Big Data supplement - City AM

What does it mean to you? What is big data and how can it help your business?

From hindsight to foresightWe look at how big data can offer new insight

AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

BIG DATANo. 1 / Feb. ’12

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TURN YOUR DATA INTO INSIGHT

Realise the value: Know how to manage your data, and what you can gain from it

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ASPECIAL

ON MANAGING YOUR DATA

2 · FEBRUARY 2012 AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

Defining Big Data is easier said than done!

Firstly, it doesn’t help that there are multiple defini-tions emanating

from analysts and solution pro-viders, keen to catch the wave of this trend. The name, big data doesn’t do itself any favours, em-phasising the volume aspect of data, when other features, such as the nature of that data, are just as important. Moreover, the volume argument is largely subjective; what’s big to one organisation is not necessarily big to another.

How do you know if you have big data?

1Some say that an organisation has a big data problem when

their data is beyond their ability to manage. But this defi nition focus-es too much on the ‘management’

aspect of big data to the detriment of the more business critical fea-ture — the opportunity to unlock actionable insight.

So back to the original question, is it a revolutionary new business tool for competitive advantage?

Well, the ‘big’ of big data cer-tainly isn’t new, as enterprises have long recognised the value of storing every piece of information. So what about the analytics? Larg-er organisations have been using data mining and business intel-ligence tools eff ectively for some time, but the costs were for many prohibitive and the focus was of-ten reactive rather than proactive.

What’s changed?

2Data evolves from something you have to cope with, to

something you can compete with. New tools and technologies have

made it possible to process huge amounts of information at much

CHALLENGES

Indentifying what big data means to you

Big data is certainly the topic du jour in the business and technology media, dividing critics and inspiring contradictory opinions. Dismissed by some as old hat, and hailed by others as a revolutionary new business tool for competitive advantage. So who’s right?

‘It is my fi rm belief that data is the key to solving some of the biggest problems that we face in business, across industry and on our planet’

Jacqui Taylor CEO, Flying Binary

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lower costs. This, combined with the explosion of information in en-terprises, is allowing organisations to analyse and uncover new pat-terns, and leverage insight in a way that they couldn’t do before.

Don’t lose focus on realising value

3Debates over defi nitions are certainly attention grabbing,

but they must not distract business leaders from the essential question for enterprises; how do you realise the insight from your big data?

More technology initiatives fail than succeed, so realising that val-ue will require old school change management practices and the following questions may help. How can you embed insight in-to your culture so that it is at the heart of every decision? How can you create a top-down data cen-tric organisation? How can you get the information to the right peo-ple so they can act on it in a time-ly fashion? How can business and IT leaders work together to plan, manage and realise the value of big data?

The journey to insight is fraught with risk. But placing business ob-jectives at the heart of every deci-sion will help keep your big data venture on track, and ensure you re-alise the value of your big data.

Caroline BoydHead of Research and Strategy, Big Data Insight Group

PAGE 6

The Era of Big Data

We are addicted to, and dependent on, an exponentially increasing amount of data; everything from internet text, search indexes, call records, medical records and e-commerce

and more. We need it to make decisions fast, deliver effective customer service, and satisfy regulators. In short, we can’t do business without it.

A decade ago, managing data was much less of a challenge. It was more structured, easier to categorise and was often cross-referenceable. Today, the game has changed, and managing information in our ‘Big Data’ world is an increasing challenge.

Now we are assailed by reams of unstructured and semi-

Mobile devices, social networks, logs, emails, tweets, video, and sensors are all now part of the information ecosystem. This is having a major impact; not just on volume, but on variety and velocity of data management.

All the while, the costs of managing, extracting, transforming, loading, and storing this massive amount of data are eating up IT budgets at a time when controlling operational expenditure is paramount.

Big Data Applications

Imagine a world where applications

to leverage Big Data to understand

of risk. Healthcare organizations can achieve better insight into disease trends and patient treatments. Public sector agencies can catch fraud and other threats in real-time. These are real, global applications being used today with Big Data. But how did they get there?

