We recently published an updated version of our Forrester Data: Business Intelligence And Analytics Software Forecast, 2016 To 2021 (Global).What’s new? We added two new forecast categories: text analytics and geospatial analytics.

■        Text analytics makes sense of unstructured data.Unstructured data, such as tweets, call center logs, and social media comments, provide an increasingly important view into consumer sentiment and trends today. Text analytics software facilitates the analysis of this unstructured data, allowing companies to mine these new data sources for insights. We project that the text analytics software market will grow 16% annually over the next five years.

■        Geospatial analytics harnesses the power of maps.Traditionally, geospatial analytics has focused on mapping data from geographic information systems (GIS). Today, we see an ever-expanding array of sources of geospatial data connecting customers and locations.Forrester believes theinternet of things(IoT) presents a massive opportunity for companies to uncover insights from spatial relationships, as every connected device can be located by some means. We forecast a 10% compound annual growth rate in geospatial analytics over the next five years.

Both text and geospatial analytics are still in the early stages of growth. Enterprises are just beginning to harness the power of these tools, and expanded adoption and innovation will drive growth over the next five years.

If you have an interest in text analytics, please check out these reports by my colleague Boris Evelson: The Forrester Wave™: Big Data Text Analytic Platforms, Q2 2016  and Vendor Landscape: Big Data Text Analytics

For geospatial analytics, please see The Forrester Wave™: Geospatial Analytics Tools And Platforms, Q32016 and Vendor Landscape: Spatial Analysis And Location Intelligence, Q2 2016

Also of interest,Mike Gualtieri takes a look at advances in machine learning in Massive Machine Learning Automation Is The Future Of Data Science.