Big Data to contribute to millions of jobs by 2015

Big Data will help create up to 4.4 million jobs by 2015, Gartner has said.

Rubbing its crystal ball, the analyst house has said the IT trend will generate 1.9 million IT jobs in the United States with every big data-related role in the US creating employment for three people outside of IT.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to surpass $3.7 trillion in 2013, a 3.8 percent increase from 2012 projected spending of $3.6 trillion, with big data leading the way.

However, there are storm clouds ahead with the company warning that businesses could struggle to recruit in the big data sector, claiming that there was “not enough talent in the industry.”

Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of research said this was because public and private education systems were failing us.

He claimed that only one-third of the IT jobs would be filled with data experts being a “scarce, valuable commodity”.

He said that to prevent this IT leaders would need “immediate focus” on how their organisation develops and attracts the skills required.

“These jobs will be needed to grow your business. These jobs are the future of the new information economy,” he warned.

When it comes to technology, Gartner claimed that the cloud was the carrier for the three other Forces: mobile is personal cloud, social media is only possible via the cloud, and big data is the killer app for the cloud.

It said that cloud would be the permanent fixture and was key in bringing new approaches to designing applications and providing more resilience by architecturing failure as a design concept.