Visual data discovery tools will be growing two-and-a-half times faster than rest of the business intelligence market. By 2018 investing in this enabler of end user self-service will become a requirement for all enterprises.

Other insights from IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Big Data and Analytics 2015 Predictions include:

* Over the next five years, spending on cloud-based BDA solutions will grow three times faster than spending for on-premise solutions. Hybrid on/off premise deployments will become a requirement.

* Shortage of skilled staff will persist. In the US alone there will be 181 000 deep analytics roles in 2018 and five times that many positions requiring related skills in data management and interpretation.

* By 2017 unified data platform architecture will become the foundation of BDA strategy. The unification will occur across information management, analysis, and search technology.

* Growth in applications incorporating advanced and predictive analytics, including machine learning, will accelerate in 2015. These apps will grow 65% faster than apps without predictive functionality.

* 70% of large organisations already purchase external data and 100% will do so by 2019. In parallel more organisations will begin to monetize their data by selling them or providing value-added content.

* Adoption of technology to continuously analyze streams of events will accelerate in 2015 as it is applied to IoT analytics – which is expected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30%.

* Decision management platforms will expand at a CAGR of 60% through 2019 in response to the need for greater consistency in decision-making and decision-making process knowledge retention.

* Rich media (video, audio, image) analytics will at least triple in 2015 and emerge as the key driver for BDA technology investment.

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

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