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 it and analyze it to their benefit.  Call it what you want – big data, complex data, savage data – the fact is that data volumes are only headed one way and there is definitely a marked uptake in the number of savvy companies out there that are making good use of it and turning it into profit.  In these circumstances, these savvy companies live and die by the ability to store, mine and analyze data and then sell that as a solution.  To them, data is very much the lifeblood of their business.

These companies span a wide variety of verticals; many organizations in different markets have recognized the benefits of storing, collating and analyzing data and then selling the intelligence or access to the data as a solution or a service.  For example, many newly-founded companies in the retail and online sector are collating information on buying habits, product promotions, advertising revenues and sales data from merchants and then selling access to that data to suppliers, sponsors, analysts, CMG companies and even back to the merchants themselves.  In that and many other examples, the ability to offer a high performance analytic environment where interested parties can interrogate data that suits their business model is imperative.  More importantly, so is the high performance analytic engine that underpins the analytic service.  Imperative in the sense that the engine must be unobtrusive to the enduser and must deliver fast performance when data is queried.  These new services are powered by the new analytic engines that differ vastly from legacy database solutions that tend to be costly, obstructive and engineered in the 1980s.

Even if data is not yet deemed to be the lifeblood of your business, and you can see an opportunity to offer an analytic service that is a viable commercial proposition, then ask yourself these questions:

• Could you open up new revenue streams by managing, analyzing and selling data and intelligence on information you can gather in your market?
• Could you sell your solution via a SaaS model and improve it through offering interactive reporting and analytics?
• Could you deal with the analysis of social media data and sell insights to companies?
• Could you create extra income from aggregating data and allowing companies to interrogate it for their needs?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then take a look at the new generation analytic database engines to power your analytic service and solution.  Data volumes will only get bigger and more complex, that we know for sure.  But armed with a high performance analytic database such as Vectorwise as the engine that powers your service, at least you can move forward and capitalize on the data growth and reap the rewards.  Go on, have a think about the sorts of reporting and analytics you could offer businesses in your sector.  Captalize on the data tsunami growth that is taking place and make data the lifeblood of your business.  It may just be the best investment you ever make in your business.