Big Data is solving problems never thought possible

Big Data has been a buzzword for too long, meaning it has to either tweet or get off the twig. Fortunately, we’ve reached the point where Big Data is moving from the realm of lab experiment into mainstream reality. Retailers are using a wide variety of data, both historical and in-the-moment to understand a customer’s context and to support real-time engagement. Mobile providers are using business event technology to monitor large volumes of customer data and to predict churn before it happens based on a customer’s likely state of mind.

Big Data beyond our comprehension

More than anything, though, Big Data is addressing problems that we never thought possible. Enormous problems like ways to manage population growth, water scarcity, disease and agricultural yields in Africa can now be addressed by rallying computing resources and massive amounts of data in ways no one expected just a few years ago. That’s because Big Data changes the way people within organizations work together to find patterns and to take action on things happening at a scale that defied human comprehension until very, very recently. It gives us a way to make great things happen and it gives a way to prevent the worst.

Big Data in healthcare

Healthcare benefits massively from massive data. Hidden inside data about how our body is constructed and operates is the the key to why some people get sick when others don’t and why some treatments work and others fail. Given enough data, and the human genome is an excellent example, we’re seeing patterns emerge in individuals and populations that answer questions about cancer, Alzheimers, and obesity. Machine learning is being used to find connections between genetics and breast cancer that were beyond our reach even a couple of years ago. Digitization of health records couldn’t have come at a better time as all of that increased patient data feeds the analytics that used to rely only on laboratories and studies.

Big Data in forecasting weather and climate

If you think about the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the Eastern US or Typhoon Haiyan on the Philippines, the ability accurately forecast weather to both benefit agriculture and warn of coming disaster has its roots in enormous amounts of data. As the CIO of the Weather Channel recently said, “Weather is the original big data problem.” In the case of Hurricane Sandy, a full 72 hours before the storm made landfall, forecasters predicted with ten miles where that event would occur. This averted an even bigger disaster in a way that was unthinkable twenty years ago.

What’s the next big problem?

The biggest limitation in Big Data isn’t the technology. It is the ability of human beings to realize which problems can be solved in the near term. There are opportunities for entirely new businesses built on the ability of large amounts of data to bring a benefit no one else saw. What’s more, the disruptive potential of data on existing business models can’t be argued — just ask taxi companies that are suffering losses to Uber, a company that simply harnessed the drivers, locations and customers engaged in transportation. The number of business models ready to be disrupted is also beyond our imagination at the moment, but certainly marketing, financial services, energy and manufacturing are at the top of the list.

All it takes is imagination.

Come see me at Interop, Las Vegas where I’ll be helping Big Data Workshop participants to navigate the big spectrum of Big Data’s solutions on March 31st.

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Christopher Taylor