Big data holds amazing promise, as indicated by the way its being used to study medicine. However, the vast majority of data is not analyzed. What holds back full use of your data?

• The Promise of Big Data: Example of Medicine
• Big Data Going Underutilized
• Archnemeses of Big Data
• Conclusion

The Promise of Big Data: Example of Medicine

Everyone in their first or second year at NYU School of Medicine must complete an assignment that taps into huge amounts of information. Students are able to study a massive database that contains hospital records throughout New York for two full years, totalling over 5 million records. Students can see diagnostics and basic demographics, with specific identities scrubbed for privacy.

The students are given analytic programs so that they can search for patterns and develop insights, notes the school’s associate dean, Marc Triola. These tools allow them to “look at quality measures for things like heart failure, diabetes, smoking and high blood pressure,” he says. “and drill down and look at the performance of the practice as a whole, and [the performance of] individual doctors.”

The school believes this project is fundamental in preparing students for an increasingly technological world. 

Big Data Going Underutilized

Big data is incredibly valuable. In the context of medicine, it could even save lives. It‘s not always getting put to use though. Specifically, only about 0.5% of all data is studied today, says the MIT Technology Review. Why?

Let’s first look at the obvious issue of size. How do we fully grasp the huge amount of data we now have essentially at our fingertips? In any practical terms, the sheer volume of information that human civilization has accrued is in the realm of the absurd. As Lauren Browning of Business Insider notes, the amount of information that enabled the 1969 moon landing is actually less than what’s now in a typical PC. The total quantity of data is expanding very rapidly, doubling approximately every two years.

Data can give us incredible insights if we study it, as seen above. Of course, a major reason to collect information, other than simply wanting to access it, is to learn from it. However, that’s not easy to do, notes University College of London big data professor Patrick Wolfe. “The rate at which we’re generating data is rapidly outpacing our ability to analyze it,” he says. “The trick here is to turn these massive data streams from a liability into a strength.”

In other words, the vastness of big data can get in the way of developing these types of projects because what could be a treasure trove can at first seem to be an impossibly big, disorganized mess. 

Archnemeses of Big Data

Size is just one of the things that aren’t working in favor of big data; let’s call it big data “archnemesis #1.” What else is holding back the use of your data?

Archnemesis #2 – Computing design

A major hurdle to overcome is that it’s difficult to integrate everything and know that the information is legitimate. The many sources from which data is collected make it challenging to maintain data integrity. It’s important to have safeguards in place that can tell if data might be inaccurate.

Archnemesis #3 – Junk science

With the rise of access to open source big data projects, some people who aren’t trained in data analysis have started releasing sloppy findings. Their findings often don’t completely make sense because they don’t know the skills or tactics used by data science professionals.

Archnemesis #4 – Lack of talent

You may simply not have the people-power to run big data projects and derive reasonable, actionable conclusions. Their simply aren’t enough pros who are well-trained in analytics available to fill the business demand. You can train current employees, though, and work with automated software.

Archnemesis #5 – Inertia

Companies essentially use trial-and-error, through their own actions and by studying those of others, to refine their growth strategy. However, businesses do often get into unhelpful patterns that aren’t based on real evidence, notes Infogix CEO Sumit Nijhawan. “[B]y leveraging analytics, organizations can evolve their existing classical decision making process based on past learnings or intuitions, into a logic-based decision support system that is based on evidence,” he says. The only issue is that many organizations don’t yet use analytics when they make decisions. 

RELATED: If you want to try a big data project at your organization, you need the speed and efficiency of a cloud server. At Superb Internet, we use a distributed design (no bottlenecks) and InfiniBand (dozens of times lower latency than the theoretical minimum of 10 GigE). Learn more.

Archnemesis #6 – Labeling

Clearly it is not easy for companies to manage or interpret the massive amount of data that their business now controls. Business leaders want the IT directors to tell them where the data is and what it’s value might be. IT pros often don’t know what the data is exactly, though.  It’s not labeled or classified, so it’s unclear if the information relates to customers or sales or even employees. Data classification is a must: it will give you a sense what you need to keep and what can be tossed, both now and in the future.

Conclusion

There are many forces working against big data, as indicated above. Hopefully knowing what might hold you back will make it easier for you to succeed and leverage your information to its fullest possible extent. Clearly big data is valuable and, if used wisely, can give you a large competitive advantage.

