Big Data, Big Risk

September 25, 2012 by Leave a comment

Michal Halama

Michal Halama

Summary Bullets:

  • Big data solutions are improving management information
  • Big data market growth means buyers need help to recognize where management information is decisive

Organizations in all industries have come to use measurement of more and more aspects of markets and the workplace to provide management with data to make informed decisions. In many cases, the more information, the less room for error, and management decisions improve. For instance, trivial matters or decisions that need to be made innumerable times so that only machines can make them efficiently. Read more of this post

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Harnessing Big Data in the Contact Center: A Slow but Worthwhile Struggle

August 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

K. Landoline

K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Contact centers have been dealing with the ‘big data’ issue for years as they strive to develop the elusive 360-degree view of the customer across an assortment of structured and unstructured data collected from billions of customer interactions each year.
  • Despite a long history of dealing with big data, there has been little progress in utilizing the information to optimize operations in most contact centers, and thanks to a lack of centralized management capabilities, data silos continue to be a major hindrance to the development of the ‘intelligent enterprise.’

Managers dealing with contact centers on a daily basis are perplexed with the industry’s sudden fixation with big data since they have been obsessed with the issue for more than thirty years in their voice call centers.  Now, the shift to the multichannel contact center, through which recorded phone calls, e-mails, faxes, Web chats, social media, and survey feedback data flow, makes the challenge even more complex and unwieldy.  How to deal with the volume, velocity, and variety of data moving through the multichannel contact center today and use the information to improve enterprise operations is a discussion worth having if we ever hope to reach the dream of the much-discussed ‘intelligent enterprise.’ Read more of this post

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Analytics in the Cloud: Making the Right Connections

May 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

A. DeCarlo

A. DeCarlo

Summary Bullets:

  • ‘Big data’ analytics could have major implications on the ability of providers to move workloads seamlessly between and among clouds based on processing needs and other requirements.
  • Vendors and providers alike are gearing up for future needs by investing now in the technology to provide the underlying analytics to automate decision support and drive higher-level computing.

‘Big data’ is one of those great nebulous terms that gains traction in part because it is vague enough to be all-inclusive.  In spirit, big data resembles the amorphous nature of the cloud by offering such an undefined scope that its potential seems nearly endless.  Massive volumes of mobile and other data can provide organizations with deep insights into complex pattern phenomena such as consumer behavior, which can be potentially priceless to a company trying to grow market share.  However, without a way to process all this data, the information is practically unintelligible. Read more of this post

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Stop GIGO Data with Better Information Management

December 23, 2011 by Leave a comment

B. Ostergaard

B. Ostergaard

Summary Bullets:

  • The looming GIGO data storm
  • Information management capabilities are more important than cheap storage capacity

Ease of storage expansion as well as lower storage costs per TB, combined with the drive to be more security ‘compliant’, threaten to combine to create a perfect data storm. Present conditions seem to encourage regulators and government agencies to insist that public sector institutions as well as corporations collect and retain even more data that is not required for operational purposes, but might be needed in future, or might be needed for public safety, or might aid future issue handling. Corporate governance, risk, compliance (GRC) policies are going in the same direction. The bottom line is: added operational costs.  Privacy issues aside, from a cost-benefit perspective two facts spring out: first, some 98% of what is stored is never viewed again, and second information management is way behind the curve. To put it bluntly: garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is a growing problem because duplication, inconsistencies, randomness as well as systemic errors, lead to massive waste. Policy decisions based on such data risk being flawed and misleading, rather than those based on well-informed analysis of timely and reliable data. Clearly, it’s easier to just add more data to storage than to actually create an information management policy and capability that gives some assurance that data used for decision-making is valid to some defined degree. Read more of this post

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Big Blue and Big Security

December 2, 2011 by Leave a comment

A. Braunberg

A. Braunberg

Summary Bullets

  • A “Smarter Planet” is not necessarily a safer planet
  • Analytics will become an increasingly important component of security solutions

I spent an interesting couple of days this week at IBM Software’s Connect event. The yearly analyst event brings together IBM’s software brands to talk strategy and trends. This was the first year that IBM invited security analysts to the event: a nod to the formation of a standalone Security Systems division within IBM Software. IBM has had a checkered past in the security markets (most notably with the poorly-executed ISS acquisition), but I came away from the event with the feeling that the company has a strategy in place that realistically addresses IBM’s strengths and weaknesses. Read more of this post

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