Written by: Leon Gordon, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Big data is used in every domain and there is an urgent demand to collect and preserve the data that is generated. A large amount of data is floating around us. What we can do with that data is a matter of consideration. That is the reason that big data analytics is at the forefront of Information Technology (Nie et al., 2018). Big data has become an important and prominent part and helps organizations to enhance their business decision-making capabilities and deliver a significant edge over their competitors (Moe et al., 2018). Big data analytics can be applied in organizations and professionals can apply it in their analytics domain. For the professionals who have great skills in big data, there are oceans of opportunities waiting for them within the industry.
Why Big Data?
There are many individuals who believe that big data is the most significant thing that can help organizations to float up above their competitors and helps them in their respective sector.
Companies are generating a gigantic amount of data and information regardless of which industry they belong to and there is a demand to store, access, and process this data to enable the organization to easily enable analytics. Ensuring they never miss important information, which is the leading breakthrough in their respective sector (Nie et al., 2018). Atul Butter who is a member of Standford school of medicine has analyzed the importance of data after saying that “Hiding within those mounds of data is the knowledge that could change the life of a patient or change the world”. And this is the domain where big data analytics can play an important role (Shirani, 2019). Using the big data platforms, a gigantic amount of data can be assembled and processed to introduce new patterns that can help the organizations to enhance their decision-making capabilities which helps the organizations to grow, maximize their productivity and help to deliver valuable services and products (Moe et al., 2018).
Top reasons to choose big data and analytics as a career
Big data and analytics help organizations to prove business trends with factual accuracy and is now vital for the success of every business irrespective of the business size and domain. Big data analytics has become important for not only organizations but also for individuals who have professional skills in the analytics domain. Big data analytics are highly in demand and the data is useless if the organization does not have desired skills to analyze it (Moe et al., 2018).
Numerous job opportunities in the domain of big data and analytics are available and companies are always looking for qualified data professionals and the true potential of unlocking big data to handle their business decisions positively. Skilled big data analytics professionals are provided with big pay packages and the high salary trend can indicate the growth of businesses. Many IT professionals are looking to invest their money and time in big data analytics training. All of this points toward big data analytics being a career path that will stay and it is a key point to take note of when deciding on a career in big data analytics. So, the following are the major 5 reasons why big data is the best career move (Shirani, 2019).
Huge Job Opportunities
The demand for big data analytics professionals is growing over time but there is a huge deficit in the availability of highly skilled professionals. This is not only happening in a particular region, but it is happening globally. Big data analytics is a hot job, there is a large number of jobs available across the globe due to a limited number of individuals in that domain. A study by McKinsey Global Institute states that the US will face a deficiency of 190,000 data scientists and almost 1.5 million analysts and managers who can understand big data and make decisions (Moe et al., 2018).
According to a current survey, India has the highest concentration on analytics in the entire world.
Moreover, data analytics trend scarcity is acute and demands a talent that is expected to be higher as the organizations are hiring from outside their organization for their work. One more analysis by Srikanth Velamakanni who is the co-founder of Fractal Analytics elaborates that there are deficiencies in two types of talents. Data scientists who can perform large-scale analysis on big data and analytics consultants who can understand and define how to use the data. The talent for these two jobs is extremely scarce and in demand.
Moreover, the current qualified data professionals' demand is just the start. In the next few years, the size of the analytics market will evolve almost by one-third of the global IT professionals from the current which is one-tenth (Shirani, 2019). Technology professionals who have experience in analytics are highly in demand because organizations are looking for methods to exploit the power of big data. The number of jobs in analytics has also increased in recent years. Other job sites are also explaining similar patterns. This surge is due to a number of organizations that implement analytics and looking for analytical professionals. In a study by QuinStreet Inc., It was defined that the trend of big data implementation is expanding and is considered to be a high priority among businesses in the US. Moreover, a vast majority of organizations are also in the process of implementing an action plan to enable a data-driven culture in their business need in the coming years.
Good salary package
Huge demand in data analytics is boosting the salary demands for qualified professionals and making big data pay big for the right skills (Nie et al., 2018). This phenomenon has been seen globally and countries like Australia and UK have witnessed this surge. According to a survey of skills and salaries published by the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA), the average annual salary for data analytics is $130,000 which is almost 5% higher than in previous years. The data analytics professionals rising demand is also reflecting the IAPA’s membership which has grown to more than 5000 members since its formation.
Moreover, Radstad states that the annual pay for big data professionals in India is more than 50% of any other IT professionals. According to a report by Indian Analytics Industry Salaet Trend, the average salary of data analytics professionals in India was up more than 21% from the previous years (Moe et al., 2018). The report also elaborates that 14% of all analytical professionals get a salary of more than 15 lakh per annum. A salary trend of big analytics in the UK also states exponential and positive growth. A quick search shows that the average salary of a big data analytics job of £62,500, as compared to £55,000 in the same period. Moreover, year on year, a median change of +13.63% is observed.
