Big Data: Enters A New Era Of Computing And Succeeds

Over centuries of experience in learning and creating opportunities, society at large is now in a data fuelled age. The networks that CIOs have built over the years have captured significant amounts of data, and now enterprises are really trying to figure out what to do with this data.

Big Data has certainly come along way from being a hyped concept to a practical reality. Most enterprises are turning to it to uncover patterns in consumption, consumer behaviour, process optimisation and much more. The fact that CIOs can now run algorithms to answer certain fundamental truths about the business is a game changer.

Microsoft, in its journey, is really taking on the cause of Big Data. TechEd 2013, featured two of its partners that are really taking Big Data solutions to the next level – Gramener and Qubole. The first started by data scientists from companies such as Microsoft, IBM and other bigwigs and Qubole, started by a team of people who thought they could do much more when they quit Facebook.

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If you thought about the hype – just a few months ago, Big Data was a serious competitive advantage. Mega vendors would come in for sales calls and tell CIOs about how easy it is to churn out actionable insights from structured and unstructured data sets. But was it really that easy? Well, only if the CIO chose their solutions.

Today the space is certainly getting more democratised as companies like Gramener and Qubole are coming up and offering enterprises more of result-driven solutions. “Give us your data, and ask us questions. We will find your answers” is something that Gramener is great at. Defining itself as a data visualisation and analytics company, Gramener will take your data and answer the questions you want answers to. You put in the context and build an actionable insight using it.

Qubole does something slightly different – they have found ways, cost effective ways, for CIOs to build their own Big Data environment by hosting it in a public cloud. Their go-to-market entails building the algorithms for you – but if you are looking at a long term Big Data strategy, most experts recommend hiring data scientists that can help build algorithms specific to the enterprise’s needs.

Given the kind of trends coming up in this space, it is also interesting to note, that most Big Data budgets are signed off by the CMO of the enterprise. A few implications come up here for the CIO. As the technology arm of the enterprise, a CIO must be able to find his or her place in the ecosystem. Big Data projects are usually large impact projects – something that CIOs cannot afford to miss out on.
Enterprise CMOs are result-driven individuals who are constantly looking for answers to fairly simple questions – but simple questions that do not have easy answers. They are not concerned with technology. The real opportunity for CIOs here is to understand more about the kind of things happening in the market that will allow them to help the enterprise or shepherd it to the right solution.

The important thing to realise for you as a CIO is that with companies like Gramener and Qubole out in the market, there is a method to the Big Data problem, especially if you want to build it in as a practice into the enterprise.

Experts believe that the CIO can significantly contribute by helping in things like vendor identification, pricing and contracts – that are key to a solid vendor relationship. While a CMO will still sign off on the budget, CIOs have the chance to find their place in the equation by helping find the right partner or by building a practice for themselves by setting up a team and finding data driven answers. Being involved in the business and technology components of the enterprise, CIOs are in a unique position to be able to put sufficient context to the answers that lie in enterprise data.

What’s even great to see at events like TechEd 2013 is the kind of support that interesting start ups like Gramener and Qubole are getting from a mega vendor like Microsoft. This only re-instates Microsoft’s position in enterprise computing and speaks a lot about the kind of industry associations that they are bringing in to build strong practices that can pave the way for the future. We recommend that you keep watching this space – it’s just about to get extremely interesting.