Four things you need to do to ready your infrastructure for analytics

Four things you need to do to ready your infrastructure for analytics

Posted on September 16, 2015 by TheStorageChap in Big Data and Analytics

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the “Journey” that customers need to embark on in regard to Big Data and Analytics. One part of that “Journey” in ensuring your infrastructure is ready. Here are four things you need to do to ready your infrastructure for analytics.

1. Audit Data Sources

As organisations embark on their big data and analytics journeys one of the things that I often see overlooked is to understand what data they have available to them: Both internally within the organisation and also externally, not only from the usual social media suspects but also from other pertinent data sources aligned to their respective business vertical. Truly valuable, competitive, insights are achieved by combining data sources and asking questions which other companies may not have had the foresight to yet do.  This makes auditing your available data sources a critical starting point to your Big Data and Analytics Strategy.

2. Deploy Hadoop

In this new world order, value is shifting from actual product and service offerings themselves to the information they generate. Information, stored within Data, is now the lifeblood of an organisation and this new information paradigm demands the need for a “Data Operating System” that can allow an organisation to explore it’s data and help determine what is of value. Hadoop is not a science project, Hadoop is a mandatory requirement for all organisations.

3. Embrace Open Source Software

Of all of the areas covered by Open Source Software initiatives, Big Data and Analytics has the biggest acceptance amongst software vendors and customers that Open Source Software needs to be at the foundation of an organisations Analytics Toolbox. In an emerging space such as Big Data and Analytics, Open Source Software helps organisations keep costs down as they begin to develop their capabilities, but more importantly this is a rapidly changing space and having many developers contributing to Open Source Software development helps organisations rapidly deploy new capabilities, remain agile and maintain a competitive edge.

4. Don’t over look the importance of Applications

At the risk of repeating myself, don’t over look the importance of integrating Big Data and Analytics with Applications. Big Data and Analytics can generate insights, but insights can’t just sit inside the platform. They need to be used to create new products, or new experiences. Agile Applications anchored by data built from within a Platform as a Service (PaaS) type architecture enable the nirvana of being able to catch people or things in the act of doing something and effect the outcome in real-time.

What do you think? Leave me a comment, tweet me @TheStorageChap or join me at Chief Data Officer Forum Europe (October 13-14, 2015).