Following on from my previous post about who are influential in the debate on Big Data I decided to have a look at how much attention some of the main players are drawing and how it has developed over time. Our market intelligence platform, InfluenceMonitor, has the answer (and keeps it up-to-date).
The chart below shows the Share-of-Influence (SoI) of 9 brands often associated with the Big Data debate.
SoI is the share of the mention, but with each mention weighed in with the measured influence (on the topic of Big Data) of the voice that makes the mention. The direction of SoI is often a leading indicator for the direction of market share.
The graph shows a number of interesting trends.
First, notice how Oracle has really done well in Q4 and Q1 (so far).
Second, HP seems to be losing out. The Autonomy deal announced in Q3 11 did seem to buck the negative trend in that quarter, but hasn’t helped in Q4 and Q1 12.
Third, McKinsey, a thought leader in the space, have grown their influence almost 9 fold from Q1 11 to Q1 12.
Looking at the graph the big question is clearly, “what did Oracle do that so dramatically moved the needle?”
Well, big data (sorry) helps answer the question.
Using the root-cause analysis function in InfluenceMonitor it turns out that the increase in Oracle’s SoI from Q3 to Q4 was driven by several factors. Oracle’s launch of their NoSQL database had a substantial impact and so did the fact that Day 2 of Oracle OpenWorld focused on Big Data and Analytics.
The attention to Oracle in Q1 12 was largely driven by its launch of Big Data Appliance and its partnership with Cloudera.
The screenshot below shows the Root-Cause Analysis in InfluenceMonitor. The box on the left shows what was driving growth from the first selected metric or period to the next. The right box shows what was pulling the metric the other way. So very quickly you get a good understanding of what was moving the needle.
Companies mentioned: Cloudera, HP, Mckinsey, SAS, Teradata, Microsoft, EMC, IBM, Oracle
Big Data is attracting increased attention these days and I had a quick look at who are the most influential stakeholders of the debate.
The list below shows the top 15 most influential stakeholders in the debate on Big Data.
There may not be many surprises. McKinsey is clearly getting credit for their recent excellent overview of the whole area.
Curt Monash (at #13) is the most influential individual.
Conferences play a big role. Strata Conference and GigaOM’s Structure conference draw a lot of attention and influence.
How to read the list (left to right): The arrow shows the most recent direction of movement and a star means they are new to the list. Example: NY Times is moving down the list and GigaOM is moving up.
Influence here is the relative punching weight of the individual stakeholder. Example: Since Oracle’s influence is about twice that of Forbes, communication on this issue from Oracle will have the twice the market impact than a similar message from Forbes.
Next column is Popularity, which is essentially a measure of how well-known a stakeholder is on the issue. GigaOM is the most well-known stakeholder on the issue, followed by NY Times and Techcrunch. So why are they not the most influential? Because those who cite those sources on this issue are on average less influential than those who cite for example Cloudera and Oracle.
The column Rel Influence shows how a stakeholder is punching in the debate, compared to what conventional wisdom (aka their popularity) leads us to believe. Notice how Curt Monash punches with 3 times the expected weight and Techcrunch punch below their expected weight. The explanation is simple. Those who cite Monash on this issue are, on average, much less influential than those who cite Techcrunch. Rel(ative) Influence is a great measure for identifying those who should be at the top of your engagement list.
Stakeholders listed: Cloudera, Oracle, New York Times, Strata Conference, GigaOM, ZDnet, EMC, IBM, Orilley, McKinsey, Wired, Techcrunch, Curt Monash, ReadWhiteWeb.com, Forbes.
The total list is of course very long (several thousand stakeholders have measurable influence on this topic).
Big Data is an area of natural interest to us at Onalytica, not least because we gobble up 100 TB of data per month, process it and make the aggregates available for continuously updated market intelligence throughout the enterprise.