The year 2019 brought a demand for real-time (or as near to real-time as possible) data analytics while the role of data itself expanded in importance in areas such as decision-making and operations. While it is safe to assume that 2020 will continue to build upon these trends, data analytics will continue to expand in importance and overall use cases.

The following are just a few trends in the world of big data to be on the lookout for.

• Life-Cycle Development – Information technology departments will start to think of their data analytics in the same way as traditional, more transactional applications. Beginning with application development and testing, IT departments will develop policies for the management of life-cycles within the data analytics world that will eventually expand into support, disaster recovery, and backups.
• In-Memory Processing – As the cost of in-memory processing decreases, it will drive more analytics to be conducted in real-time environments. For companies looking to have the ability to instantly respond to sales and business alerts or activities, this will make a world of difference.
• Prediction – Companies have traditionally used data analytics to gain an understanding of past events and the current state of things. In 2020, it is expected that there will be a movement towards using predictive analytics to make assessments about the future for better decisions.
• Graph Analytics – As data science as a whole continues to grow in importance in the everyday business workings of modern companies, the traditional spreadsheet will be given up for graph analytics. This will allow businesses to determine better connections between data while simplifying the task of linking information to improve business insights.
• Automation – Data scientists will be able to be more productive at a faster pace thanks to the automation of data in 2020 thanks to access to accurately vetted and prepared data faster than a human is capable of providing.
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning – Through the power of these two game-changers in the world of data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning will allow business to harness the power of augmented analytics with machine-generated data queries. These technologies will then learn about the data by observing repetitive patterns, outcomes, and overall processes to create posing derivative queries.

As more companies begin to understand the sheer importance of data science and incorporate data analytics into their company structure, these trends are sure to grow in popularity over the year – and many more are bound to come up. Is your company ready to handle the data boom of 2020?