BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Big Data "A-Ha" Moment?

Following
This article is more than 10 years old.

I won’t be going to the TED Conference this week.  Instead, I’ll be participating in the Strata Big Data Conference.  Nothing against TED; I loved my time there last year.  Big Data is about to hit an important inflection point and the Strata conference, brilliantly orchestrated by Tim O’Reilly and his team, is bound to be an opportunity for investors, entrepreneurs and tech observers to discuss the transformation the space is going through.

If you haven’t caught up on Big Data lately, here is a quick recap; it’s a massive opportunity: estimates from Gartner to Wikibon range from $23 Billion to $3.8 Trillion.

That’s the good news.

The bad news starts with recent analysts’ activity.  Last week, Mark Smith, Chief Research Officer at Ventana explained why “Business Intelligence”, a market adjacent to Big Data wasFailing Business”.  Earlier this month, Svetlana Sicular, an analyst at Gartner, a top research firm, released a shocking report for many: Big Data officially entered the “Trough of Disillusionment”.  

Should you give up on “Big Data”?  The short answer is No.  However, there are a few things we should pay attention to if Big Data is to avoid the failures made by its big sister, Business Intelligence (BI).

Stop making it about the Elite

Business Intelligence has had notorious issues with adoption.  After 3 decades of “existence”, the industry is stuck at 24% according to BI Scorecard founder Cindi Howson.  Many reasons have been cited for this; from expensive software, to poor usability to complex integration issues.  While each of the above certainly plays a role in the lack of adoption, my observations have been that, the culture of elitism generated in the world of data has done nothing but scare the most common of companies.  And this trend has been amplified recently.  Look, I too admire Nate Silver, Facebook and Google for the great work they do with Data.  However, I’m not trying to convince all companies that they have the exact same problem, and I certainly wouldn’t advise they use the same approach to succeed.   Yet, if you read the job description of the “modern data scientist”, you’ll notice that it looks just like Nate’s exceptional resume.  No wonder we’ll run out of them.  There is only one Nate Silver.

This year, I would love to attend a session run by a business person with an English Major background (instead of a PhD in Computer Science), showing what they did with Data at scale, without huge servers, without expensive software or cryptic languages.

I know this is ambitious, but if we want all companies and employees to relate to Big Data, we better start building for the mainstream….which brings me to my second point…

Start making Big Data “Consumer Grade”

Marc Andreessen is a hero of mine.  He is most known for co-founding Netscape.  He’s also a futurist of his own right; check out the interview Robert Scoble did with him last week here.  In it, Marc talks a good bit about the idea that Big Data can “liquify” markets.  Marc takes the example of car service Uber and how the company creates opportunities that its legacy, slow and non-data-run competitors could not do.  In the words of DJ Patil “Big Data is a product” and it serves people, not the opposite.

Big Data discussions today tend to glorify complexity.  Even Big Data’s sister, Business Intelligence, still hasn’t learned this lesson.  Take most of the current BI solutions in the market and you’ll realize that most tools do nothing for users.  In most cases, the user looks at a blank canvas, and the canvas looks back at the user.  It’s only after business requirement meetings and consultative sessions, that business users start getting value from their data – most the time “value” is characterized by a beautiful visualization showcasing yesterday’s figures.  How sad.

Data Scientists Beware

The exasperation we are hearing from analysts comes straight from customers.  They are getting impatient and most have been scared by the gloomy depiction of a future alone, without data scientists (by the way, my company ran a survey that shows salary differences between “Business Analysts” and “Data Scientists” - you can see how you stack up here).

Big Data needs his “Beppe Grillo” – it needs someone to tour the world in a Fiat "Cinquecento" – explaining how we need a different and more mainstream way to think about Big Data.

Data Scientists beware.  The goal of Big Data should be to do better than Business Intelligence.  And, if we are going to make Big Data “Consumer-Grade”, the mission will involve taking humans out of the picture, not adding them.

—–

Bruno Aziza is a Data Geek, author of “Drive Business Performance” and Vice President of Marketing at SiSense.  Prior to SiSense, Bruno worked at BusinessObjects/SAP, Apple, Microsoft and other data start-ups.  Bruno is French, has studied and worked in Germany, the UK and the US. You can connect with him directly at bruno.aziza@sisense.com.