Organisations shouldn’t have to compromise on the data available for business decisions. Applications should be capable of handling any data, at any volume, in any structure in real-time. This is at the heart of a Big Data Application. Big Data Applications address 21st century issues, enabling organisations to access all their data, structured or unstructured in real time.

The biggest challenge facing organisations trying to build these applications lies with the approach. A 21st century problem requires a 21st century solution.

Traditional relational databases are great solutions for data

data. However, these technologies struggle with data that is complex in nature and hitting organisations in high volume in multiple formats.

This new data paradigm results in the need for new databases that enable organisations to operationalise their Big Data.

1. The ability to unify data from all sources without forcing data modeling, transformation, schema normalisation, or the hassles of data management and integration

2. The functionality to easily add, update and expand information, change attributes, and continuously improve the data by capturing record sets and queries

3. The ability to support mission-critical applications with the highest scalability, performance, government grade security, back-up, and disaster recovery

4. The power to perform iterative, ad-hoc queries on the full database in real-time, eliminating the need for pre-

These capabilities make it easy and cost-effective to both operationalise Big Data and run core operations on Big Data Applications.

and unstructured data into a single database allows organisations to turn their ever-growing volumes of data into

to-market advantage, as well as new revenue streams and business models.

Mind the Gap in the Your Big Data Strategy

O rganisations are struggling to cope with the volume, variety, velocity, and complexity of modern data. Big Data is a big challenge. It is costing more money and demanding more resources, but there

is an opportunity too. Big Data can add incremental revenues and deliver a crucial competitive edge.

Operational DBMS Advantages

– allowing users to spot trends and understand what’s

happening – in real-time

data into a single database

Reduce IT effort by simplifying the process of expanding

and operationalising new data sources and attributes

Makes it easy for organisations to run their core

operations on Big Data

Enables organisations to take advantage and eliminate

the risks of the era of Big Data

Find out why organisations choose MarkLogic to power mission-critical Big Data Applications.

Call +44 203 402 3619 Email [email protected] Visit www.marklogic.com

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Data just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. In the past, compa-nies only had what was entered into their systems and then stored on their servers.

Then came the internet, which provided a new channel of infor-mation to tap into. This gave rise to social media and millions up-on millions of concurrent con-versations. Brands are keen to utilise these in the hope of un-covering popular sentiment for their goods and services.

At the same time, it is not just people generating data, sensors are too. They are being placed in everyday situations, from railway points to delivery vans, to auto-matically capture data and trans-mit it to a company and its em-ployees, as well as other machines.

It means, for the first time, companies are not only tasked with making sense of data cre-ated by customers and leads but also objects, explains Steve Pren-tice, Research Fellow at analyst firm, Gartner.

“We’re now entering the era of the internet of things,” he says.

“Machines and sensors are now all connected with com-puter systems and creating data. When you add the vast amount of data of varying velocities and varying types that are passing through company systems, you can see how we have entered the days of big data.

“Businesses know that they can get a competitive edge from under-standing the data they have stored or can get access to. This means we’re seeing an increasing number of organisations using the latest technology to turn all that data in-to insights that they can act on and which nobody else has access to.”

Front footThese new tools are so powerful that Prentice believes the field of business intelligence, which has been a staple practice among most companies, is moving from

hindsight to foresight. Business-es want to know more than what happened in the past, and why. They want access to what is hap-pening right now, why it is hap-pening and have suggestions as to what can be done to capitalise on it.

The key to success in making sense of the growing masses of data is not to just marvel at the terabytes a business can now mine and look for insights, it is more about the detail.

“Businesses have often thought that the more data you can crunch in real time, the bet-ter, but what you really need is focus,” says Prentice.

