This infographic, by edCetraTraining.com, presents the what, why and future of Big Data. While this trend is driven by increased literacy improved accessibility through more devices, and cheaper storage technologies, virtualization, data mobility and portability, and trend prediction are future of Big Data. Other interesting facts are that 75% of all data is a copy and 80% of corporate data is unstructured.
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Posted by david ricketts
A survey of over 1100 executives by the IBM Center for Applied Insights showed that organizations making extensive use of analytics experienced up to 1.6x the revenue growth, 2.0x EBITDA growth, and a 2.5x stock price appreciation compared to their peers. And what they are analyzing is Big Data, a combination of structured data found in conventional relational databases and unstructured data pouring in from widely varied sources.
Big Data is growing fast. By 2015 the digital universe, as forecast by IDC, will hit 8 zettabytes (ZB). (1ZB = 1021 bytes, one sextillion bytes). Adding to the sheer volume is the remarkable velocity at which data is created. Every minute 600 new blog posts are published and 34,000 Twitter tweets are sent. If some of that data is about your organization, brand, products, customers, competitors, or employees wouldn’t you want to know?
Big data involves both structured and unstructured data. Traditional systems contain predominantly structured data. Unstructured data comes from general files; from smart phones and mobile devices; from social media like Twitter, Facebook, and others; from RFID tags and other sensors and meters; and even from video cameras. All can be valuable to organizations in particular contexts.
Large organizations, of course, can benefit from Big Data, but midsize and small businesses can too. A small chain of pizza shops needs to know the consumer buzz about their pizza as much as Domino’s.
IBM describes a 4-step process for tapping the value of Big Data: align, anticipate, act, and learn. The goal is to make the right decision at the point of maximum impact. That might be when the customer is on the phone with a sales agent or when the CFO is about to negotiate the details of an acquisition.
Align addresses the need to identify your data sources and plan how you are going to collect and organize the data. It will involve your structured databases as well as the wide range of enterprise content from unstructured sources. Anticipate addresses data analytics and business intelligence with the goal of predicting and shaping outcome. It focuses on identifying and analyzing trends, making hypotheses, and testing predictions. Act is the part where you put the data into action, whether it is making the best decision or taking advantage of a new pattern you have uncovered. But it doesn’t stop there. Another payoff from Big Data comes from the ability to learn, for the purpose of refining your analytics and identifying new patterns based on subsequent data.
Big Data needs to be accompanied by appropriate tools and technology. Earlier this month, IBM introduced three task-specific Smarter Analytics Signature Solutions. The first addresses anti-fraud, waste, and abuse by using sophisticated analytics to recommend the most effective remedy for each case. For example it might recommend a different letter requesting payment in one case but suggest a full criminal investigation in another.
The second Signature Solution focuses on next-best-action. This looks at the various data uses real-time analytics to predict customer behavior and preferences and recommend the next best action to take with regard to a customer, such as to reduce churn or up-sell.
The third Signature Solution, dubbed CFO Performance Insight, works on a collection of complex and cross-referenced internal and external data sets using predictive analytics to deliver increased visibility and control of financial performance along with predictive insights and root-cause analyses. These are delivered via an executive-style dashboard.
IBM isn’t the only vendorr to jump on the Big Data bandwagon. EMC has put a stake into this market. Oracle, which has been stalking IBM for years, also latched onto Big Data through Exalytics, its in-memory analytics product similar to IBM’s Netezza. Of course, small players like Cloudera, which early on staked out Hadoop, the key open source component of Big Data, also offer related products and services.
Big Data analytics will continue as an important issue for some years to come. This blog will return to it time and again.
http://bottomlineit.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/big-data-analytics-defines-top-performers/
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Posted by david ricketts
The challenge facing managers is not trivial. When faced with the need to do more with less money/resources, how do you effectively derive insights from the deluge of big data?
Every business recognizes that a better understanding of data (particularly as a predictor of the future or as an identifier of existing issues) can create new opportunities and make a significant difference to managing performance. The core business drivers are well understood…. how can we acquire, grow, retain customers, How can we detect fraud and manage risk better.
How do we get there? Analytics is the natural evolution of BI processes, tools and technologies to answer these questions. While BI focuses on historical analysis, analytics builds upon this set of technologies and techniques to re-focus on the future; helping predict future trends, opportunities and threats.
The new cycle is “Ingest, Model, Deliver insights”. Ingest continuously large volumes of data, model quickly using pre-built models, and deliver real-time recommendations or predictions.
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Posted by david ricketts
Information is the lifeblood of any company that wants to stay competitive. Analysts cannot make effective decisions to promote growth without accurate insight into the current state of the business.
Business Intelligence (BI) has for years tried to provide this insight in the form of operational reporting, analytical reporting, scorecards, and projections, by consolidating, cleansing and conforming structured information. Master Data Management (MDM) also plays a role in managing information assets, by defining owner, rules, and publication of information, but like BI, the industry focus has remained on the “low hanging fruit” of structured information.
Unfortunately, structured information accounts for only an estimated 20% of the information within an organization. What about the other 80% of non-indexed and unstructured information that exists outside of corporate databases?
For structured information that resides in databases, we can define views, roles, synonyms, and access restrictions as part of the data modeling phase of the design process to control information at the attribute level. Current database management systems provide adequate functionality to manage these permissions when properly implemented.
Unstructured information located in file systems, e-mails, and SharePoint repositories are not only difficult to manage, but are tedious to relate to structured information for analysis and often do not have a clear owner. For this reason, unstructured information around the enterprise either remains untapped or is only used sporadically.
Data Governance, in theory, covers both structured and unstructured information; but in practice, it has traditionally been much more difficult to define data ownership and repeatable processes for management of unstructured information through its business lifecycle, until now.
The Hub Designs MDM Think Tank recently sat down with David Gibson, Wendy Yale, and Beth Mayer of Varonis (http://www.varonis.com/) which was founded in 2005 to fill an industry gap for Data Governance and a metadata management framework that aligns data ownership and access according to business need. Today, Varonis offers data governance and workflow solutions for unstructured and semi-structured information housed in SharePoint, Exchange, and file systems on the Windows, UNIX, or NAS platforms.
For data architects and security administrators, DatAdvantage gives an audit trail of information usage with recommendations to remove access permissions from users without the business need for it. This proactive approach to security and governance has implications for improved data quality, security compliance, and investigative research into potential corporate espionage. The web interface of DataPrivilege available to business users allows data owners and stewards to report on, manage, and digitally authenticate information they are responsible for.
Combined, this product suite fills the gap in Enterprise Information Management that exists for the 80% of unstructured information that is currently being overlooked rather than effectively managed.
Consider the amount of confidential, proprietary, and even semi-sensitive information that currently exists within your company’s SharePoint environment, network or server drives, and email systems. This information is continually at risk of being compromised by both malicious and accidental means. The risk, value, and cost associated with securing this information varies not only by organization, but also by information type. Start a dialog between business information owners and Data Architects to identify and classify your unstructured information and take appropriate actions to secure sensitive, proprietary, and confidential information.
What interested me most about the Varonis suite is that it provides a single interface to span multiple information storage solutions and it provides an API to allow you to integrate its metadata into your internal proprietary solutions. Certainly, core permissions could be managed individually across platforms for every file and document, but that’s not practical in today’s information-centric business environment. Varonis goes the extra step of not only managing the metadata and access, but also provides an audit trail. We look forward to tracking the continuing progress of Varonis as it expands its product suite even further.
Thanks to: http://hubdesignsmagazine.com/2011/04/26/varonis-analyst-briefing/
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Posted by david ricketts
