We want it all, and we want it now – has the era of instant gratification made us less patient?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Sean Jackson

Do you ever get the feeling that people have no patience anymore? No time to stop, reflect and do things at a more leisurely pace? I do. It seems that the more access we have to information, the more we want and the less tolerance we have to wait patiently for it. And this affects our lives in all manner of ways. From waiting for an analytic report to run on our work computers to growing annoyed at slow movie downloads on our devices at home; from standing in line at your local coffee shop while someone in front [...] Continue Reading…

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 [...] Continue Reading…

Love is in the air – can fast data analytics and BI help Cupid do his work?

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Sean Jackson

In today’s fast-paced world of hectic schedules, it has become increasingly difficult to meet new people, but technology and fast internet speeds have stepped in to fill the gap in the guise of online dating. Now it is easier than ever to meet the one destined to make you laugh and cry - the trend is so widespread that according to YouGov one in five relationships in the UK now start online. In fact, the UK’s Office for National Statistics has added online dating prices to its basket of goods and services from which it calculates the UK rate [...] Continue Reading…

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 [...] Continue Reading…

A new year, a new take on big data: more education and training

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Sean Jackson

I wonder what the buzzword of 2013 will be. Will it contine to be “big data” or will something else come along in its place? Until the next expression is upon us, one thing is clear: I am astounded at the level of ubiquity the expression “big data” has reached, especially when you consider how 2012 saw NPR vote the term “word of the year” [1] and even BBC Radio 4 discussed the subject on its highbrow news program “Today”[2]. Furthermore, in October 2012, analyst company Gartner published a market forecast in which they claim that the term “big [...] Continue Reading…

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 [...] Continue Reading…

Going bonkers over big data – but does size matter?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Sean Jackson

Big data: it’s amazing how two small words in the English language have found such great resonance in the world of business. Moreso how every vendor is seemingly trying to jump on the big data bandwagon to promote their offering that may (or in some cases may not) have something to do with large, complex and untamely data volumes. But let’s not get sidetracked here. By all means go bonkers about big data: take customer data and your corporate information, add in some of the unstructured variety, mix it up with social network feeds, centralize it on hardware, even [...] Continue Reading…

Harvesting the digital age – making money out of data

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Sean Jackson

Normally I don’t care for statistics; they are often used subjectively in order to prove a point or win a weak argument. In the words of 19th century British prime minister Disraeli and often referred to by Mark Twain, “there are three kinds of lies in this world: lies, damned lies and statistics.” But recently I read a number of research pieces that highlighted first the amount of data and information out there, and how data analytics today means that information can be used objectively and with great certainty to prove a theory. In fact, the articles got me [...] Continue Reading…

Is data the lifeblood of your business?

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Sean Jackson

You might think that a strange question to ask. After all, what company would admit that data is not core to their business? But whereas many organizations use data in their operations to manufacture a product or create a solution, others fundamentally depend on and use data to provide a commercial service. As industry experts and analysts continue to publish statistics on the amount of data being produced every minute of every day, the fact is that many companies are discovering the value in collating, aggregating and storing data and then offering other businesses the ability to interact with [...] Continue Reading…

To buy or not to buy: in-memory analytics, but at what cost?

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Sean Jackson

From time to time the IT community falls in love with certain concepts – cloud, virtualization and SaaS to name a few. More recently, another idea that has gained currency is In-Memory especially in conjunction with Big Data and analytics. It is a good concept and it does what it implies – data is stored in RAM as opposed to disk. While it may be a no-brainer that running data analytics using RAM rather than disk is considerably faster, the substantial hype around In-Memory, mostly aided by the marketing push made by vendors, has convinced businesses that there is [...] Continue Reading…

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