A MarketsandMarkets report forecasts that the market for big data platforms worldwide will grow at a compound annual rate of 25.52 percent to $46.34 billion by 2018.
The report provides an analysis of big data market trends by product and service type, by region and by vertical segment, the market research and consulting firm said Monday.
The global big data technology sector was valued at an estimated $14.87 billion last year, according to the article.
Accenture, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Microsoft have been identified as major industry players in the report.
Efforts to upgrade business processes and improve system performance will help drive growth for the big data market during the next four years, MarketsandMarkets predicts.
Other trend drivers include the surge in unstructured data and increased demand for predictive analytics tools, according to the report.
MarketsandMarkets projects the software segment will have a 28.7 percent compound annual growth rate through 2018.
In 2018, North America is expected to become the world’s largest big data market based on revenue and technology deployment figures, the market research company states.