Big Data is everywhere. It’s starting to train artificial intelligence, it’s providing market insights, it’s showing where and how to cut costs, and it’s informing decisions big and small.
That’s the dream, anyway. The problem is that it’s not working out that way for many businesses. Big Data is so complex, it’s hard to get your arms around it. Let’s go over some of the challenges of big data and how they can be tackled.
Where Does It Come From? Everywhere.
The technical challenge of data doesn’t just come from the fact that there’s a lot of it. If that were the case, you could just throw more computing power at the problem. In fact, according to Gartner analyst Doug Laney, the issue with big data is five-fold:
- Volume
- Velocity
- Variety
- Variability
- Complexity
Each of these points is well worth its own exploration, but we’ll hit the high notes here. EVERYTHING is data. But there’s nothing uniform enough about it for a simple solution, so therefore a complex solution is the only option. Building a complex solution to somewhat ‘uniformize’ the data so that it can be parsed isn’t just a tall order—it’s a moving target.
Luckily, like any innovation with this much upside, even partially harnessing the power of big data will pay dividends.
A Market In Search of Solutions
Academician and data analysis specialist Thomas H. Davenport said, “It’s important to remember that the primary value from big data comes not from the data in its raw form, but from the processing and analysis of it and the insights, products, and services that emerge from analysis. The sweeping changes in big data technologies and management approaches need to be accompanied by similarly dramatic shifts in how data supports decisions and product/service innovation.”
Different types of data have different storage needs. That makes it difficult to integrate them sometimes, in the same way that it can be difficult to get two Excel reports to integrate into a pivot table. But that’s exactly what you’ll need to do. You need the technology to process many types of data and the right people to interpret it. Luckily, there are a variety of offerings on the market, as well as service companies that cater to almost every imaginable niche.
Every business has a dire need for the business intelligence that will help it make decisions. But not every business has the requisite expertise and resources to devote to an initiative which may take some time to bear fruit. In fact, the open-endedness of the project—and it’s difficult-to-quantify outcomes—is a very great hurdle to overcome.
The Technological Barrier-to-Entry
Large amounts of data pose the same problem as storing large amounts of gold bullion; you want it totally secure, at least somewhat liquid, and ideally in a form that’s portable.
It’s not quick work to put together the right balance of hot and cold storage, the right levels of backup and security, and above all, to figure out the most cost-effective way to go about it—but it is the most essential work to begin making use of your data and business intelligence.
The first steps are developing a solid IT foundation upon which you can build your platform and finding the right people to support it.
Atlantic Metro’s scalability, technical expertise, and reliable IT Infrastructure platform may be the solution you are searching for. But we also understand that you must have questions. Contact us at sales@atlanticmetro.net today, and we can help you to solve any technical challenges you are facing.