Big Data

1. Recentlywhiledriving, Iwaslisteningtoa talkshow radiowhenan advertisementcaughtmyattention.
It was touting“BigData” platformto small businessowners. Whendidyoulastheararadio ad for
somethingascomplex as BigData? Is itjust a passingfad?
We all knowthat mostorganizationshave beengrapplingwithbasicdataintegrationissues tobring
togetherdatafrom desperate operationalsystemstogleanintelligence abouttheir businessi.e.
customerbehavior,productfailureordefectratio. Infact IT departmentsare undersomuchpressure
that theyare unable tocope up withthe pressure leadingtobusinessareasbuyingoff the shelf or
buildinglocalizeddatamanagementsolutionsfurthercompoundingthe dataintegrationwoes.
Withall the claimsof Big data organizations,some organizations are reallywonderingif the magicwand
to solve theirdataintegrationisfinallyhere.
Highreturn oninvestmentsinbusinessintelligence reallycomesfromthe actionable intelligence that
can be weavedinto strategicand dayto dayoperationsof an organization. The followinggraphshows
returnon highreturnon investmentfororganizationsthatleverage analyticsfortheirinternal(tactical
and strategicdecisionmaking) andexternalprocesses(i.e.supplychainanalyticwithpartners)
Thisactionable intelligence reallycomesfrompredictive datamodelsusingdataminingalgorithms
againstdata intraditional datawarehousesordatamarts. There are a few challengeswiththisscenario:
 The bestand biggestdatawarehousescontainonlyafractionof the data beinggeneratedinan
organization.
 Withthe adventof newgenerationof connecteddevices,sensors,organizationsare generating
more data than ever.Inmostcases thisdata nevermakesittothe analyticsenvironment
Source: Nucleus Research

2.  Organizationscreate tremendousamountof unstructureddatainthe formtext,audioand
videofromsocial media,documents,emails,smartphonesetc. Aspersome industryestimates,
unstructureddataconstitutesabout80% of total data beinggenerated.
The implicationof the three challengesmentionedabove isthatorganizations have beenusingonlya
tinyfractionof the data theygenerate tocreate the actionable intelligence asacompetitive advantage
tool.
Big Data and associatedadvancedtechnologiescanhelporganizationsleverage the vastamountsof
streamingandunstructureddataalongwithstructureddata to getcomplete picture of the businessoas
to preventproductfailure orreducingcustomerchurn.
Howevermostorganizationsare feelingoverwhelmedwhenitcomestoleveragingthe Bigdata
technologyandplatforms. Withsomanyvendorspoppingupacrossthe spectrumof Big data that they
are feelinglost.Keychallengesbeingfacedare:
 Where can theymosteffectivelyuse andgethighROI?
 What technologyorplatformwill workforthem?
 How can the newplatformalignwiththeirexistinginvestments?
 Is BigData reallySchemaless?Shouldtheyforgetabout30 yearsof experience withrelational
data models?
In the nextfewblogswe’lladdresseachof these questionstohelp clearthe airfororganizationsto
leverage BigDatato gaininsightstheyhave neverhadbefore.