As the pace of data growth and market change picks up, information solutions systems need to stay a step ahead – because what happened last week is old news, says HDS’ Shaun Barendsen.

Until relatively recently, data was a static, reliable store of information that told us who our customers were and what transactions had been carried out. A report compiled last week was a fairly accurate assessment of the enterprise’s position today. This is no longer the case.

Now, amid vast and exponentially growing volumes of data, we are presented with the enticing possibility that everything we need to know to improve our business resides in the information within and outside our business. This presents a very compelling case for solutions that enable enterprises to consolidate all the relevant structured and unstructured data, search and analyse it in real time, and present insights that deliver real business value.

Not good enough anymore

At HDS, we are seeing growing numbers of customers seeking the transformation of data into information that enables them to become more effective and more competitive. It is not just about data warehousing – they are looking to benefit from real-time analytics. In a market where new trends emerge daily, customers are aware that a week-old report is just not good enough anymore. There is also a growing demand for reduced cost and complexity in IT, as well as  solutions that support innovation in business and society as a whole. At HDS, we believe next-generation information solutions and analytics does exactly that.

Virtualised, optimised data storage facilitates better public service and healthcare delivery as well as public safety. Our new ability to intelligently analyse staggeringly vast volumes of data is already changing lives, saving enterprises billions, and enabling more efficient everything. And this is just the beginning. Consider the benefits to humanity possible as a result of the statistical analysis of genomic data. Already, pioneering health research and lifesaving drug development is taking place on the back of our new ability to determine patterns from huge amounts of data, where previously no patterns were evident.

The work being done in facial recognition tools is another example. Increasingly, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to collaborate to share data, match features and identify threats and suspects. Our ability to consolidate and interpret vast amounts of data from dispersed sources in a variety of formats is already making life safer and better – and the potential is endless.

The possible business uses for intelligently-analysed data are equally impressive. They extend far beyond the data analysis serving the CRM, research and marketing departments. Now, there is the potential to use real-time analysis to constantly monitor and assess the state of heavy machinery, manufacturing, or transport and utility networks through masses of sensors, allowing for additional safety checks to be built in and cost-saving proactive maintenance to be carried out.

Progress underpinned by technology

As enterprises and public service move to maximise the value of this wealth of available data, they risk an increase in the cost and complexity of managing the data, and, in a price-sensitive market, this is where innovation could be stonewalled. Therefore, the evolution to a society that is able to effectively use its big data will be underpinned by technology advances such as the converged stack, cloud solutions and advanced real-time analytics.