Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 31 | Page 34

FEATURE: BIG DATA In 2019, it’s estimated we’ll generate more data than we did in the previous 5,000 years and it is fast becoming the most valuable asset of any modern organisation. However, while most have access to their internal data, they continue to experience challenges in deriving maximum value. Zakes Socikwa, Cloud Big Data and Analytics Lead at Oracle, tells us more. T he foundation of any analytics or Business Intelligence (BI) reporting capability is an efficient data collection system that ensures events or transactions are properly recorded, captured, processed and stored. Some of this information on its own might not provide any valuable insights, but if it is analysed together with other sources might yield interesting patterns. Big Data opens up possibilities of enhancing internal sources with unstructured data and information from Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Furthermore, as we move to a digital age, more businesses are implementing customer experience solutions and there is a growing need for them to improve their service and personalise customer engagements. The digital behaviour of customers, such as social media postings and the networks or platforms they engage with, further provides valuable information for data collection. Information gathering methods are being expanded to accommodate all types and formats of data, including images and videos. In the past, BI and Data Mining were left to highly technical and analytical individuals, but the introduction //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// of data visualisation tools is democratising the analytics world. However, business users and report consumers often do not have a clear understanding of what they need or what is possible. AI now embedded into day to day applications To this end, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is finishing what business intelligence started. By gathering, contextualising, understanding and acting on huge quantities of data, AI has given rise to a new breed of applications – one that’s continuously improving and adapting to the conditions around it. The more data that is available for the analysis, the better is the quality of the outcomes or predictions. In addition, AI changes the productivity equation for many jobs by automating activities and adapting current jobs to solve more complex and time-consuming problems, from recruiters being able to source better candidates faster to financial analysts eliminating manual error-prone reporting. This type of automation will not replace all jobs but will invent new ones. This enables businesses to reduce the time to complete tasks and the costs of maintenance and will lead to the creation of higher-value jobs and new engagement models. Oracle predicts that by 2025, the productivity gains delivered by AI, emerging technologies and augmented experiences could double compared to today’s operations. According to the IDC, worldwide revenues for Big Data and Business Analytics solutions was expected to total US$166 billion in 2018, and forecast to reach US$260 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.9% over the 2017 to 2022 forecast period. It adds that two of the fastest growing BDA technology categories will be Cognitive or AI Software Platforms (36.5% CAGR) and Non-relational Analytic Data Stores (30.3% CAGR). Why AI and Machine Learning are vital to tackling the data explosion 34 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com