Organisations that can gain insights from Big Data and implement them quickly will be the ones that thrive over the foreseeable future. This was one of the key messages from the EMC Forum in Dublin.
The last few years, since recession hit in 2008, have seen the fastest transformation of IT in business in the last 25 years, according to Fidelma Russo, senior vice president, enterprise storage division, EMC.
The speed of this change was unprecedented, according to Russo, and this was due to the economic difficulties being global, dramatic and spreading fast. Organisations had little time to react and operational inefficiencies that were tolerable previously became intolerable very quickly.
“Usually you don’t get all of these influences at the same time,” said Russo.
“Things went in at the expense of efficiency in order to push the top line growth,” said Russo, which resulted in inefficient IT infrastructure. However, there then followed an efficiency drive but with a strong curb on spending.
Now, the focus is still firmly on efficiency, but also on innovation and intelligence.
“The more that you can innovate, the more that you can compete and succeed,” Russo asserted.
The organisations who have figured out cloud and Big Data, and how they fit for their business, are able to make decisions quicker, to exploit new opportunities, argued Russo. However, adoption rates for Big Data are still, low especially in Ireland, as a survey of forum attendees confirmed.
Despite the fact that more than three quarters (79%) of respondents said decisions in their organisation could be improved with a better use of data, a third of the 145 surveyed have no current plans for implementing Big Data technology, with budget (67%) as the most common inhibitor, followed by the lack of a business case or return on investment (58%).
Russo agreed that adoption was still low, but was confident of its increasing usage.
Looking back a few years ago, cloud was the same, Russo argued, as businesses were unsure as to how to use. Now, it is well established and businesses are enjoying the benefits.
“Most people now have strategies converted into plans as to what to do with cloud,” she said. “Big Data is nascent still, and there hasn’t been that upswing in adoption.”
Skills too were a concern, especially when it comes to integration with the legacy systems that persist in many sectors and organisations.
The survey found that more than three quarters (77%) believed it will be a challenge to have skills keep pace with IT innovation over the next three years. Only half (51%) of respondents believed their organisation has the right level of skills and knowledge to complete business priorities successfully.
“The piece that we are missing is that bridge from first platform and second platform knowledge to third platform. These platforms don’t go away, they tend to exist together,” said Russo.
Despite the need for skills to meet growth in enterprise applications, there is still a need for those older skills too, she said.
Many organisations are trying to meet those needs with internships and in house training. But also, work needs to be done with academia to ensure that students have awareness and knowledge to understand how these systems live together and work in modern enterprise, said Russo.
Russo pointed out that EMC was working to ensure that the skills and supports were there, from easier to use tools and services, to new technologies and professional support services. But the company is also working closely with academia to ensure that even as new computer science graduates emerge, they have a broad range of skills to cope with real world situations.
Looking out over the coming years, Russo said that greater understanding of what fits where will emerge.
“Over the next five years, people will have a much better knowledge of what applications belong in private or public cloud and how to bring capacity back and forth between those.”
“Today,” she said, “you put something in the public cloud, and it can be difficult to get back. You’ll see a merging of technologies that will allow workloads to reside in the right place at the right time.”
Security will continue to be a key pillar of what people need and want, especially as cyberattacks continue and develop, she predicted, and Big Data will just be part of how people work.
“Big Data is a little bit like search was way back. In order to do a search prior to Google, you had to be able to write a query and then execute it. Big Data is going in the same direction where the tools are making it ever easier to get the information you need in the way that you want it.”
TechCentral Reporters
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers