Every 48 hours we generate the amount of data created from the dawn of civilization until 2003, and that rate is accelerating. A fifty-fold increase is expected by 2020, with (according to IBM’s research) as many as a trillion connected devices, including cars, home security systems, manufacturing systems, medical devices and much more, all generating data.

New tools are needed to manage this “Big Data,” creating new opportunities in traditional data management – storage, security, compliance and more – as well as new value propositions for companies able to exploit that data across all industries.

A current primary focus of Big Data is consumer analytics, with new tools available to analyze and act upon the petabytes of data generated by billions of connected consumers, interacting using web applications, SMS, mobile email, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth-enabled signage, and the latest generation of proximity detection.

Big Data helps marketers better attract, engage and retain their customers, but the level of activity requires highly scalable systems to keep users engaged – and it requires analysis of huge, semi-structured data sets in order to optimize the user experience and monetize behavior. That’s driven the NoSQL movement, given Hadoop its start and pushed the evolution of massively parallel processing (MPP), analytic databases, new sets of business intelligence tools, and whole new generations of innovative visual analytics.

The evolution of Big Data has also begun to make enterprise-class capability available to the middle market. Selling analytical systems to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is now one of the hottest segments in the IT industry. Smart organizations of all sizes can potentially manage tremendous data volumes to profile customers, determine pricing strategies, target advertising, maintain real-time snapshots of the business and much more.

As those trillion devices come online in the next decade, and the “Internet of Things” becomes an even more tangible reality, other sectors will begin to harness big data in ways comparable to consumer analytics today. Verticals like energy have been dealing with massive datasets for longer than most, and their opportunities are expanding as sensors proliferate, as are segments such as healthcare, transportation, distribution and much more.

Big Data revenue will jump from $5B at the beginning of 2012 to over $50B in 2016, driving M&A. As one example, Opera Solutions, a data vendor, purchased BIQ, Lexington Analytics and Commendo Research & Consulting last year. Meanwhile, Actian targeted database management software with Pervasive Software for $164M and Versant for $37M. Business intelligence/analytics are in huge demand and acquisitions by companies such as Actuate, IBM and VMware will remain strong.

Elsewhere, next generation data warehouses are being picked up by the large players – EMC purchased Greenplum for $400M; HP bought Vertica Systems at $275M; and Teradata acquired Aster Data Systems for $263M.

Stay tuned – Big Data is only just getting started.

As a director for the Corum Group, the global leader in software M&A, Rob Schram has participated in a number of closed and pending technology transactions, including those involving Big Data. Rob has over 30 years of executive and entrepreneurial experience in multiple data-driven technologies, from industrial process automation and control to security software to energy software and services. Rob has founded and sold several technology companies and engaged in two IPOs.