Just because it’s a hot topic that everyone has been talking about since 2012 doesn’t mean that it’s actually real, useful, or the future of technology.
The global market for big data, analytics and business intelligence solutions was worth $22 billion in 2012—and it will keep growing, at a compound annual growth rate of 12.7 percent, through 2017.
That $40 billion estimate, by the way, comes courtesy of the market research firm Frost & Sullivan.