Internet of Things driving big data trends and recruitment

Internet of Things architects are the new big data rock star roles, alongside data scientists, as IoT technology moves into production and line-of-business services across a rapidly growing number of companies. To support the massive volumes and constant streams of data from IoT devices, IT departments need to learn and manage hybrid IT deployments, Hadoop, advanced networking skills and much more, and integrate them efficiently. 

2017 will see teams being expanded or built from the ground up, with multi-skilled workers expected to understand big data and the infrastructure behind fast-growing IoT deployments. As these projects and teams grow, legacy analytics tools will fall by the wayside as they are swamped with data, driving companies to look for experts in Hadoop and other big data management systems. 

Businesses will quickly learn that running their business intelligence on Hadoop-based systems will enable the company to work with raw data and generate live reports for the leadership to plan and react as the figures come on, rather than waiting for classic-style reports. 

This will create interest and change in many businesses, driving hiring sprees. They will see examples such as Netflix, Amazon, Tesla and new smart city deployments all using big data in innovative ways, and business leaders will expect their organisations to be able to do the same. Using deep learning systems to analyse patterns and data will become more common, while GPU-based data crunching hardware will compress files to manageable sizes, for consumption on common PCs or even mobile devices. Expect the suppliers of these services to undergo much M&A activity over the year, as major providers look to create one-stop shop solutions, even if these go against the desire of many businesses to custom-build their own solution. 

2017 will also see the first major disruptions to IoT services through hacking. We could possibly witness wide-scale outages of major Internet services and backbones. In this respect, big data teams will have to ensure their IT security, data backup, redundancy and disaster recovery services are all tried and tested, as total failure will cripple any business becoming dependent on big data feeds. 

While big data and IoT are not synonymous, they will become increasingly intertwined over the coming years, with many verticals, from logistics, healthcare, the auto industry, energy and consumer services all looking to them in tandem to provide a new era of efficiency and data awareness of the customer. All of which makes for an exciting year full of opportunity for the right candidates.