Big Data: Just passing through or here to stay?

There have been many technologies and concepts in IT over the years.  Some of them endure and become mainstream, for example ERPs, speech recognition, mobile commerce and smart phones just to name a few. Ping Wang published a paper about chasing the hottest IT in which he described such technologies as fads. Other technologies seem to wither and die a slow death, for example service oriented architecture (SOA) for those of you who remember what that is. Richard Baskerville and Michael Myers in their paper titled ‘Fashion Waves in IS research and practice’ described these transitory technologies as fashions. So what is big data, a fashion or a fad?  Well according to these two papers fashions and fads are quite similar in the initial stages.  Big data certainly ticks that box.  It has been progressing through the Gartner hype cycle (see below) and is one of the most searched   for terms on the internet.  The difference between a fashion and a fad is what happens when the technologies mature.  A fad will eventually become mainstream while a fashion quickly disappears.  Unfortunately it is still too early to tell whether big data is a fashion or a fad as the concept and associated technology has not become mainstream as yet.  When Big Data does become mainstream I believe it will stick around for a long time because if you look at the technology that underpins big data such as the internet of things, wearable computing, social media, these technologies are unlikely to go away anytime soon which means the data they generate, which is big data, is not going to go away. People are not going to suddenly stop using Facebook and Twitter or ditch their smartphones. Therefore, in my humble opinion, big data is a fad and is going to be with us for the foreseeable future.