Volume, Variety & Velocity: Taking Big Data to Next Level

Big data is going to have have profound impact on our lives soon given the slew of problems it can debunk by providing actionable fact-based insights that government organizations and businesses across industry verticals can benefit from. From a smart city initiative to a genomics analysis, the correlation and analysis of the huge pool of data can help you give right diagnosis, says Ron Kasabian, GM of Big Data Solutions, Intel.

Having said, the real question is how can businesses embrace it for big data expertise is scarce and solutions are expensive? Here, we touch upon few thoughts based on interactions with big data experts from Intel.

Big data is driven by volume & type of data

We're going to see a 10x data growth by 2016 while 90% of it being unstructured. And the other driver that is fuelling big data is the lower cost of compute and storage. Plus, average server cost have reduced by 40% in last ten years while the storage cost per GB by a whopping 90%, forecasts Intel. The third major driver that is enabling big data today is new investments in tools and services which has jumped to $7B in 2012 from $3B in 2010. This number would reach $17B in 2017, says an IDC forecast. This makes a ground for govt and business enterprises to consider the next big thing sooner than later.

Govt & businesses can equally leverage the untapped value of big data

Now that more and more sources are pumping the big data pool including data from sensors and surveillance, TV & Video, medical scans, and social media, the next level is to correlate and analyze them to bring up actionable insights which could be huge in terms of adding to the operational efficiency, security management and more.

The range of insights that businesses can gain could be many including business intelligence, learning customers' purchase paths and buying behaviours, extreme weather prediction, traffic optimization, genetic profile, location aware information for relevant ad placement and more.

Predictive analytics can save lives with personalized medicine

Genomics is one area where big data holds a lot of promise, says Kasabian. By collating information from a genetic profile of a person including his habits, lifestyle, health history and much more, and comparing the same against others and then correlating similarities and variations you may save one's life, adds Kasabian.

Mapping a patient's genetic profile could be helpful in determining the best treatment for him as well. Similarly, analyzing thousands of individual genomes could help both clinicians and researchers watch various medical complications and patient behaviour closely than ever. Genomic revolution is not new though, big data technologies have a lot of potentials to take it to next level. Intel is betting big on its Hadoop distributions that can be customized to fit to the requirements of industry verticals including healthcare.

Cost & Complexity are the roadblocks to big data adoption

‘This is where ‘anonymization' technologies comes into play. Intel Expressway Service ensures data anonymization and encryption in the cloud with centralized policy enforcement point', says Girish Juneja, CTO, Datacenter Software Division & GM, Big Data and Software Services, Intel.

Big data today is in gathering phase

Six percent of the total big data users are benefiting from the predictive analytic and other data analyzing technologies and the rest is experimentation, says Kasabian. This clearly shows its immaturity in terms of getting business benefits. However, five years down the line, we will talk more about new discoveries and business benefits than big data in theory, adds Kasabian.

Image source: Intel