Big Data and analytics - the emerging vision - 1: Working Paper

Big data is the buzz word in today's world. A lot of hype is being forged around the term "Big Data" and it has emerged as a common term today.

• What is this big data? 
• What are we talking about it? 
• What is it that Big Data can promise ? 
• Should I spend my time on this emerging area ?  
• Is this talking about new information which can change the way I do my business?

are some of the integral questions that germinates immediately.  To appreciate and applaud the evolution of Big Data, and its envisaged benefits it is indispensable to discern data science as an emerging area of opportunity from a business perspective.  

The term data:

A single transaction is a data entity. A single transaction helps the business to understand that there was an activity. There are established methods to capture the data entity as a part of the business process. A lot of work has been carried out in this space. Such individual transactions can be called as a dust particle.

Data scientist - The new generation workforce

What is big data?

Large enterprises are congregating electronic data from assorted sensors, and electronic devices, which are of different formats, with the use of independent or connected applications. This data inflow has outpaced the firm’s efficacy to process, analyze, store, correlate and understand the captured datasets. This new voluminous dataflow which doesn’t fit into the ambit of decorous data processing techniques has been nicknamed as big data. It has carved itself with a home in this dynamic and expanding information ecosystem that many companies struggle to manage today. Mckinsey Global institute ascribes “Big data” to datasets whose size is above the dexterity of archetypal database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.

The concept of big data has chiseled itself to reality with appropriate hardware platforms and analytical tools in order to harvest business value through the new generation information platforms. The term “big data” has materialized itself as a magic wand transforming imperfect, complex, unstructured data into actionable information in the right hands with the right tools. Such transformations have been made possible with advanced computational tools and the new generation thinking. The transformed data divulges the trends and correlations within and across large dormant data sets that would otherwise remain undiscovered. The organizational roles responsible to ensure such data transformations are called as data scientist.

MoneyWise-Topline and Bottom line

Information technology (IT) is today woven into our daily life. In a globalized economy, business life without informational technology driven applications would be impossible transforming information technology as a commodity. From a niche market, information technology has evolved into a commodity market. In order to sustain, information technology is envisaged to create value.  Today business with information technology is adopting bottom-line strategy to increase efficiency by reducing overall costs and top-line strategy to generate new revenue through new products and services.

Customer Management shift

An interesting phenomenon is emerging across the business verticals. A care full eye would definitely observe this shift. Customer perceptions has paved the way for the observed shift. It is essential to understand a couple of scenarios.

A paradigm change in underway to handle customer. The concept of picking and handing over the goods has vanished and the customer is allowed to pick and choose his goods. The next generation of self-service applications is focused less on company-provided kiosks and more on consumers’ own technology particularly cell phones, PDAs and other handheld devices.