Big data is moving towards real-time analysis.
So says Grant Vine, technical director at Cybervine, who adds: "The business case for big data is virtually unlimited, presenting new challenges and opportunities for ICT players bold enough to take on the challenge of supporting big data use."
Although data analysis has been an important part of business for a long time, the rapid increase in scale has transformed business intelligence from a stalwart into a buzzword. While many organisations are already using data analysis, even on vast volumes of data, they may not be using "big data thinking" in the process, finding innovative ways to incorporate analytics into their business decisions, says Vine.
In the fast-changing landscape, real-time analytics are becoming a reality, says Vine; using data from information feeds on trending subjects, market sentiment, or trends to allow for even faster decision-making and even predictive capabilities. Significant world events could be tracked and used to monitor business actions, avoiding the current-affairs-blind marketing faux pas, and even to inform civil defence early warning systems.
Traders could be aware of trends before Securities Exchange News Service (SENS) announcements are made, or new product impacts could be assessed by aggregating social media feeds in real time, explains Vine, adding that real-time analysis has the potential to be hugely disruptive.
The challenge, he notes, is in enabling the high-performance computing necessary to achieve such analysis. South African data legislation and the cost of keeping and consistently accessing huge volumes of data offshore make it likely that real-time analysis will require local storage.
"To prepare for big data analysis services, we need both unique architectures and cloud platforms that deliver elasticity to be made available within our borders. In this type of environment, data, processing and management are all separate - thus allowing unique control over the individual elements required," Vine explains.
Such a local structure would require a large amount of investment and planning, concludes Vine, but the "techies of today, who see the vast potential in real-time big data management and the infrastructure to support it, are the CIOs of tomorrow", and once they're in a position of influence, it will only be a matter of time before data processing changes considerably.
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