Big Data, Like Enterprise Search, Kicks the ROI Can Down the Road
November 8, 2015
I read “Experiment with Big Data Now, and Worry about ROI Later, Advises Pentaho ‘Guru’.” That’s the good thing about gurus. As long as the guru gets a donation, the ROI of advice is irrelevant.
I am okay with the notion of analyzing data, testing models, and generating scenarios based on probabilities. Good, useful work.
The bit that annoys me is the refusal to accept that certain types of information work is an investment. The idea that fiddling with zeros and ones has a return on investment is—may I be frank?—stupid.
Here’s a passage I noted as a statement from a wizard from Pentaho, a decent outfit:
“There are a couple of business cases you can make for data laking. One is warm storage [data accessed less often than “hot”, but more often than “cold”] – it’s much faster and cheaper to run than a high-end data warehouse. On the other hand, that’s not where the real value is – the real value is in exploring, so that’s why you do at least need to have a data scientist, to do some real research and development.”
The buzzwords, the silliness of “real value,” and “real” research devalue work essential to modern business.
Enterprise search vendors were the past champions of baloney. Now the analytics firms are trapped in the fear of valueless activity.
That’s not good for ROI, is it?
Stephen E Arnold, November 8, 2015
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