Here's a wake up call. The Boston Consulting Group has predicted that by 2025 as much as a quarter of jobs currently available will be replaced by either smart software or robots . After all, who would've thought that designing emojis for Facebook could be a job, and a well-paying one at that, a decade ago? But it's not just the nature of jobs that has changed. It's also the kind of information that is valued by companies that has had a major shift. So, whether it's a channel deciding which new program to launch, or monitoring sports performance, the decision-makers are asking for Big Data.

Typically, a big data course covers cutting-edge topics like data mining, machine learning, visualisation techniques, predictive modelling and statistics.

This course could also serve as a launchpad to careers in emerging fields like Data Science and Business Intelligence Development. Big Data plays a very important role in driving decisions, innovation and productivity in large multinationals, non-profits and governments.