Most analytics apps will come with Hadoop by 2015
Connecting state and local government leaders
Adding the open-source framework will lead to more task-specific analytics for agencies that need to turn data into insights and decisions they can act on, says Gartner.
As government agencies tap into the power of the Apache Hadoop open-source programming framework to analyze large volumes of data, developers will embed purpose-built, Hadoop-based analysis functions within their applications.
In fact, by 2015, 65 percent of packaged applications with advanced analytics will come embedded with Hadoop, according to a report by market researcher Gartner.
Hadoop-powered analytic applications will help reduce operational costs and IT skills requirements as well as speed up the time it takes for analysts to derive real value from data, said Bill Gassman, research director at Gartner. Technology providers, in turn, will be able to deliver more task-specific analytics directly to those who need to turn analysis into actionable insights and decisions, he said.
Hadoop uses the MapReduce programming framework to distribute queries of large data sets across clusters of computers, which can create efficient, cost-effective approach to analytics.
The Gartner report provides two other key predictions for BI teams to consider when planning for the future:
First, by 2015, more than 30 percent of analytics projects will deliver results based on structured and unstructured data, the researcher predicts. To date, business analytics have largely been focused on tools and technologies for the analysis of structured data. This is changing as government agencies and businesses try to gain insights from new and diverse data sources – audio, e-mails, text, social media, video and a variety of sensors. Correlating, analyzing, presenting and embedding insights from structured and unstructured information together will allow agencies to better personalize the customer experience, said Rita Sallam, research vice president at Gartner.
Second, Gartner says that by 2016, 70 percent of leading BI vendors will have incorporated natural-language and spoken-word capabilities. Business intelligence and analytics vendors have been slow to provide language- and voice-enabled applications, according to Gartner. As they port applications to mobile and tablet devices, BI vendors have tended to focus only on adapting traditional point-and-click user interfaces to touch-based interfaces.
Over the next few years, BI vendors will enable basic voice commands as standard interfaces, followed by natural language processing of spoken or text input into SQL queries. Ultimately, personal analytic assistants will emerge that understand user context, offer two-way dialogue, and maintain a conversational thread, Gartner analysts said.