When Big Data is Passé

Has the term Big Data jumped the shark? Is it headed deep into Gartner’s trough of disillusionment? KD Nuggets recently polled its readership to find out what phrase is most likely to replace the buzzworthy term, and when.

The top choices were (drum roll, please):

1. Smart Data (with 29 percent of the vote) – With the advent of the Smart Car and the Smart Grid, why not Smart Data? Trouble is there are already a bunch of companies and products with “Smart Data” in their names, and competitors won’t use the phrase. Also, the word “smart” doesn’t describe the sheer volume of the data.
2. Big Analytics (with 28 percent of the vote) – The industry may grow tired of the phrase “Data,” but apparently not of the word “Big.” We actually think KD Nuggets readers are onto something. We are calling Big Data in marketing Big Marketing … and we don’t think other “Big” terms are too far away.  With IDC predicting that the global business analytics software market will grow nearly 10 percent per year through 2016, the conversation is already shifting from data to analytics.
3. A three way tie between Data+, Linked Data and Internet of Things (ranging from 8.8 and 9.5 percent of the vote) – These terms missed the mark with the majority of respondents. Data+ is confusing … is it an iPhone USB adaptor or a mobile service plan? Linked Data sounds a lot like LinkedIn, and Internet of Things is a great concept, not quite a buzzword. None resonate as well as the Tarzan-esque “Big Data."

In the list of options, we didn’t see anything down the bigger than "Big" path. Extreme Data, Max Data, Radical Data, Ultimate Data. Anyone?

By 2014, 33 percent of KD Nuggets readers predict the conversation will have moved beyond Big Data. After all, we are moving up the stack, from the network (cloud and mobile) to the infrastructure (Big Data) to services. Terms like Big Data may go in and out of style. But no matter what you call it, the underlying potential—turning huge data sets into actionable insight—is here to stay. What do you think is next?