Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Big Data is all about better analytics on a broader spectrum of data, and
therefore represents an opportunity to create even more differentiation
among industry peers. This is a key point that's often overlooked: no one has
ever delivered a single penny of value out of storing data. Many vendors are
talking about Big Data, but we're not seeing much more than the ability to
store large volumes of data, leaving the organization to “roll their own”
applications without much help to make sense of it all. Real value can only
emerge from a consumable analytics platform that saves you from having to
build applications from scratch—one that effectively flattens the time-to-
insight curve. Big Data is truly all about analytics.
The joint IBM/MIT study described in
The New Intelligent Enterprise
also
found that the number of enterprises using analytics in an attempt to create
a competitive advantage had jumped by almost 60 percent since its previous
iteration, which was conducted one year earlier. The study concludes with
the observation that nearly six out of ten organizations are now differentiat-
ing through analytics.
Quite simply, early analytics adopters are extending their leadership. If
you want to lead, you have to know analytics, and if you want to be on the
forefront of analytics, you have to put your arms around Big Data.
Now, the “What Is Big Data?” Part
A number of years ago, IBM introduced its Smarter Planet campaign (“Instru-
mented, Interconnected, and Intelligent”), which foreshadowed the Big Data
craze that hit the IT landscape just a few short years later.
We think that Walmart's push to use radio frequency identification (RFID)
tags for supply chain optimization is a great story that illustrates the dawn of
the Big Data era. RFID is a great example of machine-speed-generated data
that could be collected and analyzed. Today, the world has become much
more instrumented and interconnected thanks to many technologies, includ-
ing RFID tagging. Examples of RFID technology today include tracking
products at the skid level or the stock-keeping unit (SKU) level; tracking live-
stock; using badges to track conference attendees; monitoring the tempera-
ture of food in transit; tracking luggage (from our experience as frequent
travelers, there's lots of room for improvement here); monitoring the health
of a bridge's concrete structure; and monitoring the heat-related expansion
of railroad tracks for speed regulation, among thousands of other use cases.
