Big Data at the Magic Kingdom – a blessing or a curse?

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Sean Jackson

It used to be the case that retail or telco or utilities were the markets that were getting the IT world abuzz with stories of big data analytics and making money out of large and complex data, markets where customers can be very fickle and operating margins very tight. But an article earlier this year in the New York Times shows that big data and the ability to collect, transact, manage, analyze and act upon it is just as applicable to markets with which we wouldn’t normally associate data. The big data analytics and reporting needs of retail organizations and telecom operators are by no means passé, but theme park operators and leisure companies are harnessing the big data wave, too, in order to deliver better customer service, up their game and drive profits. It seems that Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy are on hand to act upon big data, too.

The article showcases the great wealth of information that not only can be collected on theme park visitors’ habits – from what rides they prefer to what signature Mickey Mouse keyring they chose as their souvenir of the day from the gift shop – but also on significantly improving the user experience. By dispensing with coupon tickets, turnstiles and, in some cases, cash, Disney is now planning to arm its visitors with electronic wristbands and getting them to use them for purchases in the park as well as check in at sensors in order to ride they favourite attraction. As such, not only can Disney ensure that visitors don’t waste half of the day by standing in line, they can also ensure that they are happier and potentially spending more money in their stores. Families can pre-register online to ride at 1pm and turn up just 5 minutes beforehand and swipe their wristband. That certainly beats getting in line at 11am and waiting 2 hours in the soaring heat for the 90 second ride. Sounds good, right?

Sure, for the park operators this harnessing of the big data generated by all this online and sensor activity and using it to their advantage sounds great. If they can reduce waiting lines, improve the user experience and fully digest who does what when, who buys what when and who wants to see what attraction when, then the park operator can tailour the park to meet the needs of the consumer and profit accordingly. Happier guests will recommend the park to their friends, happier guests are sure to return themselves and happier guests may even spend more in the park’s stores, given that they are spending less time in the lines waiting for the rides.

But isn’t this all a little too much? Especially when theme parks are a place to go to escape from the realities of life for a while? You might argue that the simplicity and innocence of theme parks – especially Disney and the market it serves – will be lost in favour of a system where it is all about gleaning as much information from the visitor as possible and using it to the operator’s advantage. Will parents be happy standing with their kids on their shoulders watching the parade of smiling cartoon characters on Main Street knowing all too well that theme park operators are busy behind the scenes analyzing, crunching and mining information about them and their activities both done and pre-planned for the day ahead? Or is this now just the way of the world? After all, theme parks are businesses, too.

With all things in life and certainly with big data and personal information, you have to find the happy medium. I am sure that parents who pre-register their childrens’ information into the parks’ systems will not want to divulge too much data, nor have that information abused, but then they might appreciate the fact that their kids’ wristbands will tell Cinderella that one of them is celebrating a birthday and have the cartoon character wish the kid a very special day automatically.

While it is fair to say that theme park and leisure companies do need data in order to compete more tactically – somehow building a newer, faster rollercoaster ride doesn’t seem to cut it anymore these days – it is also fair comment to make that theme park operators need to be sensitive to the needs of their customers: offering a tailour-made and extra-special experience at the Magic Kingdom sounds great, but overstepping the mark and making it too intrusive can do untold damage to the theme park company and its reputation.

But whether you believe it to be a good thing or just way too over-the-top, my guess is that digital wristbands and data analytics at theme parks are here to stay. It seems that no business can afford not to embrace and ride the big data analytics wave.

The term “big data” may fade away, the need to analyze and act on data will most certainly not

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Sean Jackson

In my last blog post I discussed the need for more teaching both by our education establishments as well as employers in order to help train a knowledgeable and skilled workforce that has the necessary skills to harvest the big data wave and help organizations monetize information. After all, everywhere you look, we’re being told that big data equals big value, right?