Enhance decision-making capabilities
Big data analytics is a competitive source for many organizations. They do not doubt it. According to a survey about “Analytics Advantage” by Tom Davenport, almost 96% of organizations responded that big data analytics has become an important and prominent part in the past few years. The reason behind this is the huge amount of data that is used, and only very rudimentary analytics is being performed at this point. More than 9% of respondents in the survey believe that analytics is a key factor to enhance decision-making capabilities. Another 16% of individuals say that it is the key strategic initiative. Also, big data analytics plays a prominent role in enhancing business strategies and making significant business decisions. 75% of respondents say in the survey “Peer-Research Big Data Analytics Survey” that big data analytics can add value to their organizations and enables vital information for making effective and timely decisions for their great performance. This indicates clearly that big data analytics will stay as a career, and it can be the wisest decision that you can ever make.
Numerous job opportunities
From a career perspective, there are a large number of job opportunities available in terms of big data. Since big data analytics is used in different domains, there is a large variety of job titles for anyone to choose from. Some job opportunities are, Big Data Analytics business consultant, big data engineer, big data analytics architect, big data solution architect, big data analytics, business intelligence, and analytical consultant, metric and analytics specialist as well as analytics associate (Moe et al., 2018).
Big data analytics is a vast domain and individuals can select three different types of data analytics depending upon the big data environment. These 3 types of analytics are prescriptive analytics, predictive analytics, and descriptive analytics. A large number of organizations such as IBM, Ayata, Teradata, Alteryx, Microsoft, ITrend, Platfora, Oracle, Opera, Karmasphere, Datameer, Centrofuge, Pentaho, Domo, FICO, Saffron, Quid, GoodData, Jaspersoft, Tracx, Bluefin Labs, Panaroma software and many others are some of the technologies that are used in big data analytics. Learning some of these tools and solving business demands can lead to accessing huge job opportunities which are possible within this domain (Groysberg et al., 2019).
Management of a huge amount of data
In this current era, new technologies are creating many opportunities to make it easy to perform sophisticated data analytics over diverse and large datasets. This is evident from the report that the Data Warehousing Institute shows. According to this report, more than a third part of the respondents are using some form of more advanced analytical skills of big data for business intelligence, data mining tasks, and predictive analytics (Nie et al., 2018).
Big data analytics deliver an edge over other competitors. The rate of implementing the required analytical tools has also grown exponentially. Most of the respondents of the survey “Peer Research Big data analytics” state that they already have a strategic setup for dealing with big data analytics (Groysberg, et al., 2019). And those who have not yet created a strategy are also in the process of planning for it. When we talk about the adoption of big data analytics tools, the adoption of the Microsoft framework continues to be a popular choice. There are a large variety of commercial and open-source frameworks available in the market to choose from and the organizations can make a significant choice according to their requirements. More than half of respondents say that some tools are already deployed and are currently implementing Hadoop distribution (. Some of them, almost a quarter of the respondents have already deployed the open-source frameworks which is double the number of organizations that have deployed a commercial distribution of the Hadoop framework.
Conclusion
There are a large number of urgent opportunities available for competent and skilled individuals who have the capabilities to understand the data, think from the perspective of the business, and deliver deeper insights (Moe et al., 2018). That is the major reason why more and more organizations are looking towards harnessing the power of the big data professionals, and technology, particularly those who have strong skills in analytics which is high in demand. That’s why now is a great time for professionals that are looking to boost their careers and want to become an asset to their organization (Alaoui et al., 2019).
In addition, even with the increase in automated analytics, it does not eliminate the demand for human insights. Organizations require competent and skilled individuals who have the capabilities to understand the data, think from the business perspective and come up with deeper insights. Due to this reason, technology professionals with analytics are considering themselves in high demand and businesses look towards such skills to harness the power of big data.
Leon Gordon, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Leon Gordon, is a leader in data analytics. A current Microsoft Data Platform MVP based in the UK and a Partner at Pomerol Partners (pomerolpartners.com). During the last decade, he has helped organizations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data.
Leon is a Thought Leader at the Forbes Technical Council, an Executive Contributor to Brainz Magazine, a Thought Leader in Data Science for the Global AI Hub, chair for the Microsoft Power BI – UK community group and the DataDNA data visualization community as well as an international speaker and advisor.
References:
Nie, M., Yang, L., Sun, J., Su, H., Xia, H., Lian, D., & Yan, K. (2018). Advanced forecasting of career choices for college students based on campus big data. Frontiers of Computer Science, 12(3), 494-503.
Moe, Z. H., San, T., Tin, H. M., Hlaing, N. Y., & Tin, M. M. (2018, May). Evaluation for teacher’s ability and forecasting student’s career based on big data. In International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Deep Learning Applications (pp. 20-27). Springer, Singapore.
Shirani, A. (2019). Upskilling and retraining in data analytics: a skill-adjacency analysis for career paths. Issues in Information Systems, 20(4).
Groysberg, B., Johnson, W., & Lin, E. (2019). What to do when industry disruption threatens your career. MIT Sloan Management Review, 60(3), 57-65.
Alaoui, S. S., Aksasse, B., & Farhaoui, Y. (2019). Air pollution prediction through internet of things technology and big data analytics. International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies, 8(3), 177-191.