“The really critical factor is you can’t just go through a load of da-ta and hope some great piece of inspiration will pop out at you. The number one priority is to de-cide what insight or what data would make a diff erent to an or-ganisation if you had it. You’ve got to know what you want to know.”

Prentice believes that compa-nies realising the value of data and the insights it can provide, if interrogated in the right way at the right speed, means that the area of big data is not yet a ‘tip-ping point’ but is most definitely at a ‘turning point.’

Steve Prentice,Research Fellow, Gartner

TURNING DATA INTO INSIGHT

■ Question: What is big data and why is it an issue now?

■ Answer: With the advent of social media and the ‘internet of things’, companies now have far more data moving at higher speeds which they need to interrogate to make the best decisions.

NEWS

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

For most companies the question of what to do about big data is not a new one, they have been wonder-ing if there were insights in their data warehouse for quite some time. The trouble is, the technolo-gy has never been available at the right spec at the right price.

All-in-one data warehousing and business intelligence sys-tems used to be the main choice available to companies. Today there are specialist providers whose technology can offer the quickest retrieval, loading, cap-ture and analysis of information.

Blending these best of breed solutions is enabling big data

systems to fi nally work at the speed and depth required to make sense of the vast reservoirs of data sitting on corporate servers as well as in-formation speeding through their systems live, in real time.

Getting an edgeAccording to Alys Woodward, Programme Manager for Europe-an business analytics at IDC, this has encouraged some early adop-ters which, in turn, is beginning to prompt others to investigate the technology.

“The main early adopters are the big, well known brands, par-ticularly in America,” she says. “They’re looking to mine their data warehouses and use tech-nologies, such as Hadoop, to make sense of unstructured data online, such as conversations on Twitter and Facebook.

“As they’ve done this, their competitors are now fearing they’re falling behind. They know there’s a mass of data they could be learning from, but it’s not un-til a competitor makes the jump that they do. In fact, sometimes a competitor may not have made the leap into big data but a brand has fallen behind in market share. It realises getting new in-sights from the data it has stored and the vast amount of informa-tion available online is the best way to get back its edge.”

Competition drives big data

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

It is still early days for big data but experts believe gaining a competitive advantage is shaping up to be a key driver for longer term adoption.

NEWS

USING BIG DATACompanies are using insight obtained from big data to improve their businessPHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

JACQUI TAYLOR ON BIG DATA

Jacqui TaylorCEO, Flying Binary

“It is my fi rm belief that data is the key to solving some of the biggest problems that we face in business, across industry and on our planet.

In the same way that the in-troduction of cloud computing created a similar buzz over the last couple of years, big data, like cloud, will prove to be a game changer for those that ignore the hype and use the technology to solve real world problems.

Technology of any kind at its best is an enabler but it is nev-er about the technology itself; it is about what we can achieve by leveraging the best of what we build. We now have tools that can blend diff erent data sources from the silos littered across a com-pany with data from the social networks to generate insights in hours not years. Delivering the results to individual stakehold-ers using a self service model, with mobile capability, will cre-ate a level of engagement never before possible.

All this without the huge cost and months of delay that building a traditional business intelligence solution normally demands.”

Alys Woodward,Programme Manager for European business analytics, IDC

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INSPIRATION

Personalisation: The goal of big data

In use, big data is turning out to be the equivalent of diamond mining, according to EMC’s Tech-nical Evangelist, Mark Sear. You shift tonnes of soil to find a tiny gem; and therein lies the para-dox of big data. The data may be big but more often than not, the insight may appear tiny in com-parison. However, that is the goal Sear believes early adopters are already pioneering towards and which will become the norm in years to come.

Putting it into practice“The irony of big data is that you can take terabytes of data and then come up with a small gem which makes the technology wonderful for personalisation,” he says.

