Understanding the business benefits and strategic implications of big data

Posted by Adam Stead | 10-May-2013 00:00:00

The rise in the amount of data we store and manage has been exponential.

"Technology is never a silver bullet and before we can reap the benefits of big data we must change our mindset"

Welcome to our first Big Data Insight Group Industry Trends Report, 'Understanding the business benefits and strategic implications of big data'.

Every day, we supposedly create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data which means that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. Big data, although not entirely about the size of data sets, has come about because of this exponential rise in the amount of data organisations are storing and managing.

For businesses, all of this extra data affords new opportunities for extracting insight and value. However David Boyle, Director of Insight at zeebox, warns that the sheer volume of data can be dangerous. "We don't have many problems storing mass quantities of data anymore, but there are certainly difficulties in ascertaining which bits to interrogate and analyse... people need to ask the right questions and then have the ability to identify, gather, store and analyse the relevant data to get the answers to these questions".

When asked who is responsible for owning big data analytics within their organisation, nearly half (47%) of respondents said this lay in the remit of the CIO or IT personnel. Joint second (15% each) went to data scientists/architects and BI personnel. CTOs and marketing were 10% and 9% of respondents answers respectively.

However David Boyle expects the responsibility to shift towards business departments, something he believes is essential if organisations are to get the most out of their data. "As businesses begin to understand and embrace big data you can expect to see a more even spread of responsibility across the business functions".

Topics: Research & Reports

Written by Adam Stead

As Research & Content Producer, Adam finds and publishes up-to-date expertise regarding how disruptive technology will drive change business and life.

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