Understanding Big Data and How Businesses can explore the Opportunities with this Technology Trend.

 

 

“Companies who implement Big data strategies are seen to perform 20% better”-Regina Casonato, the Managing Vice President at Gartner.

For big data, a new set of skills and competences are required. New set of strategies are developed, you now see information being measured in terms of volume, velocity and variety; new professionals like Chief Data Officer, Data science manager emerge; ideas like having a Data science Lab are becoming common, information governance is now more relevant than before with the nexus of information coming to play.

Are all these just technology gimmicks or hypes? What is the impact of Big Data on the productivity of an organisation and the effectiveness of government?

 

 

Every emerging global technology trend comes with increased opportunities, challenges and also risks. People and technology are the major drivers of these trends.

 

It is amazing how technology has changed information in itself. Data is increasing every day with the increased use of connected devices, the internet and social media. Information is now generated and consumed at greater speed than ever. This trend will get even bigger with the future and with Internet of Things.

 

Some interesting statistics shows that over 2 billion people are now connected to the internet, and that every minute 27,778 blog posts are made, 47,000 downloads from the Apple platform, over 100,000 tweets sent, 200,000 search queries on Google, it actually will takes an individual about 5 years to read the content on the internet, personnel usually take 2 hours searching for information they kept somewhere by themselves. It is simply amazing! How these information overload have turned into unstructured data.

 

All of that happening with great speed shows that unstructured data is now becoming a major challenge for big corporations and even the government. These unstructured data constitutes the Big Data. A report by Commvault shows that 80% of the data in an organisation are unstructured and that 93% of executives believe they are losing revenue opportunities by not leveraging existing data.

 

Experts at the GITEX conference in Dubai have opined that despite the challenges around big data, it also offer great opportunities for businesses as this trends are at the centre of transformation of businesses. People are beginning to look at the potential risks with the increased information at their disposal, others are seeing the value when these information are analyzed and structured and then comes the cost of storing these data.

 

For big data, a new set of skills and competences are required. New set of strategies are developed, you now see information being measured in terms of volume, velocity and variety of information; new professionals like  Chief Data Officer, Data science manager are born; ideas like having a Data science Lab are becoming common, information governance is now more relevant than before with the nexus of information coming to play. Are all these just technology gimmicks or Hypes? What is the impact of Big Data on the productivity of an organisation and the effectiveness of government?

 

This new trend has made it necessary for businesses to look at what they need to do with the deluge of data they have at their disposal. Businesses will have to keep up with speed at which information is generated, the volume of these information and then the various forms in which they occur, these are obvious concern today. And that is what big data is all about.

 

In implementing Big Data strategy, organisations are first faced with the challenge of the Technology view around big data and the business angle to it. The growing concern with Big Data is centered on managing increased data growth, big data in terms of business versus the concept of technology, the growing cost associated with it, needed skills and competence, and securing these data. Around these challenges are the value and opportunities with big data.

 

Regina Casonato, the Managing Vice President at Gartner says that organisations should have a holistic approach to big data management. They should build a strong team made up of personnel from different departments of the organisation, this will help the organisation build their data science lab and implement a robust big data strategy.

 

The business value of big data comes from the fact that we can access information we never could, these information can be analyzed in new ways, it can be done faster and cheaper and then the organisation can use the analyzed data to transform their businesses better by 20%.

 

Several sectors and businesses all over the world are using big data to transform their businesses and remain globally competitive. The banking sector are continuously understanding their customers with the great information they have of them through the social networks. The banks now have social banking that involves deep interaction with their customers via the social media. This helps them understand the needs of their customer, finding a way of reaching them with the goal of meeting their needs.

 

The telecommunications sector is one of the sectors that have being implementing the big data strategy because of the number of data that is passing through their network. They process huge information from their customers in order to provide them great customer support and services. They also need the big data strategy to remain competitive in their industry.

 

In the Education sector, big data is used for research programs, improving learning, increased adaptive learning, the use of social learning and many other possibilities with education.

 

Government around the world are using big data to become very effective and efficient. The open data project in places like the UK and the US has increased interaction between the government and the people. Government has become very interactive and responsive. Government provide relevant services to its citizens in a more organized, convenient and open platform. Big data have also impacted on the health care sector in no small measure ensuring effective health care delivery, the manufacturing, the transportation, Retail market and many others are also witnessing transformation.

 

Regina Casonato, while speaking at GITEX in Dubai said that major strategies on getting the best from implementing big data is first asking the write questions, understanding what analytic capacity your organisation presently has, getting the right people with the right skill set and then education around it. Getting the right skills for big data analysis is seen as a major challenge in the industry as statistics show that of 4.4 million IT related jobs only 1 out of 3 of these jobs are filled. Other challenges include Software maturity, security, risk, reusability and adoption.

 

Mr.Massimo Cannizzo of Accenture Middle East said that the major challenges he sees around big data is extracting the right information from the noise, analyzing these information/data before they are stored.

 

Ronald Raffensberger, CTO,IT solution Sales at Huawei Technologies added that Implementing big data strategy makes businesses agile, makes for evidence based decisions, reduced risks involved with data loss, and then it improves efficiency and increased productivity in an organisation.

 

These experts have advised organizations to take a multi-layered approach to security issues around big data and also the need for organisations to have Data science Lab with a team of skilled experts led by the Chief Data Office(CD).

 

In addition to that organizations should consider business alignment with technology, engaging trusted partners in the implementation of big data strategies, and the need to always access their current capabilities and architecture at all time.