What does the future hold for big data?

Andy Oliver, big data business unit manager at MTI, presents his top tips for businesses looking to exploit big data

Advancements in big data storage and analytics are revolutionising the corporate world. Increasingly, companies are storing and analysing more data than ever before. This data is being used to transform businesses by providing a new level of insight to inform important decisions.

However, with the big data world changing so rapidly, what do business leaders expect big data to look like in a few years from now and what do organisations need to do to gain competitive advantage?

Data explosion

Big data is changing dramatically - from the amount of data being produced to the way in which it's structured and used. A recent report by JP Morgan stated that more data will be produced in the next two years than has been produced from the dawn of civilization through to today. The volume of business data worldwide, across all organisations, doubles every 1.2 years.

This is being fuelled by the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and huge growth in global mobile data traffic, which is increasing by about 50 per cent year-on-year. By 2018, leading analysts have predicted mobile data levels of about 173 million TB.

The trend of big data growth presents enormous challenges but it also presents incredible business opportunities to increase revenue. The IoT is inextricably linked with the rise of real-time analytics, and the Big Data Review found that this was the technology that research participants expected to impact them soonest, if it hasn't already done so.

Maturing technologies

The challenge facing organisations, as these technologies continue to mature, is to decide how much of this new data is actually going to be of use to them, and what types of data they should prioritise.

When it comes to big data analytics, technological progress is advancing much faster than uptake by the mainstream. The actual rate of project deployments has remained fairly steady, however there's a huge amount of activity occurring behind the scenes in terms of trialing and investigating new technology and identifying and consolidating data.

What do organisations need to do to gain competitive advantage?

1) Better data management and processing - Most organisations have vast amounts of data stored in different systems in a variety of formats. Bringing these together in one place enables them to capture, store, analyse, visualise and interpret it.

2) Enable a ‘data culture' - Ensure important data insights inform all key business decision making. It can make the difference between competitive advantage and the company being left struggling to catch up.

3) Develop the right measurement metrics - Few firms have shown how they will derive business value over time from their, often substantial, investments in big data. The lack of highly developed metrics is a sign of the relative immaturity of big data implementations. It's important to align big data measurement with business goals.

4) Recruit skilled employees - Businesses struggle with hiring the talented data scientists they need to analyse their corporate data for insights. A shallow talent pool of skilled workers to analyse big data is acting as a brake on growth and has prevented some organisations making the most of the data they have stored. Given this acute resource shortage, companies should consider outsourcing as much of the analytics process as possible.

Even with awareness about the possibilities of big data, and the value to be gained from it growing in organisations of all sizes, 87 per cent of respondents do not believe they are gaining the full business benefits.

With big data predicted to grow at an exponential rate, businesses can no longer afford not to have a big data strategy built into the business plan. Businesses need to ultilise and plan for data growth in order to make it a source of competitive advantage.

Andy Oliver is big data business unit manager at MTI