But no sooner did I post my thoughts, I read an interesting article from analyst firm Gartner that would have us believe that the term big data is about to plummet off the “peak of inflated expectations” and fall into the “trough of disillusionment.”[1] If you’re an avid follower of Gartner’s Hype Cycle reports, these terms will be familiar. If you are not, then don’t worry – Gartner’s opinion is just one of many out there; others in the industry have done research that would suggest that for every one negative comment about big data, there are at least three positive ones.[2]

But we’re in danger of getting stuck in an academic argument played out by analysts, industry pundits, consulting firms and vendors alike. In my opinion, businesses don’t care for the term big data per se, they care about running their operations, satisfying their customers, building their business. They care about whether they have the know-how and workforce to help surmount business issues when analyzing and acting upon large and complex data sets, ranging from structured data in on-premise applications to unstructured data feeds coming from the cloud. They don’t tend to refer to the term big data when explaining their challenges. In fact, remember when e-business was big in the late 90s? Then everyone realized it was just business and dropped the ‘e’. Today big data is ‘big’, but in years to come, folks may just call it called data.

Whether you believe that the term big data is here to stay or doomed to pass, the fact remains that there is a plethora of opportunities out there for those who are prepared to embrace them. And the savvy businesses out there are digging deep to help fund the salaries of those that know what to do with big data. Dice.com’s annual salary survey reveals that job candidates with big data technology expertise command an average salary of $100k, some $20k more than other co-workers skilled in other areas of IT, for example in mobile technology.[3] It seems that companies are prepared to pay big bucks for those who can when it comes to big data.

But just what are these jobs? Again, the argument surrounding the term big data is superfluous. No-one advertises for a “big data guru”. Instead, you see job adverts for “data scientists”, “data architects” or “data engineers.” More recently, and as shared by our customer Atheon Analytics, the term “data animator” is one that is increasingly becoming popular.[4] This is a term that makes more sense to me as it conjures up the image of someone who can cope with data of any shape and size and turn it into something visual, something creative, something alive that tells a story and that can be easily understood to make decisions and act upon an occurrence or a situation in the business. Everyone loves a good story and the human brain digests visual content much more easily than trawling through lines of a report or staring at another pie chart, just trying to figure out what it is meant to show. These animators go beyond the static nature of spreadsheets and charts, they bring data to life in a way that allows businesses to get to grip with their data as well as think creatively about what they are doing with their data.

In fact, I believe that data animators will grow in popularity and become more commonplace just as data scientists and data architects will. And as there is more of them getting to grips with data, there will emerge new executives to manage them. Chief Digital Officers and Chief Analytic Officers may well be the next wave of company board members who spearhead the pursuit of extracting value from their business data.

In summary, I don’t believe we should be pessimistic and give up on the term big data. Yes, the expression itself may drop from our vocabulary, but let’s put semantics to one side; the fact remains that organizations continue to see enough potential in their data and information that they are willing to invest and pay for expertise that can analyze and do something valuable with it.

In fact, the need for businesses to mine, analyze, predict, decide and act – all based on data – will be as prevalent as ever, bolstered by an ever-increasing number of data experts who know how to analyze and act upon data and information. That is the future ahead of us. Thus, to the point of my previous blog post, it has never been more important to ensure we can satisfy this demand with good data-oriented education and training.

[1] http://blogs.gartner.com/svetlana-sicular/big-data-is-falling-into-the-trough-of-disillusionment/

[2] http://ovum.com/2013/01/21/big-data-whats-hot-whats-not-according-to-the-twitter-stream/

[3] http://media.dice.com/report/2013-2012-dice-salary-survey/

[4] http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/data-animators-bring-big-data-to-life/240146508

Big Data: The rise of the smart city

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Sean Jackson

The buzz surrounding big data is enough to convert the most ardent sceptic but once the initial enthusiasm subsides, you begin to cut through the fog of marketing hype and evaluate practical benefits. Many people are at the second stage when they are beginning to question big data benefits. Working in business intelligence and data analytics for some time now, I’ve never had occasion to doubt its positive influence. In fact the biggest and most widespread impact is already shaping our towns and cities and turning them into smart cities, a modern urban landscape where big data is radically changing both where we live and the way we live.

According to the 2011 revision of the United Nations’ World Urbanization Prospects report[1], nearly 70 per cent of the world’s population will be urban by 2051. The world population is expected to surpass nine billion and urban dwellers to surpass six billion. Two in three people born in the next 30 years will live in cities. This growth in urban living poses tough challenges to those in local government, administration and town planning offices as they strive to ensure that the environment, transportation, residents’ safety, the provision of utilities as well as economic and social activity can continue to be improved unhindered. It is clear that responding to these challenges and improving people’s lives, towns and cities will require local planning teams and administration bodies to think differently, where much more emphasis will be placed on the consumption and analysis of large data volumes generated by day-to-day life in our towns and cities.

