Macquarie's big data plunge

It seems the US arm of Macquarie Equities Research has plenty of clout when it comes to big data.

More to the point, its move to begin coverage of companies in this rather complex area of information technology has been enough to move the share prices of several enterprise big data companies.

Big data is the term used to describe data sets that are so large they are beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, store and manage.

But there are an increasing number of listed companies operating in the big data world, offering platforms and products to manage the growing flow of data across the globe.

While Australia is on the periphery of this growth area, and has no listed big data companies as such, Macquarie has seen fit to tap into the research data stream – and has had an immediate impact.

Shares of enterprise big data companies Qlik Technologies (QLIK), Splunk (SPLK), and Tableau Software\(DATA) all rose after Macquarie analyst Brad Zelnick initiated coverage of them this week, assigning Splunk and Qlik Outperform ratings, and Tableau a Neutral rating.

Zelnick says the market for Splunk, which operates a platform, may be much larger than the core addressable market opportunity of $27 billion.

He notes that Qlik is in the midst of a transition to a new version of its big data product, but believes Tableau’s product is “appealing to the greatest number of business users, given its superior usability vs. competing products” within the category of “data visualisation.” As such, he says estimates for the company’s business are probably “conservative”: