The Big Data market continues to exhibit strong momentum as businesses accelerate their transformation into data-driven companies. This momentum is driving strong growth in big data-related infrastructure, software, and services. A new forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC ) sees the big data technology and services market growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.1% over the 2014-2019 forecast period with annual spending reaching $48.6 billion in 2019. And a new IDC Special Study examines spending on big data solutions in greater detail across 19 vertical industries and eight big data technologies.

"The ever-increasing appetite of businesses to embrace emerging big data-related software and infrastructure technologies while keeping the implementation costs low has led to the creation of a rich ecosystem of new and incumbent suppliers," said Ashish Nadkarni , Program Director, Enterprise Servers and Storage and co-author of the report with Dan Vesset , Program Vice President, Business Analytics & Big Data. "At the same time, the market opportunity is spurring new investments and M&A activity as incumbent suppliers seek to maintain their relevance by developing comprehensive solutions and new go-to-market paths."

All three major big data submarkets – infrastructure, software, and services – are expected to grow over the next five years. Infrastructure, which consists of computing, networking, storage infrastructure, and other datacenter infrastructure-like security – will grow at a 21.7% CAGR. Software, which consists of information management, discovery and analytics, and applications software – will grow at a CAGR of 26.2%. And services, which includes professional and support services for infrastructure and software, will grow at a CAGR of 22.7%. Infrastructure spending will account for roughly one half of all spending throughout the forecast period.

As big data matures, IDC expects its share of the larger Business Analytics market to increase. However, year-over-year growth within the big data market is forecast to gradually slow. The reduction in overall growth will be largely caused by increased price pressures for infrastructure and higher rates of commercialization of open source software. The availability and skill level of big data IT and analytics talent will also have a direct impact on the market.

While the business drivers, barriers, and potential benefits from deploying big data initiatives vary from industry to industry, these efforts are primarily focused on delivering a better customer experience, supporting product and service innovation, and optimizing business processes. Common barriers to adoption include security and privacy concerns, as well as the related challenges of collecting, using, and managing customers' personal data. A shifting regulatory environment is another area of concern across industries.

"The ability to leverage big data and analytics to develop an integrated view of customer activities and business operations will provide competitive differentiation to companies across industries," said Jessica Goepfert , Program Director for IDC's Global Technology and Industry Research Organization. "However, in addition to the huge opportunities, big data presents some significant risks and liabilities to organizations. Line of business and IT executives will need to approach these ongoing challenges with awareness, flexibility, adaptability, and responsibility."

From a vertical industry perspective, the largest industries for big data spending include discrete manufacturing ($2.1 billion in 2014), banking ($1.8 billion in 2014), and process manufacturing ($1.5 billion in 2014). The industries with the fastest growth rates include securities and investment services (26% CAGR), banking (26% CAGR), and media (25% CAGR).