Big Community had the pleasure of a quick interview with Co-Counder and CEO of Paxata, Prakash Nanduri, during our coverage of the Strata+Hadoop World in Singapore recently. Prakash was kind enough to share his views with us on the adoption of Big Data in the region and how he sees the future integration.
With the ASEAN region at a clear advantage to adopting Big Data, and by having a front row seat to observe what was done right and wrong in North America, has created the culture and business drivers towards having a pragmatic approach to adopting Big Data.
“It is not about dealing with Big Data, as many people would refer to as big volume data, but it is also about dealing with big variety and big velocity. So, when you think of IoT, you think of velocity. When you think of big analytics, you think generally of big volume. A lot of times people forget the notion of variety”, he explains.
The opportunity in data analytics becoming relevant in communities and societies is substantial. By looking at many regional country’s economies, one can see that they are moving from resource rich economies, to being knowledge based economies.
“Lets take for instance a very advanced economy such as in Japan, where there are a number of interesting significant transformations. First of all, the society is aging. They have a very rich manufacturing society. The society is transforming in its types of services and the goods that are being produced. They are looking at how to leverage analytics data, algorithmic data and artificial intelligence, to drive towards a whole new world, where productivity gains are high enough for that economy to grow.”
Countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with a much younger work-force in manufacturing, needs to move into different types of businesses. Therefore, leveraging data analytics is going to center around the types of people that are being educated.
“Unfortunately, people tend to think that we need to work around stem education. ASEAN countries are strong in mathematics and sciences. However, there is a need to focus the education towards creating critical thinkers and analytical thinkers. That kind of thinking ability is very important. It will affect and permeate into the overall business cycle”, explains Prakash.
He believes that going about this in a planned, step-by-step approach won’t work. That a more organic and creative method of addressing the issue needs to be found.
This is the greatest challenge yet to be addressed by a number of ASEAN countries. Though it is not practiced in all countries and by all people, however the general modus operandi to finding a solution, is in taking a step-by-step approach, and that’s not how innovation takes hold. The work-force needs to be educated in being creative and analytical but with a different approach than what is practiced now.
In the business world, data and analytics is nothing new. The ability to harness data and use that data to make better decisions, has been a natural process all the while.
“There tends to be a lot of hype in our industry. The fact and the vision of saying ‘We want to drive towards a world of information decisions’, is now more important than ever before. It is also not new. The thing people leave out is how they will have confidence in the information that they are relying upon.”
There is a clear distinction between data and information. We are in the world of being data hoarders. We have more data than we know what to do with. What is lacking is the relevant information to have confidence in the decisions we are making with the data that we own.
“We still tend to be gut based in our decision making. Why is that? The problem is, the largest challenge in driving towards information decisions, is the process of turning raw data into contextual information that you can have confidence in.”
This is an industry wide struggle. The concept of having business people get information at the speed of thought. The power of algorithmic techniques, married to highly scalable computing infrastructure, wrapped in a consumer experience that is not centered on a sophisticated IT or Data Sceintist audience, but towards a line of business audience and therefore democratizing the data to meer mortals.
“The world of democratizing data has been going on for a long time. I believe that the ultimate in democratization is when information at the speed of thought in the context of the analytical problem du jour, is made a reality.”
Depending on which segment the client is from, either as a marketer or a business person, each of these wants to get the information on what the customers needs are, and get it instantaneously. Pulling product information, customer information, sales information and not forgetting customer sentiment.
“Today, if you’re dealing with a segmentation exercise, and you’re not doing customer sentiment, are you really doing a proper segmentation exercise? A segmentation analyses needs to have a sentiment segment to have any validity.
“Therefore, the whole notion of being able to bring data from a variety of sources, volume and velocity, while quickly transforming the raw data into information that’s pertinent for the analytical exercise, is the world of democratization, which needs to be done by the line of business person and not by a Data Scientist”, argues Prakash.
The data collected will then be easily viewed by people who understand the business context and who understands the semantics of the data from a business point of view and not just a technical or scientific perspective. The view which, in the end, will be the driving force of the business.
Archive
- October 2024(44)
- September 2024(94)
- August 2024(100)
- July 2024(99)
- June 2024(126)
- May 2024(155)
- April 2024(123)
- March 2024(112)
- February 2024(109)
- January 2024(95)
- December 2023(56)
- November 2023(86)
- October 2023(97)
- September 2023(89)
- August 2023(101)
- July 2023(104)
- June 2023(113)
- May 2023(103)
- April 2023(93)
- March 2023(129)
- February 2023(77)
- January 2023(91)
- December 2022(90)
- November 2022(125)
- October 2022(117)
- September 2022(137)
- August 2022(119)
- July 2022(99)
- June 2022(128)
- May 2022(112)
- April 2022(108)
- March 2022(121)
- February 2022(93)
- January 2022(110)
- December 2021(92)
- November 2021(107)
- October 2021(101)
- September 2021(81)
- August 2021(74)
- July 2021(78)
- June 2021(92)
- May 2021(67)
- April 2021(79)
- March 2021(79)
- February 2021(58)
- January 2021(55)
- December 2020(56)
- November 2020(59)
- October 2020(78)
- September 2020(72)
- August 2020(64)
- July 2020(71)
- June 2020(74)
- May 2020(50)
- April 2020(71)
- March 2020(71)
- February 2020(58)
- January 2020(62)
- December 2019(57)
- November 2019(64)
- October 2019(25)
- September 2019(24)
- August 2019(14)
- July 2019(23)
- June 2019(54)
- May 2019(82)
- April 2019(76)
- March 2019(71)
- February 2019(67)
- January 2019(75)
- December 2018(44)
- November 2018(47)
- October 2018(74)
- September 2018(54)
- August 2018(61)
- July 2018(72)
- June 2018(62)
- May 2018(62)
- April 2018(73)
- March 2018(76)
- February 2018(8)
- January 2018(7)
- December 2017(6)
- November 2017(8)
- October 2017(3)
- September 2017(4)
- August 2017(4)
- July 2017(2)
- June 2017(5)
- May 2017(6)
- April 2017(11)
- March 2017(8)
- February 2017(16)
- January 2017(10)
- December 2016(12)
- November 2016(20)
- October 2016(7)
- September 2016(102)
- August 2016(168)
- July 2016(141)
- June 2016(149)
- May 2016(117)
- April 2016(59)
- March 2016(85)
- February 2016(153)
- December 2015(150)