The Big Data blues?

Hitachi Data Systems has announced the results of its UK big data survey – ‘Route To Real Time’ – which highlights that more than half of UK organisations may be making business-critical decisions based on old or inaccurate information as they do not have the technology infrastructure or collaborative working cultures in place to operate in real time. The survey identified the barriers to real-time working within UK organisations.

“Siloed working practices and the inability to analyse information immediately in order to extract insights from all data sets is preventing organisations from getting an accurate, up-to-date picture of their current business environment. This means organisations can’t get the most value out of their data – insights that will allow them to innovate to transform their business,” said Hicham Abdessamad, senior vice president, Global Services, Hitachi Data Systems. “The future of business is real-time, and the foundation for technology and business management needs to be evaluated today to enable businesses to evolve and capture immediate market opportunities, act quickly on trends, and gain competitive advantage.”

Barriers to Real-Time Working
· Real Time Not a Reality
o The survey, by research firm Vanson Bourne, of 200 IT decision-makers from UK organisations with more than 1,000 employees highlighted that 75 per cent of UK organisations are currently investing in big data analytics, and of these, 80 per cent are deploying solutions. Sixty-nine per cent of organisations investing in big data analytics agree that they do not have the infrastructure in place to analyse up-to-the-minute information across all their data sets.
o Nearly three quarters of respondents who have deployed a big data analytics solution (74 per cent) can analyse only up to 50 per cent of their data sets, and 33 per cent of those with a deployed solution said they cannot analyse both structured and unstructured data.
o 53 per cent of IT decision-makers surveyed agree that organisations are at risk of making business-critical decisions based on old or inaccurate data.
o In addition, 60 per cent of CIOs feel they are unable to extract the full value of their information.
· Silos Preventing Progress
o Almost three quarters of IT decision-makers said that traditional siloed working practices are inhibiting the use and effectiveness of Big Data analytics within their organisation.
o Of the organisations (21 per cent) that do not have the infrastructure in place to enable lines of business to access relevant data in real time, 50 per cent of CIOs said the issue is that information being pulled is too complex for employees to understand, and 45 per cent said the business works in silos. A further 67 per cent agree that such silos ways of working are preventing business leaders from making transformative business decisions.
o 82 per cent of all CIOs surveyed agree that a single dashboard which provides Big Data analytics for each line of business would be useful within their organisation.

Route to Real Time
“Technology infrastructure is not the only barrier halting real-time big data analytics in UK organisations; business culture is also proving to be a challenge,” said Stephen Ball, regional vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems. “Traditional siloed working practices have inhibited information from being shared across different lines of business, which means people across the organisation are working with various data-sets which may not even correlate in terms of accuracy or timeframe, preventing them from taking full advantage of the insights they hold. To become more agile organisations need to break down the barriers and foster a collaborative working environment to enable them to move further towards a real time model. This will in turn evolve skills sets and create a more productive workforce.”

Bob Plumridge, chief technology officer (EMEA), Hitachi Data Systems, says there are four recommendations for organisations to break down the technology barriers to real-time working:
· Evaluate your existing infrastructure: How information is stored can directly impact an organisation’s ability to extract meaning in real time. Exploiting big data requires structured information management before an organisation’s data starts to show true business value.
· Take a strategic approach to storage: A more strategic approach to data storage will allow organisations to better utilise the data, which in turn can lead to better business performance. Organisations with effective storage strategies – that can capture data efficiently and mine it well in the first place – find it easier to unlock equity from that data. These are the organisations that find it the easiest to improve business efficiency, performance, customer service, and competitiveness.
· Use velocity as a key enabler for big data input and output: Organisations need high velocity storage as a core part of their infrastructure to enable them to extract real value from their information and act on it in real time.
· Deploy high-performance systems: Hitachi Data Systems offers the industry’s most scalable, high performance File and Content solutions, enabling a wide array of big data workloads to be completed faster and more cost-efficiently.