 2015 will be the year they break out of the freak-niche and retentive- adopter markets as people’s need to be connected at all times continues to grow with the increase of mental health issues. Expect to see some genius big up genuine futurology predictions on digital-heat anytime soon.

Data equation tools will dictate the market

In 2015 there will be a mass of new launches of specialized software designed to use equations with data, making it easier for us to do complicated math, beyond subtraction, addition, multiplication and division.

Thanks to this new bleeding edge software we will at last be able to use mathematics and data to create new and enriched data, information, knowledge and wisdom.

So, there you have it. These have been my Big Data predictions for 2015, which can be aptly summed up by this fabulous quote from Big Data Master, Peter Cook, who famously said:

I saw an advertisement the other day for the secret of life. It said “The secret of life can be yours for twenty-five shillings, sent to Secret of Life Institute, Willesden.” So I wrote away, seemed a good bargain, secret of life, twenty-five shillings. And I got a letter back saying, “If you think you can get the secret of life for twenty-five shillings, you don’t deserve to have it. Send fifty shillings for the secret of life.”.

So, without further ado I wish you all an absolutely fabulous start, middle and end to 2015, a year that will be astonishing for big goats, big data and a massive dose of turbo-charged hype.

---

File under: Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Richard Jones, Martyn Jones, Cambriano Energy, Iniciativa Consulting, Iniciativa para Data Warehouse, Tiki Taka Pro