Big data has increased the demand of information management specialists in that Software AG, Oracle Corporation, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, EMC, HP and Dell have spent more than $15 billion on software firms specializing in data management and analytics.
In 2010, this industry was worth more than $100 billion and was growing at almost 10 percent a year: about twice as fast as the software business as a whole.
Developed economies increasingly use data-intensive technologies.
There are 4.6 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, and between 1 billion and 2 billion people accessing the internet.
Between 1990 and 2005, more than 1 billion people worldwide entered the middle class, which means more people become more literate, which in turn leads to information growth.
The world's effective capacity to exchange information through telecommunication networks was 281 petabytes in 1986, 471 petabytes in 1993, 2.2 exabytes in 2000, 65 exabytes in 2007 and predictions put the amount of internet traffic at 667 exabytes annually by 2014.
According to one estimate, one third of the globally stored information is in the form of alphanumeric text and still image data,
which is the format most useful for most big data applications.
This also shows the potential of yet unused data (i.e. in the form of video and audio content).
While many vendors offer off-the-shelf solutions for Big Data, experts recommend the development of in-house solutions custom-tailored to solve the company's problem at hand if the company has sufficient technical capabilities.