The above quote was unearthed by BMI-T analyst Clinton Jacobs while he was preparing for the big data roundtable. Research seems to indicate it was first coined by Dan Ariely, but the true origins of the phrase goes back at least 20 years to when Bill Inmon apparently said the same about data warehousing.
Aside from being slightly amusing, just as it was two decades ago, it does appear to describe the state of big data activity quite accurately, certainly in South Africa.
Moving on to more serious outlooks, Jacobs' first question for the assembled panel involves context: "Can you put big data in context, especially as it relates to all the technology we've been using in the past - data warehousing, business intelligence (BI) and analytics? And how do you determine if big data is for you or not?
Gerhard Botha, CTO of PBT Group, reckons there's significant overlap between BI, data warehousing and big data, but not necessarily an interdependency. "You can have a big data solution outside of BI and, similarly, you can do BI quite well without big data. But there are some places where your BI solution can't handle the volumes or the variety of data. And for that reason, you need the [big data] technology," he says.
Charles De Jager, senior solution specialist: database and technology, SAP Africa, offers a different take on context: "If you [consider] what a lot of people have said about big data, its variety, volume and velocity, I think they're missing a fourth 'v', value. How do we determine what the outcome is going to be?
"I'm looking at volume, a large volume of data coming in; I'm looking at variety, at machine-to-machine-type interfaces, and there's definite value that's going to come out of that," he adds.
Opportunities
Richard Firth, CEO of MIP Holdings, posits that big data offers the opportunity to combine internal company data with larger external sources to identify trends and possible business opportunities. "Location [data] has only just become a fundamental piece of connecting the dots in terms of what people are doing. The social side allows us to get back to our customers a lot quicker," he says.
"Big data is a completely different animal to what we were dealing with before, because it is real-time, new data that you need to assimilate to decide what it is doing. And what is important is that it's not for all companies. You have to be a big organisation, collecting big data, to actually deliver value out of [it]," asserts Firth.
Putting an information security spin on big data, Patrick Evans, director of SLVA Information Security, notes that all that's changed has been the variety of data available. "Location has come into play of late, which means variety has changed, but volume has always been there," he says.
"The information security industry has always dealt with big data, and real-time analytics is probably the only thing that's going to save us going forward, and our ability to interpret what is going on," he says.
With traditional BI, you're working towards a question you know. Big data... provides you with the things you didn't know...
Ana Moreira, enterprise data architect, Edge Consulting.
Moving back into the realm of business, Heino Gevers, security specialist at Mimecast, says big data allows consolidating of information and comparison against other sources to establish value.
"An example would be asking what the current economic climate is. What is the rand/dollar value? Those types of things can be used by analytics to evaluate your current information," he says.
Ana Moreira, enterprise data architect with Edge Consulting, offers another perspective: "With traditional BI, you're working towards a question you know. Big data... provides you with the things you didn't know about... understanding associations between different pieces of information that you didn't realise were there."
Information goldmine
Servaas Venter, country manager at EMC Southern Africa, offers a real-world example to illustrate the power of big data in general and real-time location data in particular. He cites uber.com, a taxi service that matches location data of vehicles with that of potential fares to streamline the process.
Vaughn Naidoo, managing executive for Telkom Business, says if you look at communication service providers, if you look at the size of the customer base, you'll find that there's lots of information generated out of that platform. "...if you don't do any analytics on it, if you don't [look for] intelligence in the data, the data has no value. We're sitting on a goldmine of information."
Jacobs picks up on an earlier comment suggesting that big data is only for big companies, and asks the panel if everybody agrees on that point. The answer is a resounding 'no'.
Venter says big data solutions can be deployed by big and small companies alike. "Whether you're big or small, business (collects) data that you'd like to understand (better to)... feed back into fine-tuning [business] applications. It's a continuous cycle," he states.
Naidoo adds: "You can derive value from data and create an internal use case to show that you can generate revenue off (it); the business case will make absolute sense, so size isn't really a factor."
De Jager speaks to the argument that the cost of technology is the limiting factor, by offering cloud solutions as a vehicle for small businesses to embrace big data at a very low or minimal cost.
