Nathan Brixius

How many real Big Data applications are there?

2013-03-09·analytics, big data

I’d like to generate a bit of robust discussion and speculation about the use of analytics in the real world.

Off the top of my head, I would guess that:

  • The number of production grade, profit impacting big data applications worldwide is around 1,000.
  • The number of production grade, profit impacting optimization (prescriptive analytics) applications worldwide is around 10,000.
  • The number of production grade, profit impacting predictive analytics applications worldwide is around 100,000.

(By “profit impacting” I mean $50K or more per year. This means that startups with a website and a beta do not necessarily count.

This thought exercise was prompted by the realization that the share of press of each category seems to be significantly different than the number of actual projects.

The big question: am I full if it? If so, why? Either way, is this meaningful in some way?