The Bigger “Big data revolution”
The size of the prize
The generation of “big data”, the emails, social media, online video, ecommerce transactions and many other kinds of digital information is growing exponentially.
A recent OFCOM study said that UK adults spend on average 8 hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, more than sleeping time (1). As TV and other forms of digital content is now the norm, this represents huge foot print.
It is often said that Marketers see Twitter, Facebook and other social media sits are the greatest source of real-time social interaction data ever created. A study back in 2012 showed in 24 hours Facebook processes 2.5 Billion pieces in content, 2.7 billion ‘Like’ actions and 300 million photo uploads. That represents 500 Terabytes of data (2). 2012 was the year Facebook passed the 1 billion users benchmark, now in 2016 Facebook is 1.6 billion users, 60% larger and still growing. This is typical of many aspects of the digital era with massive growth in data that is all hosted in the cloud computing infrastructure that these social and market places run on and the mobile devices connect into the cloud. What this represents is a huge data driven economic opportunity but also the challenges and perils of a connected world where privacy and competitive disruption are new forces to contend with for businesses.
Game changer – benefits
Big data represents all these types of data from social media, user generated content, online gaming, trading and marketing commerce and the data and social analytics that can be driven from them.
Big data and Cloud computing has been a “Game changer” is the way companies such as Amazon, Facebook , google and many others large and small have been able to exploit these technologies as they become commoditized and competitively priced to invest in. The “Big data revolution” is being pushed beyond the early stages of hosting data in the cloud to new ways to add value and monetize that data. Companies like Microsoft, google and others are seeking ways to capture consumer data , offering Terabytes of freemium storage. In the business area this ability to capture large data sets economically is enabling a “data gold rush” for cloud technology companies and user companies to capture and exploit data about their products, services and customers now often in real-time.
A big difference has been in
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Moving from batch to real time marketing and “live” adverts that can promote and customize products and services to individual customer preferences.
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Advanced insight into customer behavior to gain better influence and efficiencies in services
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Use of “services in the cloud” such as speech recognition and picture recognition that enable advanced new personal “Intelligent” services to augment mobile devices , smart TV and connected appliances in the Home, in connected cars, travel and many other places.
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New crowd sourced and cloud hosted data analysis services such as controlling my home thermostat remotely or my gym membership activity tracking with wearables and to compare with others to improvement efficiencies and lifestyles
This is just the beginning as more and more objects become connected and the convergence of ubiquitous cloud computing connectivity, faster telecoms network upload and download speeds evolve and the ever increasing behaviors of mobiles, tablets as the “2nd and 3rd screens for everything.
Importance of Data Analytics to technology employers
It is critical to understand the value of data in todays economy for competitive reasons and to manage the enterprise brand and security protection.
With data inside and outside an enterprise becomes increasingly interconnected this means opportunities and challenges to analyst what this data means and to define the value in relationships.
Loyalty has changes from products and services to more loyalty to the experience , the community and the ecosystem that customers and potential consumers are members of or associated to ij the social connected world. Being able to capture and understand “what people are saying the thinking about you and your company brand” matters. You only have to see the media campaigns running in the American elections to the impact of cyber attacks on privacy and reputation to understand the impact and severities. But also the opportunities of creating better productivity and higher personalised customer satisfaction from exploiting data analytics. The technology employers need to have staff with cloud and big data skills to do this and the right tools and technology vendors to drive this.
This is all leading to a bigger big data revolution as these technology mature and competitive is in the use of smart data, connected products and services to create responsive contextualized experiences.
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OfCOM 2015 Annual Report http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-reports/cmr15/
Constine J (2012) How big is Facebook’s data? 2.5 billion pieces of content and 500+ terabytes ingested every day, 22 August 2012. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/how-big-is-facebooks-data-2-5-billion-pieces-of-content-and-500-terabytes-ingested-every-day/