Taming big data

Gareth Hutchins at OpenText explains why taming big data is the key to enterprise agility 

 

July sees us enter the annual Global Enterprise Agility month. It’s a month that’s focused on drawing attention to the importance of adapting quickly to the realities of the business world we inhabit.

 

Just like in the natural world, the ability to react quickly to challenges and pounce on opportunities is key to survival and success. In the business environment, luckily, that doesn’t mean you have to watch out for your competitors trying to eat you or steal your food. 

 

But it does mean being able to manage and understand the insights available within the data that every business nowadays is built on. With most businesses now driven by technology, the amount of data in the world is growing exponentially. There were around 4.4 zettabytes of data being held globally in 2013, but according to Statista there will be a massive 181 zettabytes of data created by 2025.

 

Getting to grips with this volume and variety of data represents one of the biggest challenges standing in the way of enterprise agility moving forward.

 

It also represents a huge opportunity; those enterprises that can tame the data stand to benefit from faster, more informed decision making and ultimately better business results in the long term. 

 

The role of analytics in a world of big data

As data proliferates, businesses’ needs around the storage, protection and consumption of it become increasingly challenging. Crucially, the manner in which employees access the insights held within datasets will be key to deriving value for the business as a whole.

 

That means an evolution in how analytics is applied will underpin data strategies going forward. 

 

Because while companies have been analysing their data for many years, the tools they have been using weren’t necessarily built for the scale of growth we’re set to see in the volume and types of new data being created now.

 

So, for businesses to stay competitive in a fast-moving world, they need data analytics tools which are inherently scalable and able to adapt, grow and provide fresh insights into the business and customers alike.

 

Analytics is a catch-all term, but there are specific sub-categories underneath that umbrella that need to be considered. There are several ways to make data analysis-ready, including descriptive, diagnostic, predictive or prescriptive analytics tools.

 

Right now, of course, the area seeing the most growth is AI-powered analytics. These will get faster, smarter and more accurate as they have more data to learn from, and could be a vital resource for businesses looking to become more agile.

 

In the manufacturing industry, for example, AI is already being combined with analytics to help businesses gain a true picture of all their data, structured or unstructured, historical or real-time.

 

Pulling all of this together to deliver insights is powering the Industrial Internet of Things, bringing concepts such as smart factories and autonomous supply chains to life and supporting the process of predictive maintenance.

 

But the power of AI-based analytics is not exclusive to manufacturing. Retailers can use it effectively personalise customer offerings, while financial services firms can leverage it to do everything from risk management to forecasting. In a world of big data, the capabilities offered by different analytics solutions will be ever more vital. 

 

Future-proofed through data – the road ahead

The end result of all this is a business that is future-proofed, able to succeed in the present while also putting itself on a proactive footing.

 

Analytics should, of course, be a key discussion point during Global Enterprise Agility Month, but also as we move forward. It should form part of a broader agility strategy with the aim of readying your business for whatever comes next.

 

In these times, with uncertainty the only reliable factor of business, that’s extremely important. Leveraging analytics to deliver actionable insights exactly when they’re needed may not help us to predict the future exactly, but it’s crucial to long-term success as data continues to explode in volume and type.

 

When do you need to run, when should you conserve energy, and when is it the right time to take a chance? Animals in the nature seem to make these decisions instinctively, but they’re doing so with the benefit of vast streams of biologically-analysed data streaming from their sharpened senses.

 

Now that digitalised businesses generate huge data deposits by default, their ability to get insight from that data needs to be similarly embedded.

 

Whether it’s keeping data secure in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks, or using it to optimise customer experiences, it all boils down to greater agility.

 

That is why this year’s Global Enterprise Agility Month comes at a vital time. We should use the conversations sparked this month to inspire a tangible evolution in how we approach the future as technology companies. Analytics will be at the heart of that. 

 

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Gareth Hutchins is Director, Solution Architecture at OpenText

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com