Now that the banking cloud is quickly developing, traditional banks are realizing they have to improve their digital stance if they don’t want to see a mass exodus of their customers.

• Better Security Perception & a Changing Market
• Digital the Way to Bank Quickly
• Essential to Continuing Retail Success
• Diving into Digital
• Immediacy without Sacrificing Service
• Cloud as a General Path Forward
• Conclusion

Better Security Perception & a Changing Market

Now that cloud-centered, digital bank startups are on the rise, traditional firms are assessing the extent to which they might want to invest in newer technologies. Public cloud was previously feared as a general security concern, but that perception has largely changed: security was listed as the top challenge with cloud in last year’s State of the Cloud survey, but in 2016 the top issue is talent and resources.

Banks are becoming more open to cloud in terms of security but also from a business standpoint, recognizing that they are losing market share to emerging businesses such as Starling, Mondo, and Atom. Traditional banks have had to move elements of their businesses beyond their own datacenters in order to effectively respond to the changing financial landscape.

Digital the Way to Bank Quickly

Every bank wants both rapid and safe mobile banking delivered via a coherent and well-coordinated application. There is massive disruption in the finance industry: as some people start transitioning to 100% home banking, these applications are becoming increasingly popular, notes Steven Boyle of ITProPortal. “More and more, the bank is becoming a virtual concept rather than a high street or call center entity,” he says, “though many still want the peace-of-mind that accompanies talking directly to experienced banking staff.”

It’s very important that banks meet that need for speed with any cloud systems they adopt. After all, that is the point. The cloud services they choose should be well-designed and use enterprise-grade equipment. For instance, at Superb Internet, we use distributed storage (offering no single point of failure and no bottlenecks) and InfiniBand (with practically no jitter and always-zero packet loss).

Essential to Continuing Retail Success

Brick-and-mortar banks are part of the larger retail sector that isn’t keeping up with cloud. Retail businesses are in many cases unaware how they are falling behind. Stores that do not transition substantially to digital may see as much as 35% of their net profits disappear, according to a McKinsey report from 2015. Meanwhile, organizations that optimize their cloud use could see their profits go up 40% or more.

Companies that haven’t yet transitioned to digital are only painting themselves into a corner. They are falling behind in terms of the immediate-access, user-experience expectation that is gaining traction among consumers.

Diving into Digital

Banks are basically now beyond the point of toe-dipping in terms of the cloud’s rise, explains Boyle. “[T]he old guard is now facing a crossroads: adapt and invest now, or cling to outdated core systems that could eventually prove catastrophic,” he says. “The latter course risks a situation where banks fade along with their older client base.”

Everything is becoming more mobile throughout our society. That level of convenience is now becoming not an extra perk but an expectation. Traditional banks will need to keep pace in the digital era if they are to remain relevant, particularly among the younger demographics. Startups are setting the bar high, hoping to create a service that outdoes what the traditional banks can provide. The agility with which startups are able to maneuver can make it challenging for the major industry players to compete.

Immediacy without Sacrificing Service

Digital is efficient for all parties. However, service can suffer. That’s a major issue in terms of engagement. You can keep the more tech-savvy customers engaged, but you could lose customers who become frustrated within a system they don’t understand – and with lack of face-to-face assistance.

Part of that comfort issue can be solved by patterning your cloud environments after the familiar world of a physical bank. Essentially, the human element cannot be forgotten. “Digital convenience must be matched by engaging customer service at every step of the process,” says Boyle.

Cloud as a General Path Forward

More traditional banks are realizing that it makes sense to adopt cloud services. Basically cloud allows banks direct access to virtually unlimited high-speed resources on-demand. That means it’s possible to crunch big data, speed up transactions, lower budgets, and keep customers happy.

Cloud allows companies to have extraordinary agility since they are able to add or remove services on-the-fly. It also has a better reputation in terms of security, now that banks and other institutions have realized strong cloud providers must have security expertise in order to protect their systems and credibility 24/7.

The major cloud strong-point that is particularly attractive to banks is the reliability of cloud systems, since redundancies are built so fundamentally into legitimate cloud architecture.

Banks have also realized they can use cloud to any extent, in conjunction with their legacy systems as desired.

Conclusion

For banks, digital is a key differentiator in the industry that is impossible to ignore. In response, many banks will transition to the cloud faster than expected.

