Choosing the Best Fit Enterprise Infrastructure
February 28, 2013
A writer from Search CIO laments that big data is not in fact rocket science in a recent article, “Data Mining Challenges on the Horizon: Got Big Data? Now What?” This writer attended a two-hour seminar which was sponsored by the Mass Technology Leadership Council and moderated by the global VP of Oracle’s Health Sciences business unit, Kris Joshi,
We learned from this article that infrastructure has been targeted as a high priority and there are several solutions:
Harvard, for example, has a new data center in Holyoke, Mass., that will be able to handle 40,000 calls. It’s the university’s last, by the way, according to Clamp, because when this baby no longer computes, the next cluster will be in the cloud. In the big data puzzle, as Broad’s Trunnell put it, infrastructure is “in many ways the easiest one to solve.” Heck, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is using Oracle’s Exa-line products to help monitor a purported 50 billion transactions per day.
Big data may not be rocket science but many enterprise organizations have found that choosing the appropriate technology for their specific case can be a tough job. We recommend starting with the fundamental component to a big data solution and employing an enterprise infrastructure focused on data delivery.
Megan Feil, February 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Data Delivery Solutions Connect Data Points from Different Apps
February 27, 2013
It is clear that the big data space is going through a huge transformation. As vendors and experts in the industry alike push to define burgeoning technologies into niche-specific solutions, there is bound to be confusion at times and complete clarity at other points. A recent Forbes article called “Big Data “A-Ha” Moment?” discusses this industry and adjacent ones in terms of both the struggles and space for opportunities.
It seems that many can agree that the big data industry has large sums of money written all over it. Estimates from Gartner to Wikibon range from $23 Billion to $3.8 Trillion. However, the closely related industry of business intelligence has been stuck at a 24% scorecard from Gartner.
According to the article:
Many reasons have been cited for this; from expensive software, to poor usability to complex integration issues. While each of the above certainly plays a role in the lack of adoption, my observations have been that, the culture of elitism generated in the world of data has done nothing but scare the most common of companies. And this trend has been amplified recently. Look, I too admire Nate Silver, Facebook and Google for the great work they do with Data.
One of the hallmarks of the niche of big data technologies that fall under the category of data delivery solutions is their intuitive user experience and the integrative abilities to connect multiple pieces of data from different applications under one roof.
Megan Feil, February 27, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
New Terminology Does Not Change Power of Data Delivery Solutions
February 26, 2013
Many venture capitalists were chomping at the bit to fund big data start ups not too long ago. However, according to a recent article from Venture Beat it is time to move on. This venture capitalist chasing news source tells us, ‘Big Data’ Is Dead. What’s Next?
The article goes on to discuss who killed it. Everyone from media sources to industry leaders to marketing experts all the way down to the vendors themselves had a hand in the death of big data, according to this piece. Instead of the big data deluge, this article warns against a big data headache. The only cure: a big data Advil.
Writer John De Goes states:
As the industry matures, there won’t be a single term that replaces the big data moniker. Instead, different tools and technologies will carve out different niches, each more narrowly focused and highly specialized than the universal sledgehammer that was big data.I’m going to talk about some of the niches you’re going to hear about again and again. Alas, some of these will be spun into buzzwords that, like big data, accumulate so much “momentum” they eventually lose meaning.
Life after big data will involve smart data, data science, NewSQL and predictive analytics according to this article. If one thing can be certain it is that there will be new terminology to apply to new vendors in the big data game as time goes on. However, big data as a term will always be able to quickly and simply capture the essence of solutions from data delivery vendors to enterprise infrastructure solutions.
Megan Feil, February 26, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Businesses Require Scalability Seen in PolySpot Solutions for Big Data Needs
February 22, 2013
Whether companies are in the exploratory phase or have already implemented their initiatives, they are talking about big data to some extent. CIO points out an interesting dilemma some companies may be facing in their recent article, “Big Data is a Solution Looking for a Problem.” With all the hype, some companies may have forgotten to ask what problem they wanted to solve by using big data.
Big Data is forecasted to drive $34 billion of IT spending in 2013 and create 4.4 million IT jobs by 2015. In light of those numbers, there must be some major problems that companies want to address.
One of the biggest variables companies are looking at is how much data they need to hold onto for storage and analysis:
A lot of other industries are simply looking for ways to manage and monetise their data assets – and Big Data is not always the answer, according to Logan. There are plenty of off-the-shelf software programs that can visualise large data sets, and in some cases the best solution may be to simply throw some of the data away.
Finding a big data solution with the capacity for scaling will help increase the company’s ROI. An organization may not have petabytes of data to undergo analytics today but they might need that capability tomorrow. Solutions like PolySpot have scaling capabilities that growing businesses require as they are increasingly driven to find more opportunities and insights from their data on hand.
Megan Feil, February 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Information At Work Collects Data But Delivers Insights
February 20, 2013
Industries from education to business to politics and even government are using big data to inform decisions and to achieve efficiency and transparency. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a news story on the OECD Observer from Martine Durand, Director, OECD Directorate of Statistics recently called, “Can Big Data Deliver On It’s Promise?”
Revealing statistics were shared in this article. For example, according to the UN Global Pulse, more data was created in 2011 than in the whole of human history.
The article states:
International organisations are getting involved too, the creation of UN Global Pulse being a case in point. The OECD has also been harnessing the potential of big data. Collecting statistics and understanding trends are the daily bread of our organisation, and we have built innovative, interactive tools to draw in more and better information from the public. This, in turn, feeds into improving the policy recommendations we give to governments.
The enterprise is an area where we see a huge potential for efficiency to be increased. Tools like Information at Work from PolySpot provide the cross function infrastructure that companies need to collect and deliver information in real time.
