There is remarkable unanimity among industry analysts and thought-leaders on the nature of big data. Rather than a phenomenon of volume alone, big data is almost universally described as having the dimensions of velocity and variety as well. The term velocity recognizes the speed with which many types of big data, such as sensor output or social network interactions, are generated. Variety recognizes the many forms that big data can take, from very compact “blips” from sensors or clickstreams to text documents to multi-gigabyte geospatial images.
Posts Tagged ‘Big Data’
Use the Four Vs to Better Understand the Big Data Ecosystem
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011Leveraging Information Assets to Optimize Customer Value
Monday, November 21st, 2011When asked to identify the greatest barriers to improving multichannel customer experience, “Thirty-four percent of respondents identified difficulty unifying different sources of customer data.” This would indeed be a barrier as understanding your customers’ needs is intrinsic to delivering an exceptional customer experience. To understand the customer, organizations must take each morsel of information left at touch-points across the organization and weave them together to create the customer’s story. The need for information optimization and big data applications then becomes vital. I had the honor of being in the hot seat as we explored this topic at one of our tweet chats. Here is a glimpse into our discussion:
Monetizing Customer-Relevant Big Data
Monday, November 7th, 2011Continuing the “Big Data” discussion Stacy started last week, I would like to touch on the area of monetizing customer-relevant big data.
Businesses of all sorts are accumulating data that does not easily lend itself to conventional database/data warehousing models. What they do and don’t do with this data can have a significant impact on their bottom-line business performance.
But it’s good to clarify two points about big data. First point: big data doesn’t just mean lots of data. According to the definition originally put forth by Gartner analyst Doug Laney in 2001, big data involves three attributes: volume, velocity (i.e. the speed at which it is accumulated and/or loses its freshness), and diversity of sources.
Big Data = Information Optimization
Monday, October 31st, 2011Everyone is talking about “big data” yet we each have a slightly different view of what it means and its impact. One thing we all can agree on is that we must devise strategies to handle and leverage the “Forty percent projected yearly growth of global data.”
One of the things I have heard is, “Well, we have a lot of information scattered throughout, so if we put everything we own in a single, distributed processing system like Hadoop—which is meant to house massive amount of information efficiently—we can start making sense of it.” I want to shake my head, “No, no, no!”
Big Data: Big Challenge or Big Opportunity?
Monday, December 6th, 2010Avanade recently released its 2010 report on “The Business Impact of Big Data.” Though this report comes from across the ocean—the UK—it mirrors the issues that we face in our own backyard.
According to the research, “one in three executives is regularly unable to find the right people who can provide the information they need when they need it.” This is huge as business decisions are driven by information. Perhaps I should clarify that by saying intelligent business decisions.
Economist Reports on the New Phenomenon: Big Data
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010The Economist issued a special report last week entitled “Data, Data Everywhere.” In this report, Kenneth Cukier, a financial and business correspondent in Japan, was interviewed to share his thoughts around how the superabundant growth of information is having a macro-economic effect not only on businesses but even society as a whole. Some have labeled this the age of “Big Data.”
Kenneth explains the Big Data movement through a business example. He reports that “Wal-Mart handles more than 1m customer transactions every hour, feeding databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes.” The CIO of Wal-Mart, Rollin Ford, wakes up everyday asking himself “how can I flow data better, manage data better, analyze data better?” Wal-Mart is not alone in asking how they can prepare for the age of Big Data.
