Predictive Analytics Cloud: Opportunities, Trends and Big Data Impact
Highlights from a significant new report by Decision Management Solutions on Predictive Analytics in the Cloud: Opportunities, Trends and Big Data Impact. The top driver was reduced cost while data security and privacy remain the primary obstacles reported. Download this free report.
Guest blog by James Taylor, Nov 13, 2013
Decision Management Solutions has recently completed some research into Predictive Analytics in the Cloud Research and the results are clear. Predictive analytics in the cloud is becoming mainstream, with broader and accelerating adoption. You can download the full report from the 
Information Management white paper section.
A few highlights:
The number of companies reporting a positive impact from predictive analytics has risen dramatically since 2011. Two thirds of this year's respondents have seen a positive impact from using predictive analytics in their business.
Over 60% of survey respondents said they were using at least one kind of predictive analytics in the cloud - a significant increase over 2011. An astonishing 90% said it was likely they would have at least one class of solution widely deployed in the next few years.
The top driver for all this activity was reduced cost while data security and privacy, along with regulatory and compliance concerns, remain the primary obstacles reported.
The big focus area for predictive analytics among respondents is in customer engagement. In particular customer satisfaction, customer profitability, customer retention and customer management.
Big Data is a hot topic and when asked about new data types, more experienced analytic teams show much higher usage than in 2011.
Social Media, Sensor, Weblog, Audio and Image data types are all rated as much more important in analytic models among those with successful analytic deployments. With more successful, more established teams using Big Data more broadly it seems likely that there will soon be a rapid and significant growth in the use of new data types in building predictive analytics.
Predictive analytics is increasingly focused on near real-time, operational data, which grew the most in importance between 2011 and 2013.
Early adopters with one or more predictive analytics solutions deployed in the cloud were significantly more likely to have plans to expand deployment and were likely to rate the value of predictive analytics in the cloud more highly. Exposure to predictive analytics in the cloud breeds enthusiasm.
The importance of embedding predictive analytics in operational systems was clear from the results. Over 95% of survey respondents who reported tightly integrating predictive analytics into operations (Decision Management in other words) also reported transformative or significant impact. The percentage reporting such integration has risen significantly since 2011. Decision Management, with its systematic embedding of predictive analytics into automated decision-making systems, is an ideal approach to maximize the transformative power of predictive analytics and a rapidly growing area.
Here is the full report and you can also watch a recording of the webinar with Jim Ericson and James Taylor, presenting the report results.
James Taylor is CEO of Decision Management Solutions and author, most recently, of Decision Management Systems, A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Predictive Analytics.
