“Arguably, Big Data is boring, and most of it is totally irrelevant,” laments Mark Darbyshire, TIBCO’s European CTO, in a recent interview. The term “Big Data” has gone viral, but, at the root of the phrase, most of the data itself is not all that interesting. However, what is quite compelling is finding important data amidst mountains of information organizations collect and store. Cloud Services World recently discussed the value of small data with Darbyshire. In the article, he takes a magnifying glass to the real issues of Big Data, examining the relevance of the smallest parts of one of the hottest topics discussed in technology spaces.
Behavioral Analytics
The issue of Internet security and privacy has been making headlines recently. When the IT world and political/social current events collide, which is more often than not in this digital age, people from all walks of life stop to pay attention—in the form of shares, likes, comments, and other types of online participation. Personal security online is a concern for everyone, and businesses have a responsibility to protect customers, while also improving customer experiences. Big Data has become the DNA of customer behavior, and, as Darbyshire put it:
“Behavior and identity are very different; your identity is where you live, your phone number, what car you have. Your behavior would be what sort of cars you want to buy.”
Businesses can utilize data to take advantage of a customer’s buying patterns and purchasing behaviors, and send personalized notifications, discounts, and respond to real-time events to correct a transactional problem when necessary. Big Data is not supposed to be used to invade or intrude on anyone’s identity, but to assist customers and provide them with an enriched customer service experience.
Nuggets of Information
Analyzing every piece of data from every customer would not only be boring, but would impact the ability of a business to function. Is it really the “big” part of data that people should be fascinated with? Finding the small nuggets of information within large quantities of data proves to be more valuable. Data is about context, so let’s change the framework of Big Data conversations and talk about the data that matters.
For more information on ways to leverage Big Data, read the latest Gartner magic quadrant on application integration.
