Big Data. Marr Bernard

homes

      Everything is also getting smarter at home. From the cars we drive to and from home, to the heating systems, gadgets, appliances and even the carpet!

      The evolution from basic to smart is especially noticeable with cars. Initially the Model T Ford was black, stick shift, a few buttons and no seat belt. Today we have cars with dashboards that resemble an aircraft cockpit, with cameras and sensors for easy parking, alerting the driver if he or she gets too close to the kerb or another car. Some cars will parallel park themselves and brake automatically. Others will sync with traffic information and redirect you to a better route to avoid traffic black spots or an accident. Sensors on the engine will monitor how well you are driving, which will in turn potentially lower (or raise) your insurance and dynamically adjust your service intervals based on your driving style.

      There are smart thermostats that monitor the home and only heat the areas that are being used. The temperature of your home can be changed while you are still at work so that when you arrive on a winter's evening the house is cosy. This ability to monitor and dynamically alter temperature can save energy and money. Obviously solving the energy crisis is not just about finding new energy sources such as wind and solar but also about saving the energy we have and using it more efficiently.

      Smart TVs use face recognition to make sure your children don't ever watch anything unsuitable for their age and smart carpets can alert you should your elderly parent not make their usual morning coffee.

      Considering all the toys, gadgets and smart appliances there are now more machines connected to the Internet than people. And all those smart things are gathering data and communicating with each other.

      Smarter love

      Even something as personal and magical as falling in love is getting smarter. Everyone hopes to find their soul mate and yet, for many the search is far from straightforward. Online dating site eHarmony matches people based on twenty-nine different variables such as personality traits, behaviours, beliefs, values and social skills. Each person who joins eHarmony completes a comprehensive profile questionnaire, which provides the data for the analytics model to find potential matches.

      US digital specialist, Amy Webb, even took the online data algorithms one step further. After one particularly terrible first date where her ‘Prince Charming’ ordered the most expensive items from the menu, enjoyed them and did a runner after excusing himself for the bathroom, Webb created her own personal scoring system based on what was important to her in a potential life partner. In addition she analysed other profiles to see what attracted attention, tested changes to her own profile to see what made a difference to the number and quality of enquires and would only agree to go on a date with someone if he scored above a certain number. And it worked… Amy Webb is now happily married and the couple have a daughter.3

      Smarter parenting

      The complex art of parenting is also getting smarter. To identify and reduce potential pre- and postnatal risks, many babies around the world are being constantly monitored across a myriad of metrics and data points including heart rate and respiration. These vital measures are able to predict infections 24 hours before the baby shows any visible symptoms and can allow for early, often life-saving intervention.

      Once your baby has arrived safely he or she can also sleep on a mattress full of sensors that monitor breathing patterns and heart rate and alerts parents if anything is wrong. Just imagine how many tragic cot deaths could be avoided with this smart technology. We can even buy digital diapers which will send a tweet to our smart phone when our baby needs changing! Obviously a good parent doesn't really need a tweet to tell them this information but the latest generation of these diapers automatically analyses the urine and alerts the parent of an increased sodium level, possible dehydration, as well as the onset of any infections – and all this even before any physical symptoms appear.

      The marriage of data and technology is radically changing our world and making it smarter. And business must become smarter too.

      Going back to the fishing analogy for a moment… When fishing emerged as an industry, the competition was sufficiently low and the stocks of fish sufficiently high that the fisherman didn't need to be in an exact location to enjoy a prosperous day at sea. Their experience, equipment and the number of fish in the oceans meant they would be successful unless they hit particularly bad weather. Today, with intense competition and finite fish stocks that need to be responsibly managed, fishermen have had to evolve and become smarter. And the same is true for all businesses in all sectors.

      Today the really successful companies understand where their customers are and, perhaps more importantly, what they are doing and where they are going. They know what is happening as it's happening and they allow that information to guide their strategy and inform their decision-making.

      Companies that won't embrace the SMART revolution will be left behind.

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      SMARTER BUSINESS

      Big Data is at the heart of the smart revolution. The basic idea behind the phrase ‘Big Data’ is that everything we do is increasingly leaving a digital trace (or data), which we (and others) can use and analyse to become smarter. The driving forces in this brave new world are access to ever-increasing volumes of data and our ever-increasing technological capability to mine that data for commercial insights.

      There is little doubt that Big Data is changing the world. It is already completely transforming the way we live, find love, cure cancer, conduct science, improve performance, run cities and countries and operate business. As a result there is a huge amount of hype and fuss over Big Data. Everyone is discussing it. It is THE hot topic discussed in every boardroom, every business publication from The Economist to Fortune to the Harvard Business Review. Big Data is even making its way into mainstream media.

      But despite the noise around Big Data most people still don't really understand it and very few people know what to do about it. Personally, I don't like the term because it's too simplistic and potentially misleading. Granted, we are now tracking and storing data on everything so we potentially do have access to large volumes of data – hence the term Big Data. But the real value is not in the large volumes of data but what we can now do with it. It is not the amount of data that is making the difference but our ability to analyse vast and complex data sets beyond anything we could ever do before. Innovations such as cloud computing combined with improved network speed as well as creative techniques to analyse data have resulted in a new ability to turn vast amounts of complex data into value. What's more, the analysis can now be performed without the need to purchase or build large supercomputers. This means that any business, government body, or indeed anyone can now use Big Data to improve their decision-making.

      Especially powerful is our ability to analyse so called ‘unstructured data’ (more on this in Chapter 3). Basically, unstructured data is the data we can't easily store and index in traditional formats or databases and includes email conversations, social media posts, video content, photos, voice recordings, sounds, etc. Combining this messy and complex data with other more traditional data is where a lot of the value lies. Many companies are starting to use Big Data analytics to complement their traditional data analysis in order to get richer and improved insights and make smarter decisions.

      In effect what Big Data should really stand for is SMART Data and whilst I think the term Big Data will disappear in time, the increasing production and use of SMART Data is definitely here to stay.

      Who is using Big Data?

      The big players in the space, including Amazon, Google, Walmart, and Facebook, are already making a splash. Walmart, for example, handles more than a million customer transactions each hour and imports those into databases estimated to contain more than 2.5 petabytes of data.4 The company is now able to combine data from a variety of sources including customers' past purchases and their mobile phone location data, Walmart internal stock control records, social media and information from external sources such as the weather, and initiate tailored sales promotions. For example, if you have bought any BBQ-related goods from Walmart, happen to be within

3

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_webb_how_i_hacked_online_dating.html

4

SAS Whitepaper (2012) Big Data Meets Big Data Analytics: Three Key Technologies for Extracting Real-Time Business Value from the Big Data That Threatens to Overwhelm Traditional Computing Architectures.