Blog

Whenever New Year celebrations kick start, news stations run their yearly recap montages in a thrilling, cinematic fashion. So while we may lack some of the pyrotechnics of those broadcasts, you can still anticipate a lot of excitement from this 2014 Big Data recap. After all, Big Data is such a hot topic of conversation, even the White House is talking about it – but more on that in a bit.

Back when the year started, we discussed how much organizations were spending on Big Data compared to other IT areas (the tally was $34 million according to Gartner). While we are still waiting on the financial figures to come across to draw a direct comparison, there are some other interesting numbers to chew on.

Back in 2012, an article was written in Business Week prompting business schools to adapt business analytics as a standalone concentration within their curriculums. At the time, there were a few universities that offered full-fledged degree programs such as DePaul, Fordham, and North Carolina State. On the undergrad level, there were only three programs that came from Augusta State University, St. Joseph’s University, and Stuttgart Media University.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve seen some progress. According to an article in the Huffington Post, the role of “business analyst” became one of the fastest growing jobs in 2013. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed this phenomenon, predicting a 22% increase in jobs by 2020.

However, the demand for BA work still doesn’t match up with the manpower that’s presently available. McKinsey & Company revealed that by 2018, we could see a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 professionals with deep analytical skills.