Many governments still haven’t switched over to cloud computing. Let’s look at why cloud is advantageous and factors that have made “cloud-first” policies challenging to realize.

• Objective: Less Governmental Waste
• Benefits and Concerns of Cloud Computing for Government Offices
• What’s the Holdup?
• Making the Switch

Objective: Less Governmental Waste

In the 2016 US presidential race, we see a lot of discussion of education, healthcare, and the economy, but not much on the topic of real structural changes to streamline the federal system. The best way for government to become more efficient is to look at the technology that has disrupted and ultimately strengthened businesses throughout the marketplace.

The pressure on government agencies to provide better services within strict budgets has always prompted governments to consider ways to work together. The ability of organizations to foster collaboration got a major boost with the rise of the cloud, mobile devices, and social apps. These tools allow federal agencies to develop ideas and programs internally – branching out to affiliates, vendors, and the general public as desired.

Now, these technologies have been helpful to government departments, but the transition has also been tricky, notes Morten Brøgger in Government Technology. It’s been difficult to use the cloud for collaboration while giving balanced consideration toward security concerns and the desire to build systems that are affordable yet robust. “In other words, tools cannot compromise on ease of use when programs are increasingly being evaluated and funded based on the public’s and employees’ experience,” says Brøgger.

The biggest priorities for government are cloud computing, infrastructure, and analytics, according to renowned research firm Gartner. However, governmental entities have been slow to transition to the cloud.

When decision-makers feel unsure about cloud, it’s helpful to remember that standards have been created to independently gauge the crediblity of providers and their legitimacy to back federal services. You want to use partners that are fully compliant with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and have SSAE 16 audited datacenters, meeting checks and balances established by the American Society of CPAs.

Benefits and Concerns of Cloud Computing for Government Offices

It’s obvious in certain ways that a cloud transition would be an improvement. It would be easier to facilitate projects between two or more agencies and to manage vendors. It would even make it easier for the staff to share files and make them broadly accessible to the team or even themselves on different devices. The Gartner assessment notes that, for these reasons and others, CIOs in the private sector are increasingly in favor of cloud.

However, very few government IT chiefs are truly using a “cloud-first” perspective. That’s backed up by a study released in January 2015 by MeriTalk, highlighted in Federal Times. The study found that three out of four federal IT decision-makers (75%) would like to move to cloud but don’t want to lose control of the infrastructure. Meanwhile, nearly one in four (23%) said they were wary about cloud hosting providers. Another 32% said that they had to stick with the legacy approach because of data sovereignty and security requirements.

A 2014 survey from Market Connections highlighted additional ways that government agencies are able to benefit from cloud. In fact, the survey found that those who did make the switch actually listed security as one of the reasons for their choice. They also said that it was more affordable. Three in five respondents said that using cloud was more cost-effective than running servers on-premises.

What’s the Holdup?

In recent years, both the United States and United Kingdom governments have publicly committed to moving to the cloud as quickly as possible. However, the transition that was expected has not taken place.

The reason action has been slow is that CIOs are concerned about security precautions.

Among CIOs who took part in the Gartner 2015 CIO Agenda report, fully nine out of ten believe that digital environments “[create] new types and increased levels of risk in government,” Brøgger explains. “In addition, government CIOs are hampered by complex legacy IT environments that must be simplified and modernized.”

There is a lot of unsureness. Only 37% of United Kingdom government workers feel confident in cloud systems, an aversion that is probably similar in the United States. People want to avoid the challenges of cloud, which include reviewing providers’ security parameters, blocking out a time to shift to the new environment, and a sense of lacking the appropriate insights or skills for deployment and management.

The issue is that many government projects are interdepartmental or are shared between agencies.  Without secure cloud systems, less secure or time-consuming approaches (such as email) are being used instead.

Making the Switch

CIOs at government agencies should first be aware that “cloud is a cultural revolution, as well as a technological evolution,” comments Brøgger. It’s critical to address the issue of security head-on. “A frontline lack of trust in cloud security is the fundamental Achilles’ heel of the wider and faster adoption of public-sector cloud services,” he says.

As discussed above, part of the hesitation to transition to cloud is because of unsureness about particular providers. However, you can feel confident when you work with a provider that is compliant with guidelines and standards established by the federal government and accounting industry.