PH out to carve slice of $212-B global data analytics market

The Philippines is poised to capture some $31 billion of the global data analytics market, which is expected to grow to $212 billion by 2015.

On the sidelines of the Think Forum 2013 Wednesday, IBM Philippines president and country general manager Mariels Almeda Winhoffer noted that the country has the opportunity to corner at least 15 percent of this growing industry.

According to Winhoffer, the Philippines has already taken significant strides to help prepare and capacitate its future workforce with the necessary skills.

In the value chain, the data analytics industry is said to be a level higher than the IT-business processing management industry.

“The discussion now is how ready are we in terms of employment opportunities. The [data analytics] market is going to require 4.4 million jobs globally, and those jobs will require analytics capabilities and skills. But only 30 percent of those jobs will be taken up because the skills are not available,” Winhoffer explained.

This then presents a “compelling” opportunity that the Philippines can tap as it becomes a source of talent for the growing data analytics industry.

To help build the workforce for that, Winhoffer said, IBM Philippines has earlier forged partnerships with the Commission on Higher Education and the Department of Science and Technology.

“I believe it is all about the skills required, so we need to sustain that need and address the calls of the [data analytics] industry.… I’m now trying to build a consortium that will allow us to cement this opportunity [to capture a share in the global data analytics industry] for the country,” she said. “For us now, we are collaborating with partners in ensuring that this industry becomes the next big one for us. This is about higher value service, and it’s going to change industries and shape different business models.”

Trade Secretary Gregory L. Domingo said earlier this year that the Philippines is well-positioned to become the global hub for data analytics industry.

“Data analytics is where you put a lot of intelligence in mining data [which], if properly analyzed, would be put to a lot of productive use like helping companies make good decisions out of the data. There is a very good chance, and we will give it a big shot to make the Philippines the data analytics hub of the world,” Domingo said in the July issue of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Dataline.