By far the biggest trend for enterprise IT for 2013 will be Big Data.
Now, as with all buzzwords, and Big Data has two of them, there is a fair bit of fogginess around the whole idea, and in truth, the idea is actually manifold.
Big Data is a set of disciplines that can work in many different ways to derive value from the vast volumes of data that are accumulated, stored and then often ignored by many businesses.
But, the old rules of thumb are as applicable as ever. Firstly, data cleanliness is still paramount. The ‘garbage in-garbage out’ axiom reigns supreme! Secondly, data governance will be more critical than ever as the three Vs, volume, variation and velocity increase too.
However, the first one, about data cleanliness will certainly be harder to ensure. This is because much of the data from which nuggets of insight can be garnered will be unstructured and therefore more difficult to discern useful intelligence from. But as a character said last night on the superb Irish Pictorial Weekly, he has invested heavily in gigabytes. Now that might seem a trite statement for comedic effect but, think of it this way, how much unstructured data has the average enterprise got sitting on expensive storage, possibly backed-up a few times, maybe even encrypted, for which it has no plans beyond the regulatory ? That may well be viewed as an investment in gigabytes, unless something is done to discern intelligence from the data.
So, while one of the first forays into Big Data for many companies will be to examine normal, line of business data, the next step as organisations become familiar with the technologies, will be to delve into some of those archives of unstructured data, from email correspondence to web traffic and more, to see what can be discerned.
All of this is being made possible through tightly integrated hardware and software, from the likes of Greenplum (EMC), Oracle and IBM, that requires little configuration to get up and running. However, as with almost every technology revolution, the first steps will be pretty uniform for almost all businesses as the same questions and themes are repeated over and over. But as any interrogator knows, getting the desired answer is often about asking the right questions.
So, as your business moves toward being able to afford, implement and use Big Data technologies, it is worth examining your business to see what are the questions that you need ask. The insights about cost, efficiency and the like are common to all, but in your sector, your market, your niche, what will you need to ask to get the intelligence that will give you the competitive edge?
These are the issues that businesses need to contemplate over their bowls of plum pudding and rounds of fruitcake this holiday season. As enterprises are given examples of Big Data successes, they must apply the examples and determine for themselves what questions, reports and slicing will reveal the value in the data. While many organisations will get a bump from the first, obvious analysis, it those organisations that can ask the intelligent questions, and thus get the right answers, that will succeed in the second round of the Big Data game.
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