Fewer tech trends are likely to be hotter than Big Data analytics in 2015 as far as the enterprise is concerned. Hot on the heels of Forrester’s forecast that Hadoop will become an “enterprise priority” in the next 12 months, International Data corp. has just gazed into its own crystal ball, and sees a future where spending on Big Data analytics is set to grow three times faster in 2015.

IDC’s pronouncements came during a its Worldwide Big Data and Analytics 2015 Predictions web conference last week, where it looked at long-term trends in Big Data as well as new themes it thinks will appear in the next 2-3 years. The biggest takeaway? Within the next three years, all major enterprises will find themselves compelled to invest in data visualization tools to keep pace with the competition.

“Leading organisations are changing how they measure their operations, interactions with customers, and resource allocations,” said Dan Vesset program VP for Business Analytics and Big Data research. “Faster access to more relevant data and constant experimentation is creating a further gap between leaders and the rest of the organisations. It is also creating new challenges for IT and business leaders tasked with their organisation’s big data and analytics strategy and execution.”

IDC made the following predictions:

• Visual data discovery tools will grow 2.5x faster than rest of the business intelligence market, and by 2018 investing in this enabler of end user self-service will become a requirement for all enterprises.

• Over the next 5 years, spending on cloud-based Big Data analytics solutions will grow three times faster than spending for on-premise solutions, and hybrid on/off premise deployments will become a requirement.

• Shortage of skilled staff will persist, with almost 200,000 deep analytics jobs expected in the US alone by 2018.

• By 2017, unified data platform architecture will become the foundation of Big Data analytics strategy.

• Apps that incorporate advanced and predictive analytics, including machine learning, will accelerate in 2015 and will grow 65 per cent faster than apps without this functionality.

• 70 per cent of large organizations already purchase external data and 100 per cent will do so by 2019.

• More organisations will begin to monetize their data by selling them or providing value added content.

• Adoption of technology to continuously analyse streams of events will accelerate in 2015 as it is applied to IoT analytics, which is expected to grow at a 5-year CAGR of 30 per cent.

• Decision management platforms will expand at a CAGR of 60 per cent through 2019.

• Rich media analytics will at least triple in 2015 and emerge as the key driver for Big Data anlytics technology investment.

• By 2018, half of all consumers will interact with services based on cognitive computing on a regular basis.

Granted IDC’s list is a long one, and so it’s unlikely that all of its predictions will ring true. Nevertheless, it highlights a fact that few can deny – Big Data analytics is becoming increasingly important for all enterprises, and that means organizations will have to ensure they possess both the skills and the resources in the right places to make the most of it. We need only look at the newly formed partnership between Apple and IBM to see how essential Big Data analytics has become.

As noted in a recent, unrelated survey by the consultancy firm Nemertes, more than 65 percent of organizations already have some kind of Big Data initiative in place. “As initiatives progress, organisations focus less on the technical hurdles, having figured many of them out and instead focus on output value,” said Matt Craig, research lead at Nemertes. “Many solutions can work extremely well, yet if there is no way to analyse and share the information in a simple, concise manor, the value drops significantly.”

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