Europe ‘must improve’ big data standing

The big data sector is growing at a rate of 40% a year, though only two out of 20 companies making money out of big data are European – a situation “we should improve”, according to the European Commission (EC).

In a memo, the EC said that Europe’s failing in this area come in spite of the fact that the European Union is the largest economy in the world and makes up around 20% of global GDP. It called for action as the big data sector is growing “at a rate of 40% a year.”

“Every minute the world generates 1.7 million billion bytes of data, equivalent to 360,000 standard DVDs. More digitised data was created in the last two years than in the rest of human history,” said the EC.

A recent European Council Summit called for a framework to be put into place for a “single market for big data.”