business
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TALKING
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warehouse appliances require massive
throughput for mainstream, file-based
workloads and cloud-native, object-based
applications
• True scale-out design. The power
of data lake is its native, scale-out
architecture, which allows batch jobs to
scale limitlessly as software – not the user
– manages resiliency and performance
• Multi-dimensional performance. Data
is unpredictable and can arrive at any
speed—therefore, organisations need a
platform that can process any data type
with any access pattern
• Massively parallel. Within the
computing industry, there has been
a drastic shift from serial to parallel
technologies, built to mimic the human
brain, and storage must keep pace
A true data hub must have all four qualities
as all are essential to unifying data. A
data hub may have other features, like
snapshots and replication, but if any
of the four features are missing from a
storage platform, it isn’t built for today’s
challenges and tomorrow’s possibilities.
For example, if a storage system delivers
high throughput file and is natively scale-
out but needs another system with S3
object support for cloud-native workloads,
then the unification of data is broken and
the velocity of data is crippled. It is not a
data hub.
For organisations that want to keep data
stored, a data hub does not replace data
warehouses or data lakes.
For those looking to unify and share their
data across teams and applications, a data
hub identifies the key strengths of each silo,
integrates their unique features and provides
a single unified platform for business.
Think of storage like a bank, or an
investment. We put our money in banks, or
in the stock market because we want our
money to work for us. Modern organisations
need to do the same with data and they
should speak to their preferred vendors to
see how they can help. n
Driving the effective use and adoption
of information
Adriaan Hubinger,
Engagement Manager: Data,
Information and Analytics at
Decision Inc, examines how
to effectively adopt data
inside the business.
J
ust consider how much data is
available to decision-makers. In 2015,
12 zetabytes (1ZB is the equivalent
of about one trillion gigabytes) of data
was created worldwide. And by 2025, it
is forecast to increase to a staggering
163 zetabytes. Clearly, companies need
a carefully constructed adoption strategy
to capture, manage and understand the
information they have at their disposal.
Adding to the complexity of this challenge
is the fact that many existing business
intelligence (BI) tools are not being used
to their full capacity. There is a willingness
to adopt them, but there is a lack of
understanding how to integrate BI across
the organisation for all employees to benefit
from it.
Even though the financial sector has received
a lot of attention when it comes to data
analysis and information strategy adoption,
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INTELLIGENTCIO
the reality is that any sector can benefit
from this. In the current difficult economic
environment, businesses are trying to keep
costs low while still being competitive and
maximising the technological solutions they
have at their disposal.
To truly achieve business value from BI
and other analytics tools, companies must
extract value out of the information they
have at hand. This is not only a South African
challenge. Local companies are on par with
their international counterparts when it
comes to adoption rates. Some statistics
show that insurance and technology lead all
other sectors in terms of BI adoption with
40% of organisations having 41% or greater
penetration of BI. It all boils down to making
solutions accessible and customisable to the
specific needs of the business.
Change management
Moving beyond the willingness to change and
having the capabilities to analyse data more
effectively, another component that needs
to be considered is change management.
It has become too easy to migrate BI and
data analytics solutions without taking into
account the people who need to use it.
Granted, costing is always a consideration
as organisations want to run as optimally
as possible. Even though it might be too
expensive to convert the entire organisation
to a comprehensive BI platform, there
are options to embrace a more modular
approach. This is not only cost-effective but
enables the organisation to train sections
of people with the solution and gauge its
impact on the organisation.
African expansion
Looking at the rest of Africa, there are
significant opportunities for businesses to
extract additional value from insights across
the continent. Data structures differ in each
country and these are not always in the
most accessible formats. By getting the data
into a usable format, businesses can gain a
greater understanding of the needs of their
target markets.
Data needs to be accessible in its simplest
form for decision-makers to gain actionable
insights. Currently, it is about transforming
innovative technologies like Machine
Learning and Artificial Intelligence into
relevant solutions that can deliver BI value
for the organisation.
The opportunities are there as is the
willingness. Now it is a matter of combining
data with tools and ensuring employees can
unlock the insights inside it. n
www.intelligentcio.com