Data scientists argue that successfully and creatively understanding Big Data produces operational efficiencies and greater margins for business.
Big Data is relative however and can take different shapes in different organizations, ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. Some simply seek to use it as an aid in consumer and product forecasting while others will use Big Data collection and analysis to conduct controlled experiments to make better management decisions.
In either case, budgets are opening up for Storage Area Networks (SANs) where CIOs can stockpile data. But to what end? Storing data is one thing, leveraging the lessons locked within it is another. And the bigger and more varied the data sets are, the greater the difficulty a business will have in extrapolating nuggets of wisdom.
Is the money spent on storing Big Data today really driving business value? Even if we could successfully analyze and comprehend Big Data (the jury is still out on that one), we would have to invest in advance software to create unlimited analytical models that find the connections within the data.
The hope is that these would lead to insights about customers and business processes. However, these are just more data points. An analyst(s) would still be required to determine which of those models is best suited for the marketing objectives, the business culture, current management styles, employee skill set, etc.
Is Big Data a Red Herring?
In our age of relationships and consensus building is big data not just a Red Herring? Does it not shift the focus of a business’ decision making and strategic planning to patterned historical transactions instead of monitoring future trend currents? What products will capture the imagination of your audience or how your brand strategy will be perceived in the future cannot be predicted by calculations or algorithms spewing out past transactional matrices.
If we’re to believe the current consensus on social business, enterprises are evolving through the power of crowdsourcing, public opinion and relationship building. Product innovation is being propelled by predicting the intangible not analyzing data sheets. There’s a real threat in making Big Data analysis a business strategy.
So my question to you is: is the current fixation on Big Data collection an operational reaction to the volume of data being created or truly a strategic paradigm for business? Will it simply get in the way of better judgment? Make executives lazy in their innovation?
What are your thoughts? Will Big Data Kill Big Business? Join the debate!
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