IBM’s decision to establish an analytics centre in Halifax is a huge boost for the digital industry across the Atlantic region, because it will expand capacity, improve technical education and mesh with plans afoot in New Brunswick.

Premier Darrell Dexter announced Thursday the company that pioneered the personal computer would set up its only Canadian Global Delivery Centre in Halifax. The headlines stress around the creation of 500 jobs over eight years in exchange for a payroll rebate of as much as $12.2 million. The addition of 500 tech jobs will in time boost the size of the IT industry in the region, which will benefit the sector over all.

The bigger issue is that the announcement will accelerate the ambitions of some key players in the tech field to analyse what’s become known as Big Data. This field is indeed big, and getting bigger. One estimate says the market will hit $16.9 billion by 2015, up from $3.2 billion in 2010.

In May, Geoff Flood, president of Fredericton-based T4G Ltd., told the Saint John Telegraph Journal that his company hoped to develop a centre of excellence for Big Data in New Brunswick. The term “centre of excellence” is vague, but it would presumably include multinational companies, support groups, educational institutions and a host of smaller companies.

Big Data is the process of mining piles of data that are so vast that their meaning can’t be calculated with normal technology. How vast? Consider that each minute humanity produces 204 million emails, 2 million search queries, 100,000 tweets and posts 48 hours of new video to YouTube, according to business intelligence firm Domo. All of this information can be useful in business, healthcare and public policy because it can reveal consumer patterns, buying intentions, health trends and public opinion if properly analysed.

Businesses are doing just that. IBM has 30 analytics centres around the world, and will soon have one in Halifax. Big Blue, as IBM is known, is so big in Big Data that it has a twitter handle @ibmbigdata. The usual suspects – Microsoft, Google, Oracle – are ramping up in the field as well.

Skill sets are developing in the field so that the consulting firm McKinsey Global Institute estimates the U.S. will soon need 140,000 to 190,000 technical personnel with “deep analytical” expertise and another 1.5 million managers versed in Big Data.

And that’s where the opportunity is for the entire Atlantic region. If we develop the right skill sets, there are massive opportunities for employment and business creation. The IBM deal includes an agreement with the Nova Scotia Community College and five universities – Dalhousie, Acadia, St. Mary’s, St. F.X. and Cape Breton – to train people in analyzing Big Data. Matthew Ivis, IBM’s Government Program Executive, said these discussions have not been limited to Nova Scotia and the company is also talking to University of New Brunswick, for example.

This is huge for technical education in the region. Michael Shepherd, the head of the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie, said all these institutions will first have to take a step back, evaluate their curriculum and update it to ensure it meets the demands of this new field. This will happen not just in computer science but also in business courses. And once that happens, the institutions in the region will have another arrow in their quiver when recruiting international students, or even convincing young Atlantic Canadians to enter computer science.

In the short term, the creation of the IBM analytics centre may tighten the labour market in the IT space. But overall, the developments in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick mark a great opportunity for the region and a real watershed for technical education.