Mumbai: Bouyed by strong demand from industries like automobiles, aerospace and healthcare, the global engineering analytics (EA) market is poised to touch USD 27 billion by 2017, research firm Zinnov Management Consulting said.

The spending on engineering analytics, which refers to derivation of meaningful insights by processing information from physical machines, was estimated to be about USD 12.6 billion in 2012.

"Across the globe, use of EA has aided verticals such as the automotive, aerospace, healthcare, energy and industrial verticals and has transformed the way their businesses operate, contributing to increased revenue and efficiency," Zinnov Management Consulting Director Sidhant Rastogi said.

Using EA, companies streamline their supply chain and logistics through improved connectivity. Also, since they can improve asset utilization, there is a significant impact on efficiency and overall expenses are also reduced.

EA spending can be classified into three categories -- Engineering spending (investments made towards addressing the potential opportunity), which is the biggest segment with nearly 60 per cent (USD 7.1 billion) share.

The spend on analytics (investment on infrastructure like data warehousing, software licensing, software maintenance and analytics services and consulting) stood at USD 3.7 billion, while that on System Integration services was at USD 1.8 billion in 2012.

According to the study, EA-related benefits are currently estimated to be close to USD 250 billion and expected to rise to nearly USD 500 billion by 2017, primarily in the area of improved efficiency.

The industrial vertical forms the largest part of the EA spending due to large engineering and SI spending, with a total spend of USD 3.9 billion.

This is followed by energy, which spends USD 3.2 billion; and automotive, which spends USD 2.1 billion.

Healthcare and aerospace sectors currently spend USD 1.8 billion and USD 1.7 billion, respectively, the study said.

"The advent of the era of personalization and growing focus on energy efficiency are the key megatrends fuelling growth in this space. Further, technology advancements like in-memory computing, cloud, big-data, increased sensor adoption and improved bandwidth are important drivers," Rastogi said.

As organizations become aware of the benefits of engineering analytics -- improved customer understanding, identifying new opportunities, reduced time-to-market and efficiency -- service providers now have a great opportunity to move up the value chain of engagement with their customers, he added.

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