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Big data: Cutting through the hype



There is a lot of hype about Big Data, as vendors and projects fight it out for claims and market wins. But what's it all about? What's in it for me as an IT professional? This article is a snapshot of the terms, the demand for services and what you can do to get ready for the Big Data wave!

First, let's look at the terminology - What is Big Data? Why are projects claiming to be Big Data when they are only Analytics or older style BI projects? From an annual expenditure perspective - Big Data is huge - almost 20% of all project expenditure claim to have an Analytics component. Big Data is a fast-growing component in this expenditure.

 

So, what constitutes a Big Data project? It must pass the following tests:

  • Does it have huge volumes of data in near real time speed of generation?

  • Is it varied, as in unstructured data from several of sources (both inside the organisation and outside e.g. social media or IoT sensors?) 

  • If so, what value is generated from it in terms of $ earned or money saved?


These projects are the true Big Data projects - and they are occurring, right here and right now across ANZ. 
 

We are seeing demand across companies where vast data lakes are being analysed on premise and in Clouds across Telco, Retail, Banking, where each of the competitors are driving innovation to gain customer loyalty and increase market share. Additionally, large transport and distribution companies are taking data from sensors (IoT), whether it be trucks, trains, or maintenance vehicles to actually measure performance of component parts and, this is the good bit - predict and prevent outages or failures before they occur!
 

So, cutting through the hype, Big Data is clearly here to stay and will evolve over the next 3-5 years and beyond.