Is big data an industry?

2012, EMC, IBM, Oracle and other multinational it giants have released large data strategy and products, the United States to implement large data programs, the United Nations to release large data reports, some cities and parks in China announced the development of large data industry ... Big data is undoubtedly the hottest it vocabulary of the year. However, the controversy is always with the hot spots, for large data, opponents think this is just another concept of enterprise processing and selling, another horse racing boom.

So, is the big data the IT sector is another concept of speculation, or the inevitable trend of industrial development? is the big data an industry? Sadie Consultants will focus on this topic, from the technical trends, industry concepts, national strategy three levels, discussed for what large data will become an industry and should be a major part of the country's strategic emerging industries to develop vigorously.

Large data industry is the inevitable trend of it technology innovation and application

At present, information and communication technology ushered in a new round of major breakthroughs. With the rapid development of the new generation of information technology such as cloud computing, mobile Internet and IoT, social informatization, Enterprise Informatization is becoming more and more mature, socialization network is rising gradually, and the sensor devices and mobile terminals are more and more connected to the network, all kinds of statistic data, transaction data, Interactive data and sensing data are being generated rapidly from all walks of life, with global data growing at an unprecedented rate and with more and more types of data. The total amount of data created and replicated globally in 2012 amounted to 2.7ZB, 200 million times times the total amount of global data in 2002, with more than 85% unstructured content such as text, photos, audio, video, medical images, etc.

Large-scale data gathering with a wide range, large number of production and updating, with unprecedented social and commercial value, has been commented as "new oil", "a new economic asset similar to money or gold" and has great potential for development. According to U.S. research institutions, large data can bring the U.S. medical services industry 300 billion of dollars a year value, the European public management of the annual value of 250 billion euros, helping the U.S. retail industry to raise 60% net profit, helping the U.S. manufacturing sector reduce the cost of 50% product development, assembly costs.

Looking at the development history of the world industry, the new technology that can bring application value will develop into a prosperous industry. The innovation and application of large data technology not only can deal with the challenge of data explosion, but also can create great value and promote social productivity, so large data will develop into an important new industry.

Second, the concept of large data industry can be clearly defined

From the perspective of industrial concept, large data industry is the collection of enterprise economic activities related to supporting large data organization management and value discovery, which conforms to the general principle of industry definition, that is, industry is a collection of enterprise economic activities with some kind of similar attribute.

First of all, from the understanding of industrial connotation, an enterprise's economic activities must have similar attributes. The common attribute of large data industry is to support large data organization management and value discovery.

Second, from the industrial extension understanding, an industry enterprise's economic activities must be able to materialize. Large data industry-related enterprise economic activities include: to achieve large data storage, retrieval, processing, analysis, display related IT hardware and software production, sales and leasing activities, and related information services. Can be divided into three aspects: (1) to build large data platform, to achieve large data organization and management, analysis and discovery of related IT hardware and software production, sales and leasing activities; (2) operation and management of large data platform, system integration, data security, cloud storage and other solutions and related consulting services (3) Data leasing business, analysis and forecast service, decision support service, data sharing platform and data analysis platform, which are related to large data application.

Third, from the industrial composition understanding, an industry must have the corresponding upstream and downstream industry chain. Large data industry chain according to the data value realization process includes data organization and management layer, data analysis and Discovery layer, data application and service layer and so on three levels, each layer contains corresponding IT technical facilities, software and information services. The large data industry chain structure is shown in Figure 1.

At the data organization and management level, related to (1) virtualization, data security, Distributed file systems, databases, data warehousing, data conversion tools, such as software sales and leasing, (2) Supporting data organization and management of storage equipment, servers, integrated machine and other IT infrastructure hardware production, sales and leasing, (3) Support data organization and management of platform planning consulting, system integration, cloud storage and other services.

Fig. 1 Panorama of large data industry chain

Source: Sadie Consultant Industry Database 2012,12

In the data analysis and discovery layer, it involves (1) the sales and leasing of software such as parallel operations, data statistics, content/knowledge management, data mining, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, semantic analysis and data visualization. (2) Supporting data analysis and discovery of servers, high-performance computing equipment, one machine and other IT infrastructure hardware production, sales and leasing. (3) Support data analysis and discovery of computing platform consulting planning, system integration and other services.

