Big Data vendor market perception stays positive

Sentiment surrounding Big Data vendors remained positive last year, despite sceptics’ suggestions that the subject had been ‘over-hyped’.

The Big Data buzz word even managed to transcend from the enterprise IT world to become a hot topic for business publications and journals in 2012, with MongoDB claiming considerable mindshare among web developers who traditionally relied on MySQL.

“Given the level of build-up and suggested hype, it surprised us that sentiment expressed about Big Data vendors still remained so positive in 2012,” says Tony Baer, principal analyst, Ovum.

“What’s also interesting is the degree to which Big Data became a business, not just a technology story in 2012."

While positive mentions of Big Data vendors outnumbered negative mentions by 3:1, negative sentiment spiked in November with headlines over HP’s troubled acquisition of Autonomy.

Not surprisingly, given that vendors accelerated the pace of product announcements during 2012, 60% of Twitter activity occurred in the second half of the year.

“While Twitter streams are not a scientific focus group for detecting brand awareness, they provide a valuable window on market thinking,” Baer says.

“The data showed that while some players, such as IBM and Teradata, successfully scored high recognition in Twitter mentions, other enterprise players need to better focus their message to get Big Data recognition.”

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