And it is staggering just how much data towns and cities generate. At a rough estimate, we will generate 4.1 terabytes per day per square kilometer of urbanized land area by 2016. In fact, you could say that cities are the true big data systems of our age. From geolocation data collected by smart phones to data generated by cars and their GPS instruments, from the contact sensor payment cards we use to ride the subway to the data we offer when we want to make use of a bike or a car in the city. From the data generated by our health ID cards to that from our loyalty and store cards, our bank cards and every time we make use of QR, bar or flash codes to access content.

Data generation does not stop there – think about the data created by traffic management systems, from traffic lights to the sensors on our roads; from the provision of utilities such as gas, electricity and drinking water; when delivering refuse collection and waste management services; from the provision of healthcare in our doctors’ surgeries and hospitals to the data generated by schools and colleges educating our children.

Data is not being generated in isolation either, there an increasing appetite for real-time and interactive information – where we were once content to use a map provided on a street display, we now turn to our smart phone devices and tablets to interact much more dynamically. Before, we were glad when we found a good restaurant. Now we want to research it, see what others think of it, take photos, post content and share our reviews. No longer do we want to wait patiently for the bus to arrive, wondering whether an alternate transport might better serve our purpose. Now we want to know where it is, how late it is running and whether it will get us to the station in time for our train. Before, we just got into our cars and headed off to where we needed to go. Now, we want to research our route, see if there are any traffic jams or incidents, plot our journey using our sat nav, and see how the weather might impact our journey. Before, we were happy if we could get our children into a local school. Now we want to know what the school is like, how it rates in the league tables, what the teachers are like, how easy it is for our children to get to school, what other parents think about it.

You could even say that where once we used to talk to our neighbours and family to get their thoughts and opinions, now we are consumed by the digital age and look to online resources instead, creating and consuming vast amounts of content that others can use and add to, vast amounts of data that – once shared – civic authorities and town planners can use to their advantage.

Faced with this deluge of data in a wide variety of forms and formats, it may be hard to know where civic authorities and town planning organization can start. But the answer is clear: every step made towards improving the quality of life begins by first analyzing it and making sense of it. For me this represents a great opportunity for the city authorities and urban developers – it gives them a powerful tool to tackle rapid and unprecedented urbanization by making better informed decisions, operate more efficiently and even predict the future to ensure resources can be organized in time.

We have already seen a number of practical implementations from utility providers exploring how information from smart meters can encourage water and energy users to change behaviour to civic authorities using available technologies, including mobile phones, sensors and closed-circuit television to improve the flow of road traffic. One of the most successful example of this was during the 2012 Olympic games in London when Transport for London, the public authority responsible for running the London public transport network, prepared and ensured smooth transport despite experiencing a 25 per cent increase in customers using real-time information collected from CCTV cameras, subway cards (Oyster card), mobile phones and social networks to ensure limited disruptions to trains and bus routes.

Data is all around us – it’s not just growing but multiplying and what the civic authorities and town planners need is fast and easy-to-use technology which can digest the data quickly and give them the answers that they need. They don’t need to invest in large, expensive storage or data processing solutions; specialized solutions are not needed here. There are newer analytic solutions out there in the market, ones that leverage the performance features of the latest off-the-shelf servers and hardware that can crunch through large volumes of data of all shapes and sizes and render the results on devices that we all use anyway in a matter of just seconds: on smart phones, tablets, our desktop PCs.

Cities are areas where big data is having a real impact. Town planners and administration bodies just need the right tools at their fingertips to consume all the data points that a town or city generate and then be able to turn that into actions that improve people’s lives. In this case, big data is not just a passing fad or marketing hype, it is definitely a phenomenon that has a direct impact on the quality of life for those of us that choose to live in a town or city.

Tomorrow’s towns and cities are being built today, and they’re being built by using big data.

[1] http://esa.un.org/unup/pdf/WUP2011_Highlights.pdf

Big Data Kills by a Thousand Cuts

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Kevin Cox

Death by a thousand cuts was an ancient punishment reserved for heinous crimes such as treason or killing one’s parents. The process involved tying the person to be executed to a wooden frame, usually in a public place, and proceeding to cut off little slices of flesh until the guilty party expired. Big data has the potential to do just this to your company. The worst part of it is that you will not even know this is happening to your company until it is too late.

