I published a blog post titled Big Data and Rise of Predictive Analytics a couple of days back in which I highlighted that “I am happy to say that Predictive Analytics (or Advanced Analytics as some would prefer to say) is going main stream in 2013, thanks to Big Data. It is not too difficult to understand why given the three Vs of Big Data, namely Volume, Variety and Velocity. Only way one can derive full benefits out of Big Data is by using predictive analytics and this is forcing large and medium companies to make necessary investments in building analytics infrastructure and reporting capabilities. And this is excellent news for those in Analytics profession or technology companies/service providers who help clients derive insights from mountains of (big) data.“
Good to see that major enterprise software vendors have started focusing their attention on predictive analytics. Here’s a very good infographic on Predictive Analytics published by SAP Blog (infographic embedded below):
Harish, I agree that Predictive Analytics is a big and important trend. It’s about time.
But, I think we’re a long way from PA becoming “mainstream” — if by that you mean widespread adoption.
There’s a lot of talk about Big Data and PA, and that’s a good forerunner of action.
I think we’re all a bit too quick to declare something mainstream when something becomes buzzworthy. PA is tricky stuff, and many companies lack the skills to really put it to work. Technology is still too complex.
I’m also not convinced that Big Data is all that useful for most companies, for PA applications. This is another term that is being hyped, and may have some PA applications (social, web) but my take is most companies would be better served looking for PA opportunities in the mountains of transactional data they already have.
So perhaps 2013 will be the year that PA becomes mainstream in the media. I hope so. Mainstream adoption is probably a few years away.
This is definitely the direction that we are moving in. It’s no longer enough to look at what happened, it’s more important to determine what WILL happen. It’s just necessary to have the capabilities that will allow you to take action from the data.