This post is by Ashish Verma, US Leader, Big Data and IoT Analytics, Deloitte Consulting LLP. Ashish is a Director with Deloitte Consulting LLP and has more than 18 years of management consulting experience helping Fortune 100 companies build solutions that focus on addressing complex business problems related to realizing the value of information assets within an enterprise. He leads Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Big Data and IoT Analytics practice, building offerings and accelerators to enhance business processes and effectiveness.
One of the common struggles that I see my clients face is the adoption of big data and their ability to derive value from it. When I talk to CxO’s, they are aware of the potential of big data. They’re knowledgeable of its benefits and ability to support an analytical framework; they’re aware of data governance too. What is missed, is the fact that big data is not a destination, it is a journey to be taken with the same level of rigor that underpins any significant transformative technology initiative within an organization.
During my tenure leading our go-to-market offerings for our portfolio of services tied to Big Data, I’ve witnessed big data change from a technology of the future, to a core component of how organizations can optimize assets, drive revenue and increase margin while reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This evolution includes what we know as the Internet of Things (IoT); a world of intelligent connected devices generating data for use in new services that can reveal actionable insights or triggers based on input stimuli.
But it’s not as easy as feeding various data streams into a cloud computing environment and declaring the organization to be ready for the future. IT leaders who want to enable their business partners with self-service analytics for streaming machine logs or semi and unstructured data sets are now faced with deciphering a complex ecosystem including security risks. A reactive measure is to restrict access to provisioning Hadoop-based cloud clusters (IaaS or PaaS) running on public, private or hybrid platforms that stream this data for analytics or data discovery. The hope in this method, is that on premise capabilities behind the firewall will deliver to the ask in the near future. But this defeats the purpose of core platform modernization, or what we know today as hybrid ecosystems, purpose-built for the specificity of analytical workloads tied to the ask. The asks are intuitive to the organizations that have been there and done that; it’s not an “either or” choice that is made.
When I’m working with a client on these asks, I always discuss the value of aligning people, process and technology to the target operating model of the future. These enabling technologies are just one component of the strategy. Without a lens to the target operating model where an organization is training its workforce to be an insights driven organization (IDO) – what we refer to as analytical thinking and doing, as opposed to snap judgements tied to whatever little facts that are available in a world that is increasingly more complex, uncertain and volatile – outcomes are at best sufficient. Organizations that operate without insight have little guarantee of translating a good outcome from yesterday into future success.
An important feature to look for in an enabling technology is the strategic fit in an ecosystem that delivers an end-to-end solution where deliberate choices can be made today and in the future. Pivot points become apparent when organizations focus on the big opportunities tied to IoT or Big Data. Technology should help operationalize IoT or Big Data into a repeatable process, and enable the business to find, prepare, govern, curate and protect data at scale.
By managing this complex dynamic of provisioning, governance and adoption, CIO’s can help their organization achieve deeper insights and shape the future of their organizations. Most importantly, they can allow data to truly shine as the organizational asset that it is.
About the Deloitte and Informatica Alliance
The quality of your data and the ease with which it can be examined determines the success of your most important business decisions. Deloitte’s breadth and depth of experience in Analytics and Information Management, aligned with Informatica’s industry-leading software, fully leverages the value of data. Together, we deliver timely, relevant, and trustworthy data that empowers organizations to achieve tangible business value by turning data into insights.
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