Big data is the new wave in the IT industry: Oracle

Big data is a current buzz word in the IT industry and enterprises should harness it into their businesses, according to Oracle database product marketing vice-president, Willie Hardie.

Hardie said that big data is an evolution, which a lot of its customers want to learn more about.

“They certainly want to learn about big data from a business opportunity perspective. They want to find out where the opportunities lie. They have got IT systems and datacentres, so they are beginning to question why they should adopt it into their businesses,” he said. Hardie referred to a study, February 2012 Big Data manifesto, from open source analyst firm, Wikibon, that showed the market for big data will top $50 billion mark by 2017.

In addition, he claimed a recent Capgemini study found nine out of ten business leaders believe data is the fourth factor of production, as fundamental to business as land, labour and capital.

However, with Gartner predicting 650 per cent enterprise data growth in the next five years and 80 per cent of that data being unstructured, Hardie said it will not fit nicely into the traditional relational database.

As such, Hardie claimed that the biggest opportunity lay in corporations integrating big data with their business intelligence systems.

“Big data deals with different types of applications – that can be device generated data or social media applications – that has previously been ignored. This information might be valuable and can be disseminated to their business population,” he said.

He also said that as long as there is businesses opportunity, companies should not hesitate in adopting technologies such as big data during this period of economic uncertainty.

“Organisations have to look at where they are in the marketplace, their sales figures, their competitors’ performance, how well they can upsell and cross-sell to their customers and how well they can compete in the marketplace.

“Even in a tight economy, as long as there is opportunity, any investment in big data projects is going to be worthwhile,” he added.