Raj Wanniappa, GM: big data for Dimension Data MEA, suggests one type of small company that benefits from big data. "Data and service companies that analyse retail trends (collect data, analyse it) and then sell the data back to retailers and manufacturers," he says.
Another perspective
Moreira offers insight into the workings of big data by relating her experiences as part of IBM's Information Governance Council, where she says work was carried out to simplify and analyse the associations between bits of information. The result, she says, is a platform that connects three things: a subject, an association and some kind of object.
Business needs to identify and then build the appropriate big data scenario that's going to help them solve problems.
Charles De Jager, senior solution specialist: database and technology, SAP Africa.
"This could be where big data is heading, using things like natural language to analyse (such) databases... that you can derive the value and see the 'unknown' you couldn't see before," she adds.
However, the big questions about big data are: how does one start the journey? And what does implementing big data really entail for South African business?
Evans counters with the information security aspect and posits the possibility of security firms with large repositories of data about cyber attacks working together to make this data available, commercially, to companies for use when under attack. "If you have all this data available from around the world...at a reasonable price... you can probably create a far better defence network," he says.
De Jager says big data is not an 'if you build it they will come' scenario. "Business needs to identify and then build the appropriate big data scenario that's going to help it solve problems. Start small and grow it from there," he adds.
Naidoo believes it all begins with a business requirement. "It could be as simple as a new revenue-generating opportunity, it could be the fact that you want to manage the customer experience better. But, if you don't start from a business driver perspective to drive some sort of value... it just won't happen," he says.
Education
Botha adds: "You first have to go through an education process. You have to teach the customer what big data is all about. And only once they understand what it's about, what the possibilities are if you look at the various use cases, can you actually get to the point where they can then identify places in their organisation where big data can be of value."
Firth suggests the structure of business is about to change as a result of big data. "We're used to the structure ourselves where business and IT are separate and IT delivers a service. We believe that teams inside IT are going to sit inside the teams in business and collate themselves into units," he says.
"You're not just going to take a business leader and make them an analytical person. You have to get those skills inside the business. So unless you've got a technologist sitting, understanding what's coming and how to use that to do what we need to do, analyse whatever the case might be, then the two things are always going to be separate. So we believe that the structure will change," elaborates Firth.
Venter offers a CIO perspective, noting that CIOs have to look at their environment from a data perspective as opposed to an infrastructure perspective.
Gevers suggests big data is happening whether businesses like it or not. "Currently, businesses are mostly focused on finding a home for their big data, a home that can scale infinitely, that's accessible from anywhere in the world," he says.
From there he believes it's a process of testing and assimilating all the legacy information, analysing and harvesting it for information to help drive new revenue streams or business benefits or end-user efficiency.
Deeper meaning
Wanniappa believes big data is not a goal in and of itself. "It's actually a journey," he says. "Wherever you start, it depends on the company. It can be done on an infrastructure level; it can be done on a big data management level; the database where you host the thing; or interventions at an analytics layer.
"One thing is certain: a lot of companies are looking at (big data) at the moment and if you don't do something, you're going to miss the boat. Things are changing so rapidly that you can't afford to stay back or wait."
Moreira agrees, but says in SA there's still a lot of learning that must take place. "Getting involved in BI, often just implementing the BI tools, showing what the information actually represents, shows the problem," she says.
"And if we could offer our customers a good visualisation mechanism, we'll start showing those associations; that would go a long way into building a platform [for big data]."
Jacobs has the last word: "The term big data is a bit confusing for me. Big volumes of data have been managed for many years. To me, big data is about extracting insights from this information by merging stuff, putting stuff together that you never thought really went together, and based on that, new revelations come across.
"And that's where the real value lies. Not in the technicalities. It's about the 'we can give you competitive advantage' by gaining new insights from data that you already have, or putting in various external sources of data, bolting on the little bit of your data that makes the real difference and then giving your organisation a competitive advantage," he says.
"To me, that's the story that really stands out about big data," concludes Jacobs.
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