Big Data is dead. Long live data on demand

Big Data is dead.

Long live Big Data?

Or, if Sigma Computing CEO Mike Palmer – a self-proclaimed “big data man” who hates the expression – is right, maybe we need to call him something else before we hammer the last nail in the coffin. Call it data on demand, perhaps, as others have done – real-time access to relevant and timely data that doesn’t involve a multitude of expensive middlemen to sort and sort it out. interpretation.

Whether customers are retailers looking to avoid stockouts and plan for better mixes of merchandise, or financial firms keen to make meaningful decisions emerge, the goal of their business – and platform providers as well. that service like this – is to help end users to forge one. a direct connection to the mountains of information they have in store.

As Palmer told Karen Webster, “Large amounts of data have created a certain separation between the decision maker and the data they need and want in order to make the best decision. We live in a world where businesses have billions and billions of records that are all useful to them, but usually not something you can run on your laptop.

Palmer explained that more and more companies are now using platform tools that can take tons of data from various sources – spreadsheets, SQL and Access databases and more – and bring up information in real time with high business value beyond the task at hand.

Cloud-native business intelligence and analytics (A&BI) platforms can break the grip of existing systems, freeing data for new uses and giving businesses of all sizes the processing capabilities they need for them. to understand. However, users who need this data must also access it on demand.

“These questions change all the time,” Palmer said. “This is really where we try to bring together the data, the curiosity of a lot of our professional audience and the technology to make them more self-sufficient. “

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Mentalities are changing

Storage is cheap, Palmer said, and as a result, many companies keep information just to keep it. The challenge today for CFOs and others is getting the right information to the right people in real time, without breaking the budget in the process.

Palmer explained that companies often give up on removing permissions altogether because they don’t have adequate processing capacity.

“They pull data from their data sources and distribute it by email or other sharing mechanisms, because business users need to be able to ask questions about the data and use it on their laptops,” Palmer said.

However, playing quickly and freely with data creates security, governance, and compliance challenges. Platforms like Sigma, he said, keep data secure, providing a middleman between cloud providers like Snowflake while still allowing users to access what they need without running into disruptions. security concerns.

With data more in demand than ever by the connected economy – and soon to be making exotic new connections in the metaverse – real-time database queries can cause a stir.

“We’re talking about giving people the responsibility, but also the empowerment, to ask a question about the data directly, to get a response on demand – that is, in seconds, no matter how small. this dataset – familiarizing them with the available data. to them in those data warehouses, ”Palmer said.

See also: Banks and Merchants Use Behavioral Analytics and Deep Learning to Control Holiday Fraud

The high cost of doing nothing

The connected economy is about uniting vertical sectors and adjacent ecosystems using data. However, speed and accuracy are key to driving more meaningful connections and conversions.

Finance teams tend to balk at all costs, Palmer said, but they are faced with the reality that “with more demand for data and more use of data comes higher costs and they will have to. reconcile return on investment [return on investment] on that.”

The question they need to answer internally is whether better decisions made with better data are worth the investment.

Commenting that old-fashioned data centers aren’t known to be vibrant, Palmer said those who are feeling the most pain because of it right now are involved in the hampered supply chain.

“They have very advanced point of sale systems, they know what’s going on in the store, but by connecting that with the inventory system that could have been built 20 years ago, the ever-changing situation with the “Inventory and distribution logistics, these people jobs have become immeasurably more difficult over the past two years,” Palmer said. “Corn, [it] can be facilitated with data.

This goes for retailers facing stockouts, just as it does for financial institutions with huge data operations that have been overtaken by technology and need to catch up.

Palmer said he often wants potential clients to ask him what they would risk if they didn’t modernize their approach to data access, continuing: What will my business be like in two or three years? What if I did the data better? What more competitive advantage could I have? ‘ “

For Palmer, it’s as simple and relevant as asking where his business would be if he hadn’t embraced e-commerce or the internet in the ’90s.