“We’re already seeing great ev-idence of this in healthcare and

this is an area where I think some of the most interesting break-throughs will be. There’s already an online service that will anal-yse your saliva and then tell you which conditions your DNA sug-gests you are most likely to suf-fer from. It also gives lifestyle ad-vice on getting out of the ‘at risk’ groups. It’s using interrogation of massive databases to give you a personal insight into your DNA, and then combining that with another database on preventa-tive, healthier lifestyle advice.”

While this is already happen-ing, Sear believes that in the fu-ture doctors will use similar techniques to personalise treat-ments to patients through big data systems knowing a person’s full medical history which it can compare against other similar

patients. That way, precise doses can be established and the im-pact of one drug on, or over, an-other can be monitored better.

Forecast planningWhile it is early days for big data, Sear reports that the news event of Whitney Houston’s death was used by a network entertain-ment company to predict spikes in traffic for her content. They took the buzz around social me-dia to establish which audio and video files it should cache at local nodes around the world to stop its central network from being overwhelmed.

Similarly, the producers of The Inbetweeners movie used big da-ta technology to measure senti-ment on social media sites, no-tably Facebook and Twitter, to

decide whether or not to make a movie.

“They actually picked up sen-timent and the buzz around the television show to predict how many DVDs of the series they were likely to sell,” says Sear.

“They then further analysed sentiment towards seeing a full length film and estimated how many DVDs they would sell. The results were positive enough to encourage them to make a movie, which was a huge success.”

What’s next?In the near future, Sear predicts insurance companies will be us-ing big data techniques to compet-itively price policies for individu-als. This is likely to start through tracking boxes which can be add-ed to cars to monitor performance. Alternatively, the data could also be used to guide local authorities to improve traffi c management by analysing traffi c fl ows.

Additionally, information, such as reports of many vehicles applying their brakes sharply, could be used to forewarn of po-tential accident black spots be-fore a person is injured.

■ Question: If big data is happening now, or is about to, what insights are being offered?

■ Answer: We’ve yet to reach mass adoption but early indications of personalisation is the, perhaps ironic, first advantage of big data.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

CHANGE

‘The irony of big data is that you can take terabytes of data and then come up with a small gem which makes the technology wonderful for personalisation’Mark Sear

Technical Evangelist, EMC

Big data: A billion pound opportunityBig data has been simmering away for the past couple of years but it could start to come to the fore this year, analyst firm Deloitte is predicting.

As a progression from classic business intelligence big da-ta has been on the radar for en-terprises but now Jolyon Bark-er, the global lead for the fi rm’s Technology, Media and Tele-communications Industry divi-sion, is predicting the technolo-gy is about to become the norm, rather than the exception.

“So-called ‘big data’ projects had a total industry revenue of only £65 million in 2009,” re-flects Barker.

“However, 2012 will see 90 per cent of Fortune 500 com-panies kick off a data-related initiative, which will boost the industry’s revenue to between £650 million and £1 billion.”

Gaining pace“Acceptance of big data is still in its infancy, mostly used for meteorology and physics sim-ulations, but interest is gain-ing pace. Nevertheless, as da-ta warehouses start to over-flow and as the need for more relevant and timely analysis begins to put strain on tradi-tional analytics tools, the in-dustry cannot afford to get carried away with the ‘big’ in big data; it needs to main-tain its focus on extracting insights that help to improve decision-making and busi-ness outcomes.”

Key driverAccording to Deloitte’s re-search, internet companies have led the way with explor-ing big data, but the sectors that are likely to follow include the public sector, financial ser-vices, retail, entertainment and media. This could trigger a talent shortage with up to 190,000 skilled professionals needed to cope with demand in the US alone over the next five years.

The key driver, the firm found, has nothing to do with the technology but solely the insights and competitive ad-vantage it can deliver.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

NEWS IN BRIEF

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BIG DATA, BIG BUSINESS1. EMC’s Mark Sear likens big data to diamond mining 2. The stars of The Inbetweeners movie. Producers used big data technology when deciding whether to make the movie or not3. Big data is becoming more important in the health sectorPHOTOS: SHUTTERSTOCK

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