The convergence of mobile, social, Cloud and Big Data is evolving the technology landscape and the battle for who will win and lose is being fought right now.
So said IDC analyst Alys Woodward at the research firm’s Social Enterprise, Business Analytics and Big Data conference in London, explaining that this growth in ICT is bringing the social enterprise, business analytics and Big Data together.
Attitudes to the social web are changing, she said. IDC research revealed that whilst last year organisations were very much concerned with risks surrounding employee behaviour within the social enterprise, as well as negative discussion about the brand, organisations this year are embracing the social web with the majority viewing it as a valuable marketing tool.
But despite the acceptance of the social enterprise, businesses still haven’t realised the potential of business analytics. According to Woodward, this is due to a number of reasons:
- Risk – will organisations get the answer they want?
- Questionable value – will the answer be different enough?
- Volume of velocity swamping the system – if organisations can only operate their analysis once a month, is it worth it?
- Lack of investment – more focus on other priorities
- Lack of IT and business alignment
Big Data is helping businesses answer those questions. “It takes business analytics a step further and evolves it along the four dimensions of the V’s,” she said.
Armed with value, volume, velocity and variety, Big Data integrates additional data sources and more complex formats, as well as speeding up responses, and providing answers to new questions and better answers to existing questions.
It also makes social possible and allows businesses to see what people are saying outside of their organisation, the analyst added.
“But social brings a phenomenal data challenge and the question is what insight can you get out of it?”
