Big data is driving change in organisations, as business leaders leverage it to deliver immediate value at the point of impact.
So said Inhi Cho Suh, IBM's VP for product management and strategy, during the IBM Software Day, in Maropeng, yesterday.
In a keynote address, Suh pointed out that the business environment is shifting and business models are under constant pressure mainly because of the emergence of demanding and connected customers. Mobile, big data, cloud computing and social media are also driving the change, she added.
"If you are not changing, you are losing," said Suh. "Big data is more than simply a matter of size. It is an opportunity to find insights in new and emerging types of data and content to make your business more agile, and to answer questions that were previously beyond reach. Until now, there was no practical way to harvest this opportunity."
According to IBM, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and 90% of the data in the world today was created in the past two years alone.
"This data comes from everywhere - sensors used to gather climate information; posts to social media sites; digital pictures and videos; and cellphone GPS, to name a few. This is big data. Big data spans four dimensions - volume, velocity, variety and veracity," Suh explained.
She added that by mining and exploring big data, organisations are able to find out what is interesting and relevant to the business for better decision-making.
"Organisations are struggling to extract value from growing data volumes across the enterprise; they need to unify information across federated sources in the organisation. There is also the inability to relate raw data collected from system logs, sensors, streams, etc, with customer and line-of-business data managed in the enterprise system."
She added that because of the complexity and rapid growth of machine data, many organisations make decisions based on a small fraction of information available to them.
Explaining data volume, she said enterprises are awash with ever-growing data of all types, easily amassing terabytes or even petabytes of information.
On velocity, Suh said: "Sometimes two minutes is too late. For time-sensitive processes like catching fraud, big data must be used as it streams into your enterprise in order to maximise its value."
Variety means big data is of any type - structured and unstructured data such as texts, sensor data, audio, video, click streams, log files and more, she noted, adding that new insights are found when analysing these types of data.
Regarding veracity, she said that, according to an IBM study, one in three business leaders do not trust the information they use to make decisions. "How can you act upon information if you don't trust it? Establishing trust in big data presents a huge challenge as the variety and number of sources grow."
In order for organisations to realise the benefits of big data, Suh pointed out, they must adopt the OODA [observe, orient, decide, act] loop approach, a concept originally applied to the combat operations process, often at the strategic level, in military operations.
She then urged organisations to take this approach, especially for decision-making, if they are to respond quickly to the changing business environment.
Describing the other use cases of big data, Suh said it presents an enhanced 360-degree view of the customer. She added that it also gives a boost to operational analysis by optimising operations with machine data for greater efficiency.
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