Big Data Organizational Stack

If you think Big Data is about processing terabytes of data, gigabytes of data per hour, and a healthy mix of structured and unstructured data to get insights either algorithmically or from the relatively few talented data scientists, then you are missing the point.

Big Data Needs to Scale

What I mean by scale is, the tools, data and insights need to be available and presented in such a way that provide new intelligence deep into the organization and beyond the data scientist. Is your data being used to influence executive decision making? Is it being used to adjust operational priorities? Is it influencing product managers on what products to develop, features to prioritize, or marketing strategies to focus on? Is the average salesperson adjusting their sales pitch or prioritizing prospects differently based on all the data available? Is finance using data beyond financial benchmarks in their forecasts?

My first two posts on Big Data provide some of my insights. First, Big Data is not just about data management, e.g., volume, velocity, and variety of data. My post, Top Five Tools of Big Data Analytics covers tools such as visualization, predictive, data quality and master data management.

Big Data is a Big CIO Opportunity. First, the CIO has to make the right IT investments in data management requiring new technologies, talent and skills. Then the CIO needs to select and scale usage of an appropriate set of Big Data Analytic tools.

And then, the CIO needs to help Big Data scale and help the organization become more data driven.

A Significant Challenge