In the data application and service layer, it involves sales and leasing of hardware such as data rental business, analysis and forecast service, decision support service, data sharing platform, data analysis platform and other business models to provide end users with raw data, data value and data capability, as well as IT infrastructure supporting data analysis and sharing platform. , system integration, operations management services.

Four, from the industry to face the market understanding, an industry must have corresponding market demand and end users. For the large data industry, the government and the public sector, industry enterprises, individual consumers are their end users. In the field of government and public utilities, large data can be applied to the fields of social management and people's livelihood, such as urban planning, public safety, public transport, and the management of pubic opinion, bringing about many benefits, such as efficiency improvement, speed of response, improvement of service level and decrease of management cost. For industry enterprises, large data can be applied to product research and development design, production operation Management, supply chain management, customer relationship management, enterprise brand marketing and other links, can help enterprises accurately grasp market demand changes, improve product design and production efficiency, improve the agility and accuracy of the supply chain, and achieve personalized precision marketing. For individual consumers, through the application of large data services will make information more ubiquitous, from family life, travel, consumption, entertainment, tourism, learning and other aspects of expanding the people's living space, improve the quality of life of the people, leading the digital era of intelligent life come.

Five, from the main body of industry participation understanding, an industry must have real enterprises to participate in it. Because large data industry can bring huge economic and social benefits to social management, enterprise innovation, personal life and so on, it has attracted a large number of it enterprises to actively invest and layout large data related hardware and software products and services (as shown in Figure 2), greatly promoting the innovation of IT technology.

Figure 2 Large data industry-related enterprises at a glance

Source: Sadie Consultant Industry database, 2012,12

To sum up, although the current large data industry in China is still at the initial stage of development, market size is still relatively small, 2012 only for 450 million yuan; and the current large data market leading manufacturers are still in the majority of foreign companies, domestic manufacturers are fast follow-up, the overall industrial ecological environment is not mature. But from the aspect of industry intension extension, industry chain, market demand, participation main body and so on comprehensive appraisal, the big data industry development impetus is very strong, in the next 3-5 years the industrial scale and the market scale will realize the rapid growth.

III. large data industries should be integrated into national strategies

From a national strategic perspective, to promote the large data as a strategic emerging industry to the national strategic level, it will help to arouse the government and industry to pay attention to large data, promote the security of large data, storage and processing technology innovation and industrialization, so as to protect the data sovereignty of our country and seize the commanding heights in the new round of international economic competition

First, in the era of large data, national competitiveness will be partly reflected in the size of a country's data, activity and the ability to interpret and use data, the national data sovereignty embodies the possession and control of the data. The data sovereignty will be the space of the game between frontier defense, coastal defense and air defense, and China should pay great attention to it.

Second, the United Nations and the world's major countries began to pay attention to and use of large data for economic and social value of the great, China needs to actively respond. July 10, 2012, the United Nations published the Big Data government white paper "Big Data for development: challenges and opportunities", pointed out that governments should use a wealth of data resources to better respond to social and economic indicators. The United States Government has launched a large data research and development initiative and has pledged that the government will invest over $200 million trillion and that many key national institutions will be involved. In July 2012, the general Ministry of Japan issued a new comprehensive strategy of "active ICT Japan", which is aimed at discussing the present situation, development trend and problems faced by large data popularization, in order to make contribution to solving social public problems.

Third, large data for China to bring social and economic innovation and development of important opportunities. First, a new means to improve the level of social management, will lead China's economic and social informatization to a new level. Second, a new generation of information technology convergence application focus: with large data as the node, the next generation of information technology applications will be the collection of information, and create huge business value, economic value and social value. Third, the industry enterprises to enhance the competitiveness of a new way: the real ability to use large data, and its value into productive enterprises will have a strong competitive advantage, and become the industry leader.

Therefore, China should put large data into the category of strategic emerging industries, in the "Twelve-Five" national Strategic emerging Industry Development plan to support the mass data storage, processing technology research and development and industrialization, the further provision of active support policies and moderately loose development environment. At the same time, from the national level attaches great importance to large data security, in large data security standards and law two levels, the establishment of large data security of the complete security system for the development of China's large data industry escort.

To sum up, large data is not only an industry, but also should be included in the national strategic emerging industries category. We believe that, with the overall planning and support of the State, through local governments to formulate a large data industry development strategy, through the domestic and foreign it leading enterprises and many innovative enterprises actively participate in the future development of large data industry prospects are very broad.