More than Just Analytics: Actionable Insights Drive Big Data-led Business Transformation
2 min read
“Big data” has become the new buzzword of the tech world. But is big data actually something new, or just something that’s been repackaged? Recently I read an interesting IT World Canada article by Nestor E. Arellano that discussed that many executives are questioning whether big data is just analytics, especially as big data becomes a corporate norm.
Arellanco’s article highlights that the three critical differences between big data and analytics are volume, velocity and variety. These differences, which are also outlined in a Harvard Business Review article, present a supporting view of current research statistics from Cisco. Here’s a break-down:
- Volume: The number of connections are set to exponentially increase by 2020
- Velocity: The speed of data allows for real-time of near-real time information access
- Variety: Big data comes in many forms of unstructured data, making it very valuable for businesses
Based on these definitions, the proper digestion of big data will help organizations make better decisions and will provide increased opportunities for innovation. This unstructured data can be analyzed to give business leaders crucial information necessary to build and grow.
Big data can be broken down to reveal industry trends and information that can transform the way organizations operate, while helping business leaders understand how to provide consumers with a better experience or more tailored product.
How can big data transform my business?
As big data continues to grow, thanks to rapid smartphone adoption rates and more network connections, Canadian businesses are looking for ways to harness the power of big data through actionable insights. Fortunately, technology has enabled other elements to scale as well. Elements of computing such as storage, memory, processing and bandwidth are becoming cheaper, making it more economical for companies to conduct expansive data-intensive approaches to analyzing information.
Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) unifies computing, networking, management, virtualization, and storage access into a single integrated architecture. This unique fabric-based infrastructure helps to enable end-to-end server visibility, management, and control in both bare metal and virtual environments. It’s an ideal platform for big data applications due to the exceptional performance, capacity, and manageability of the UCS solution.
In addition, Cisco’s recently announced the intent to acquire WHIPTAIL, a leading solid-state systems and flash vendor. WHIPTAIL systems span from single-node entry products to 30-node behemoths that drive almost 400TB’s of flash, 40GB/sec of bandwidth and 4 million random R/W IOPS. The systems are perfect for applications where speed is critical such as analytics and video transcoding. This will allow for faster and more stable capabilities in a space where virtual desktops and data analytics are creating increasing performance demands on traditional storage arrays.
Interested in finding out more on how Cisco Canada can help your organization manage big data? Visit our solutions page for more information!
Join the discussion on #BigData on Twitter and follow us @CiscoCanada.
Authors
