Sumerian: Companies missing out on true value and returns from big data

Sumerian today stated that many companies are missing out on the true value of big data analytics. In response, Sumerian has provided expert insight into how companies can use analytics to capitalise on their big data in 2012.

Big data analytics helps firms gain intelligence from their large data sets to increase operational efficiency, improve business performance and gain a competitive advantage in the market. “Large companies with complex IT environments often don’t realise that they are sitting on a wealth of untapped data,” said Sumerian CEO Bryan Clark. “Most systems store copious records on everything they do, but these logs are only rarely mined for actionable intelligence. Big data analytics can help firms bring these disparate sets of data together, connect the dots and provide a new level of insight that can map straight to the business’ bottom line.”

Companies have long used analytics to enhance certain business processes, such as sales and marketing, but they are only now beginning to understand the value that big data analytics can bring to IT departments. Large enterprises can use analytics to better align and optimise their IT environments, improving critical processes and bringing added value to the business. Sumerian offers the following advice on how companies can apply analytics to their big data sets to reduce IT costs, enable growth and deliver optimal service levels based on business needs:

• Reduce latency and improve performance: The first step to reducing latency is to understand that latency is not a single number, but a distribution. For companies that require the fastest possible IT environment, big data analytics can provide accurate insight into end-to-end latency and its distribution across systems. By modelling the relationships between underlying system components and the contribution each component has on end-to-end performance, CIOs can make targeted investments and adjustments to optimise the environment and drive performance.

• Drive consolidation and optimise capacity: By applying big data analytics to data that has been collated from disparate sources, including database servers, storage servers, individual applications and web servers, CIOs can establish the relationship between business demand and underlying infrastructure components. It is then possible to accurately predict how each system component is impacted when business demand changes. Big data analytics can also ensure that the IT environment operates with maximum efficiency by highlighting areas that are suitable for consolidation as well as areas that are underutilised and can handle greater capacity.

• Moving to the cloud: Big data analytics can play an integral role in helping CIOs to realise their cloud agenda. To achieve a seamless transition and realise the promised cost benefits, it is vital for companies to understand the relationship between user demand, IT resource utilisation and performance. This help firms to both manage the initial migration and ensure that ongoing operating costs are optimised and business performance expectations continue to be met.

“While analytics won’t address every challenge that IT organisations are facing, it can certainly help CIOs better understand complex operating relationships on a large scale,” commented Clark. “On a business level, analytics helps large companies lower their costs without compromising their ability to deliver strong business returns. The bottom line is companies that successfully mine the value of their data will ultimately do better.”

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