Global big data and data analytics leader Teradata SkyRay (listed on the New York Stock Exchange, divested from its parent company, NCR Corporation, in 2007 independent) organizes a global user conference (Teradata Partners) once a year, and we talk about big data for just three to five years, but The industry's largest data analytics summit has been going on for 30 years. The most senior industry, business intelligence, data warehousing, and big data experts you can think of, but also user representatives from the world's biggest data-driven organizations are all here.
On the sidelines of the conference, this reporter interviewed Mike Koehler, CEO and President of Teradata, Stephen Brobst, Chief Technology Officer, and Aaron Hsin, CEO of Greater China, who shared different perspectives on how Big Data has changed and will soon change our lives, especially our business lives!
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Journalist: Have Chinese companies started to realize immediate business benefits from big data?
Xin Erlun: In fact, no matter whether it is immediate or subtle, as the theme of this year's conference, Breaking Big, explains, we need to actively embrace big data, and "break the boundaries and limitations" in its application, and both businesses and individuals should explore and pursue "innovation, differentiation, courage, significant progress and excellence."
So, for enterprises to reap the benefits of big data, they must persist in innovation and pursue it, no matter whether they are looking for breakthroughs in technology or actively innovating in business processes, organizational structure, or the analytical culture of the enterprise. In China, there are more than ten industries customers choose Teradata to do a lot of innovative projects, including government and public **** services, subway, transportation, aviation, communications industry, banking, insurance, securities, logistics, courier industry, manufacturing industry, automotive, retail, e-commerce, power energy and other industries.
For example, in the domestic courier industry, we helped a leading courier company build its data collection and analysis system to help improve its business processes. By identifying "leaks" in their business processes, integrating various data from business processes, such as scanning data, fleet operation data, and other cross-departmental data, improving the billing process system, and realizing advanced analytics such as correlation analysis, the company was able to eliminate previously lost revenue. According to the courier company's calculations, in the first year of the project, if we assume that the cost of deploying Teradata solutions and services is one dollar, the customer's resulting revenue reaches 80 dollars, which is a very significant change.
In the insurance industry, most insurance companies assume that customers will look for information about insurance on weekends, so they place online ads for weekend hours. In fact, as proven by our big data analysis, it should actually be Monday! It's the first day of everyone's busiest working day. Therefore, through the big data analysis, the advertising resources will be placed at the right time, the right people is to help companies get the real benefit.
In terms of marketing, we often receive a variety of "nuisance" sales calls, which are in fact at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong way to the wrong person. Enterprises should analyze their customers' data and use smarter ways to serve them, and I think this kind of inaccurate service should become less and less common.
In fact, whether it's companies that are already benefiting from harnessing big data, or those organizations that are just beginning their journey, many companies have hesitated and wandered when once faced with investing in big data projects. This, of course, requires greater courage to support. surveys from Teradata, as well as from a wide range of customers, have seen that it's time for us to be proactive. We also understand that cultural shifts may take longer than shifts in technology and analytics processes, but we have always emphasized that big data starts small, and we believe that companies can also quickly see the value of big data and the irreplaceable drive that data analytics brings to business change.
Reporter: Big Data has made great breakthroughs in the development of technology, what factors affect the technical progress of Big Data really put into the application?
Stephen Brobst: People just pretend to love technological progress, haha! In reality, humans want to see a step change, not a sea change.
For example, like driverless car technology has been around for a long time, but it's still difficult to get the public to accept driverlessness directly now, and change will be gradual. Now the car has realized the function of self-parking, which is the first step towards driverless. Driverless is more because of the problems between regulations, supervision, insurance companies and lawyers, and it is not soon to be applied on a large scale.
Also, as precious as human life is, you have a lot more sensors in your car than wearable sensors on a person. By wearing sensors, big data can provide a lot of data analysis on health. For example, providing personalized medications and treatment plans based on your individual genetic profile. This is a future trend. But many people are afraid that they don't want to put their genomic data inside a big database because of personal privacy.
In the big data space, the fastest growing and most promising area is probably the Internet of Things, where Teradata sees the future of big data analytics as the "Analytics of Everything". Additionally, in Gartner's Analytics Forecast, the top 10 technology trends likely to impact businesses in 2016 were released, with technologies such as analytics of everything and the Internet of Things making the cut.
In fact, these predictions are a reflection of the reality of technology development. The realization that everything is networked or everything can be analyzed relies most heavily on sensor technology. In the era in which we currently live, sensor technology combined with massively parallel processing capabilities allows us to measure and analyze virtually any phenomenon as a whole. Advanced instruments allow us to track changes in everything, such as weather patterns, automobile driving habits, and even the temperature of a refrigerator at a fast-food restaurant or the vital signs of a patient in a hospital (or at home). This data is captured in a database and analyzed in detail using a wide range of statistical, analytical, and visualization tools.
It is thanks to these sensors that new sources of data are being generated in our lives and work. For example, with RFID readers, we are able to perform retail inventory tracking and control, medical test sampling tracking, fraud prevention, etc.; with GPS location trackers, we are able to perform fleet management and transportation and freight management; and with data collection sensors, we are able to collect real-time data for analysis in manufacturing, environmental protection, and transportation systems.
But there are three main reasons why the IoT hasn't grown rapidly: first, we still need cheaper sensors. Second, IoT needs a unified standard, which is critical. For example, for the analysis of IoT data, we released Teradata Listener software, which is designed to address the difficulty of data specification and real-time analysis. Third, the security factor. Networking between things and things involves security, if there is bad data transmission, for example, airplanes, cars, fuel pumps, etc. are hacked will cause accidents, must be careful.
Reporter: In your opinion, how will big data change our daily lives five years from now?
Mike Koehler: According to the latest IDC report, the number of connected devices in the world was 10.3 billion in 2014 and will grow to 29.5 billion by 2020. This will bring about a huge change in society and human life. We are not going to predict the future like analysts, but we can share a few very tangible examples of big data applications.
In the next five years, while a lot of things are already connected, there will be many more items that will be connected, resulting in new sources of big data emerging, along with new insights and unprecedented opportunities. In agriculture, for example, big data can help wineries by allowing them to automate the timing of watering and fertilizing grapes, and even target management.
Every airplane, train and subway, vehicle, and even bicycle can be interconnected through sensors, and we can learn in real time to know what their potential problems are, what the solutions are, and how to go about making repairs.
For current and future developments, while we all recognize the value of big data or the changes it brings, I would like to emphasize the value of big data analytics! To a certain extent, just having data does not make a business truly competitive, and just having data does not bring much convenience to your daily life.Ms. Kathy Koontz, Vice President of Account Management at Nationwide Insurance Company, a Teradata customer, points out, "It's not the data that counts, it's how the data is used. Businesses must change the way they do business and learn to see the facts and react to them from their data, otherwise the data, no matter how organized it is, is of little value."
Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, has said, "Today, the age of data analytics is upon us, and data analytics is no longer a vision of the future. Every industrial company will be transformed in some way around data and analytics." So, as we can see, data and analytics are revolutionizing industries, revolutionizing consumers, and bringing in new competitors, but more importantly, data and data analytics are allowing our society to begin an unprecedented transformation.