Partner Article

“Big Data and Powerful Users” ? Helping Businesses

by Andrew Carr, sales and marketing director, Bull UK & Ireland

Rapidly escalating data growth is one of the defining characteristics of today’s IT environment. Between the origins of man and 2003, around five Exabytes of information were created. Now, we produce that in just two days. By 2013 1,000 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, and the resulting traffic will increase nine-fold.

At the same time, the world of IT is seeing another major trend: a fundamental shift in the relationship between user and IT solution. Today, the information system has to comply with users’ expectations and their choice of hardware and ergonomics: not the other way round. Having been ‘pushed’ by technology since the 1970s, innovation is now being ‘pulled’ by usage.

Whether they are transactional application servers or the supercomputers used for computer simulation, the machines required today have to deliver colossal amounts of processing power, just to deal with such huge volumes of data and to meet increasingly sophisticated user demands for solutions that deliver innovation.

As these new technologies roll out, users will have an ever-growing influence over the choice of tools together with an expanded role in information systems governance. New technologies will be expected to create ‘value’ for the business. Users will expect their computing tools to mimic their working habits and usage, and deliver real operational added value.

The Right Solutions Delivered by the Right People

So how can businesses optimise the benefits they can achieve from this explosion in big data and the increasingly sophisticated capabilities of IT systems while at the same time taking advantage of the new drive towards user-driven IT systems?

At Bull, we believe, they first need to put in place the raw infrastructure to store large volumes of data but to do so efficiently and provide ease of access - even to workers on the move. Then they can start to use it as a strategic tool by implementing smart analytics required to evaluate data. From here, they can deliver applications like business intelligence that enable them to extract the greatest possible business value from the data they have. This valuable intelligence can drive profitability and competitive advantage through the added level of understanding and forecasting generated.

At the same time, they will need to be aware that the increasing sophistication of technology and its users is leading to redefining the role of the IT department. Once largely a production unit, it is rapidly turning itself into a services provider capable of using emerging technologies to tackle the key challenges faced by the organisation, from business innovation to operational excellence, and from customer relationship to risk management and regulatory compliance.

To do this, the IT Department will have to rely – more than ever – on partners capable of supporting it with the technological and business aspects. And if they are to effectively help businesses meet these twin challenges of the new IT age, those providers will need to come equipped with both the recognised technical expertise in IT infrastructures and an in-depth understanding of end users’ business challenges, in their chosen markets.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Teradata .