In the recent past, enterprises have been skeptical about the adoption of big data and its return on investment. However, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across various industry verticals have begun to leverage investments in big data analytics.
Analytics firms worldwide are also deploying analytical tools and techniques with big data gaining significant traction. More big data pilot projects are expected to be successfully delivered in the next few years because the returns on investment meet client expectations.
The rapid rate of big data adoption by SMEs is fueling SME Big Data Market growth at a CAGR of 42.94 percent for the 2013-2018 period.
TechNavio analysts have pinpointed the top 12 big data companies offering solutions tailored to SMEs:
IBM Corp.
IBM, a major big data vendor, is a provider of big data analytics, big data integration, and data analysis solutions. It acquired several companies such as Netezza Corp. for US$1.1 billion in 2010 and i2 Technologies Inc. and Algorithmics Inc. in 2011, which were pure-play big data vendors, to establish itself in the Big Data industry. Through these acquisitions, the company has enhanced its capabilities to deliver a comprehensive big data solution.
Hewlett-Packard Co.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) is one of the leading vendors in the market. On June 20, 2011, it launched Vertica Analytics Platform 5.0, a major new release that enables IT administrators to analyze more than one petabyte of data in real time.
The Vertica Cloud Analytics platform fulfils the BDaaS requirement. The company has expertise to deal with financial unstructured and structured data and, hence, can handle all its clients’ data and provide actionable insights. The company has already established itself in the market with its on-premises and on-demand big data solutions.
Oracle Corp.
Oracle offers one of the broadest and most integrated portfolios of products that help user enterprises manage data from diverse sources. In 2011, it acquired Endeca Technologies Inc., an e-commerce and BI company, and Datanomics Inc., a company that offered data-quality software. It acquired two more companies, DataRaker Inc., a cloud-based analytic platform company, and Cleartrail Technologies Pvt Ltd., a clinical analytics products company, in 2012.
Teradata Corp.
Teradata acquired Aster Data, the leader in big data analytics, in 2011. It has a strategic partnership with SAS Institute Inc. This partnership provides these companies with the ability to run and optimize key aspects of SAS solutions within a Teradata database. Teradata offers Teradata Active Data Warehouse, a private cloud-based data warehousing solution that virtualizes all processing and storage, which eliminates the need for customers to be concerned about the location or availability of system resources.
Amazon Web Services Inc.
Amazon Web Services Inc., a company launched in 2002, offers a cloud-computing platform. The company offers a wide range of solutions, including enterprise applications, web applications, game hosting, media sharing, high-performance computing, big data, archive, disaster recovery, and federal solutions. The company’s datacenters are located in the US, Europe, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, and Japan, and serve clients across 190 countries.
Cloudera Inc.
Cloudera Inc. provides commercial implementations of the Apache Hadoop open-source software. The company has been funded since 2008 by several investors, including Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, providing it with a total venture capital funding of US$141 million.
It is based in Palo Alto, California, US. It serves several enterprises across sectors such as Financial Services, Government, Telecom, Media, Advertising, Energy, Retail, Healthcare, Oil and Gas, and Gaming. It had more than 250 employees as of 2013. Along with software solutions such as Cloudera’s Distribution Including Apache Hadoop, commonly known as CDH, Cloudera Enterprise, and Service and Configuration Manager Express, the company provides several support packages.
Couchbase Inc.
Couchbase Inc. is a software company headquartered in California, US, with offices in San Francisco and the UK. The company’s products include the Couchbase Server and Couchbase Cross Datacenter Replication. Couchbase Server is the company’s flagship product and is a NoSQL document database for interactive web and mobile applications. It is easily scalable, provides consistent high performance, and is always on. This means that it can serve application data 24 hours a day, seven days a week and has a flexible JSON data model.
The company recently announced the second phase of its JSON Anywhere mobile strategy by delivering three new products. One is its Couchbase Lite product, which is a lightweight JSON database that sits on the mobile device. The second is Couchbase Sync Gateway, which is a companion product to Couchbase Server that synchronizes the mobile database with the bigger database in the cloud. The third is Couchbase Cloud, which is a mobile database-as-a-service product focused on mobile app developers who do not want to set up or manage a back-end database.
EMC Corp.
EMC Corp. is a leading vendor in the Global IT market and a prominent vendor in the Global SME Big Data market. It offers on-premises and on-demand Hadoop-based big data solutions to various private and government organizations. The company’s big data solutions enable enterprises with smaller data centers (with less storage equipment) to successfully manage large volumes of data, which increases the cost-efficiency. Additionally, it offers enterprise content management solutions for different data.
Google Inc.
Google Inc. announced the availability of Google App Engine MapReduce in 2010, indicating its presence in the Global HDaaS market. The company also provides big data analytics through its BiqQuery platform. These are web-based services and they can be deployed on a subscription basis.
Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft Corp. develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. It has five business segments: Windows and Windows Live Division, Server and Tools, Microsoft Business Division, Online Services Division and Entertainment, and Devices. The Cloud Computing service of Microsoft, including Microsoft Azure, comes under the Server and Tools segment. The company has a special focus on providing big data solutions to SMEs.
SAP AG
SAP AG is a German multinational company that provides software products for business applications, analytics, database and technology, cloud and mobile platforms. It is the largest software company in Europe and fourth largest in the world. The company focuses on SMEs and provides customized solutions as per business needs. Its featured solutions include big data and rapid deployment solutions. SAP has business operations in more than 130 countries and has been helping 251,000 customers operate efficiently.
Splunk Inc.
Splunk Inc. produces software that enables customers to search, correlate, analyze, monitor, and report on a real-time format. It helps clients analyze machine data and realize real-time visibility about their organization’s operations. The software is a machine data engine that indexes terabytes of data generated from various sources such as websites, servers, networks, and mobile devices.
The company focuses on verticals such as the Aerospace, Educational, Government, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, and Manufacturing sectors. It serves more than 5,000 customers in over 70 countries around the world.
