John Boswell is the senior vice president and chief legal officer with business analytics and software company SAS.
Data is pouring in from every conceivable direction. Organisations are inundated with data – terabytes and petabytes of it.
The explosion of data isn’t new. It continues a trend that started in the 1970s. What has changed is the velocity of growth, the diversity of the data and the imperative to make better use of information. “Big data” is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth, availability and use of information. At SAS, we believe that the term big data is relative: It applies whenever an organisation’s ability to handle, store and analyse data exceeds its current capacity.
Much has been written on the big data trend and how it can serve as the basis for innovation, differentiation and growth. Our economy is becoming a digital economy. There are now, and increasingly will be in the future, tremendous opportunities for scientific, social, humanitarian and economic advancements directly as a result of the amount of data available.
But no matter how big your data is, it is just a lot of data unless you are able to analyse it and make better decisions. Data analysis with the right software and technology enables intelligent extraction of relevant information. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how much “big data” you have. If you cannot extract key information or if it's misclassified, you’re left with misinformed decisions, untapped value, and a puzzle that at best is yet to be finished – and at worst, is giving you the wrong picture. If content is king, then relevance is the kingdom.
For business, the use of big data analytics brings undisputable competitive advantages. The global survey, Big Data: Lessons From the Leaders, showed that nearly half of the 700 surveyed companies that "significantly outperform their peers financially" reported a well-defined data strategy-four times the number performing on par with peers. But there is also revolutionary innovation capacity with big data analytics for societal advancement. For example, United Nations Global Pulse has been able to warn of pending unemployment increases and inform policymakers of likely effects through the analysis of social media chatter and conversation sentiment. The analysis of half a million blogs, forums and news sites compared with official unemployment statistics revealed that increased chatter about cutting back on groceries, increasing use of public transportation and downgrading one’s automobile could, indeed, predict an unemployment spike.
On a less positive note, in March 2013, the eurozone unemployment rate rose to a record 12.1%, the highest since the days before the euro. This jobless rate equates to 26.5 million men and women unemployed in Europe including 5.7 million young people.
Yet the global survey on big data quoted above indicated that new roles such as data scientists and data stewards are necessary for gaining insight from data; however, workers skilled in these areas are in short supply. According to industry analyst International Data Corporation (IDC), the big data technology and services market is expected to grow from $3.2 billion (€2.5 billion) in 2010 to $16.9 billion (€13 billion) in 2015. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 40%. Europe must capture this opportunity.
What Europe needs today is an expanding economy with high-paying jobs. It needs companies to locate and expand in Europe. Data is the new “oil” and data analytics are essential to business, job growth, innovation, prosperity and will lead to the creation of millions of jobs in the future. Europe needs to foster the use of those resources. Important steps are being made towards this direction. Core to this objective, are data-friendly policies that encourage the use, free-flow and analysis of data, facilitate the location of companies in Europe that focus on data-driven innovation and build the necessary framework of trust for European citizens who will ultimately benefit from the deluge of data and its analysis.
