Sponsored post: Big data analytics is hot and getting hotter; 5 trends explain why

Big data analytics leader Pentaho Corporation has identified five key trends driving the market:

1. The big data platforms ecosystem is exploding: The popularity of several open-source big data platforms such as Hadoop, MongoDB, Cassandra and HBase is growing enormously, making it technically and economically viable to store and analyze big data.

2. Commercial-quality big data platforms are here: Commercial companies now provide professional quality assurance and technical support and services for the leading big data platforms, so organizations can feel confident running their businesses on them.

3. Successful applications and results on the rise: Big data analytics are being applied in a growing number of organizations spanning digital media, mobile apps, gaming, health care, security, finance and government. Compelling applications are emerging in the analysis of customer behavior, lead conversion, security threats, social media marketing, product management and supply chain optimization.

4. It’s just not that hard anymore: The complexity of big data technology initially was an obstacle, but new big data visual development tools like Pentaho eliminate the need for specialist big data platform developers to write code, greatly reducing the time to solution. As a result, more businesses are quickly uncovering insights that were previously out of reach.

5. Big data ecosystems are maturing rapidly: More software, hardware and services are emerging on the big data scene every day. IDC estimates that total revenue for big data will reach nearly $17 billion by 2015, growing at a rate about seven times faster than the overall IT market.