Megan Feil, February 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Source and Deliver Information Across Multiple Enterprise Applications with PolySpot
February 19, 2013
We stumbled across an article from TLNT that discusses big data as it pertains to the HR world in light of some other articles from major sources like the New York Times and SAP. “Big Data: It’s Just Useless Information Unless You Put It To Work” asks businesses to inquire within their HR departments about using data to ask deeper questions about the way people work.
The author recommends using big data, and the strategic and social recognition possible through it, to inform and gauge performance amongst employees.
The referenced article enlightens us on the topic of using big data to increase efficiency in employee work patterns:
Translating that to the world of people management, data can transform how we view individuals, their capabilities and their work by giving us more information to correct flawed or incomplete perceptions and, as Brooks said, “illuminate patterns of behavior we haven’t yet noticed.” This is particularly powerful in terms of employee behaviors related to what we say is most important to our organizations – our core values.
While big data and the technological solutions needed to access it may help uncover employee work patterns, it will also become necessary then to tap into multiple enterprise applications they use in order to gauge their performance. Solutions like PolySpot enable both sourcing data and information delivery across different file types.
Megan Feil, February 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
PolySpot Uses Disorganized Data and Churns Out Deliverable Insights
February 18, 2013
Big data is exploitable, increasingly necessary for enterprise functionality as organizations become more complex and can provide endless opportunities for ROI. However, there are some organizations that have not fully realized their potential to tap into this resource. ZDNet‘s article “Big Data: Why Most Businesses Just Don’t Get It” discusses how these organizations want to look at multiple pieces of data across different information sources but cannot execute the technology and manpower required.
Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Debra Logan offers up her insights in the referenced article stating that 95 to 97 percent of organizations she knows are only exploring possible big data solutions currently. However, research from Microsoft says 75 percent of organizations are implementing solutions in the next 12 months.
The article quotes Logan:
Software companies in general have no interest in helping you make anything smaller because they make their money from more data and the more disorganised that data is, the more money they make. The most advanced industry in terms of big data is retail. It’s the stuff they do with all the RFID, the supply chain, with loyalty cards. Those are big-data problems.
Enterprise organizations are faced with the very real problem of too much information that is scattered across various departments in silos. However, there are solutions like PolySpot that use connectors to break the barriers of incompatible data types to draw out important knowledge and information.
Megan Feil, February 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Information Delivery Solutions Maximize Value of Big Data
February 15, 2013
It is no surprise that we are seeing many exciting developments happening on a more specific level in the midst of these larger cultural and technological changes following the rise of big data. Science Daily discusses how a crowdsourcing platform that initially began in the commercial sector can solve a complex biological problem even faster than former, traditional approaches in the article, “Solving Big Data Bottleneck: Scientists Team with Business Innovators to Tackle Research Hurdles.”
Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School and London Business School have partnered with TopCoder, a crowdsourcing platform with a global community of 450,000 algorithm specialists and software developers, and have discovered that this community is highly adept in solving the kinds of problems typically delegated to post docs.
The article quotes Karim Lakhani, associate professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School:
This study makes us think about greater efficiencies in academic research can be obtained. In a traditional setting, a life scientist who needs large volumes of data analyzed will hire a postdoc to create a solution, and it could take well over a year. We’re showing that in certain instances, existing platforms and communities might solve these problems better, cheaper and faster.
Many organizations in the business sector, in addition to the realm of academics, are searching for more efficient ways to store, organize and process big data in order to maximize the value from it. Information delivery solutions are great tools in enabling organizations to access insights from big data across the entire company.
Megan Feil, February 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Enterprise Organizations Search for Solutions to Deliver Inisights
February 14, 2013
While ETL technologies were once good enough on their own, the era of big data has made waves for more augmenting technologies. However, Smart Data Collective points out that it is not just big data, but also the need for predictive analytics that has caused the paradigm shift. Their article “Data Integration Ecosystem for Big Data Analytics” defines common terminology related to enterprise software in the world inundated with big data through business contexts.
The author identifies the six sources of the integrated data ecosystem in a typical enterprise organization: sources, big data storage, data discovery platform, enterprise data warehouse, business intelligence portfolio, data analytics portfolio.
We learned the following from the article in regards to what processes integrated data can facilitate with greater ease and efficiency:
While the business intelligence deals with what has happened, business analytics deal with what is expected to happen. The statistical methods and tools that predict the process outputs in the manufacturing industry have been there for several decades, but only recently they are being experimented with the organizational data assets for a potential to do a much broader application of predictive analytics.
This was a useful write up as it sheds light on one of the most important topics for enterprise organizations right now dealing with getting a grip on big data. Organizations are looking for solutions that can deliver enterprise information in real time and across various departments and applications.
Megan Feil, February 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Enterprise Information Delivery Strengthened with Solid Library of Connectors
February 13, 2013
Now that many organizations have begun to employ big data initiatives we are seeing many more surveys that are examining what stage of the process these companies are at. An article from ReadWrite discusses the results of a survey conducted by Infochimps and SSWUG.org, a community site for IT professionals. “Big Data: Many CIOs Completely Clueless” offers solid insight into what kind of technologies these companies need in order to succeed with their initiatives.
The article states:
The greatest challenge with Big Data is getting at the data trapped in various business applications across an organization, the survey found. Pooling this huge amount of information is necessary in order to run the necessary analytics to find ways to cut costs and run a more efficient business. But before that can happen, all the data has to be converted into a usable format.
Understanding a more complex picture, at a bird’s eye view above the individual enterprise applications, is likely to be much easier when the proper tools are employed. We have had our eyes on one such possibility, PolySpot. Enterprises benefit from the heightened information access and enriched information that comes with a product featuring such a strong library of connectors like this technology offers.
Megan Feil, February 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
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