In the world of today, your customers are writing about you and their experiences of your products or services across thousands of different websites, Yelp, Google, Bing, your own Facebook page, your own Youtube channels, your own website feedback forms, win-loss data from your own sales force-you name it. The big data explosion is coming from the hundreds of millions of transaction and social media engagement channels across the Internet and your own systems that you set up to serve your customers in the first place!

The genie is out of bottle and there’s no retreating from the world of big data. Before your business has even been contacted, 57% of the purchase decision has already been made –this based on 2011 research from the Marketing Leadership Council of Corporate Executive Board. Where is all this decision-making happening if you haven’t even met once with this prospective customer? It’s happening on the Internet. Prospects are using the myriad web channels to find out just what everyone really thinks of your solutions and forming their own opinions without ever meeting you.

“Well Kevin”, you say, “this is such a bleak picture it just can’t be, we’ve been a customer-centric company for many years- this is how we have grown our business in the first place”. And you would be correct. It is a well known fact that companies that listen to their customers win. “Aberdeen Group, Customer Experience Management: Engaging Loyal Customers to Evangelize Your Brand” report cites 70% of customer experience management best in class adopters use customer feedback to make strategic decisions. 50% of industry-average organizations and 29% of laggards do this. This hasn’t changed; it’s just that now this feedback is being posted in a thousand other places than your website.

Businesses today have to embrace big data to really understand the totality of what their customers are experiencing and reporting to out to their networks. You have to develop strategies for being able to collect all of this feedback in whatever format and bring it together with your own information to have a true 360 degree view of your customer. The truisms on which the most successful businesses have been built stand true, it’s just that the execution of those truism have become much more complicated with the hundreds of new communications channels that we are using in our everyday lives. Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, estimates that CMOs will be outspending CIOs on IT in the next 5 years, driven by the inexorable rise in on-line business and big data. With the right big data strategy, instead of a thousand cuts, you could be facing a thousand compliments

Cut Out The Complexity With The Vectorwise Data Mart Appliance

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Thomas Ribble

This April, Lenovo teamed with Actian to deliver the powerful Vectorwise Data Mart Appliance, offering a pre-configured software and hardware solution designed to be the most effective data analytics solution for businesses of any size. The Data Mart Appliance combines Lenovo’s industry-leading ThinkServer hardware with Actian’s record-breaking Vectorwise database. By matching smart software with high-performance, affordable hardware, the Data Mart Appliance represents a collaboration of world-class platforms that offers businesses an immediate plug-and-play solution for accessing and analyzing data.

With increasing customer demands for faster performance and a wider variety of appliances, analytics and business intelligence, the combined experience of Vectorwise and Lenovo is the complete package for a data solution in any organization. Engineered to accelerate Big Data project implementations on an enterprise-scale data warehousing solution, the Vectorwise Data Mart Appliance offers:

Performance: The appliance features the record-breaking Vectorwise database optimized to run on the Lenovo ThinkServer RD240, an ideal workhorse server that provides the capacity and power needed to process large transactions.
Affordability: Starting at an attractive entry price, the appliance offers low total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for expensive resources to design and tune the system.
Fast Deployment: The pre-configured appliance can be in production within minutes of being racked, ensuring fast deployment and the shortest time to get action-oriented insight into the hands of business users.
Compatibility: Compliant with industry standards for SQL, JDBC, ODBC, and .NET support, the Vectorwise Data Mart Appliance operates seamlessly alongside legacy platforms.
Manageability: Based on industry standard components, the appliance is simple to install and manage using resources and skills readily available in your organization. With built-in web-enabled remote management, the ThinkServer RD240 will easily integrate into existing management infrastructures.
Energy Efficiency: The ThinkServer RD240’s energy-efficient features and Vectorwise’s Energy Efficiency records make this Data Mart Appliance an ideal solution for customers seeking green alternatives
Interoperability: The Vectorwise analytic database is certified with commonly-used Business Intelligence tools including IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy, Pentaho, SAP BusinessObjects, Tableau and Yellowfin.

Feel free to contact Lenovo directly with any questions or check out Actian’s products page for more details and to see how the Vectorwise Data Mart Appliance can help your business analyze data.