How IT Leaders Can Learn From Big Data Industry Changes

The Big Data market has transformed how most IT services are bought and sold. Often the customer is a business leader, rather than the CIO, and services are already available, rather than needing to be designed from the ground up.

The Big Data market has transformed how most IT services are bought and sold. Often the customer is a business leader, rather than the CIO, and services are already available, rather than needing to be designed from the ground up.

IT leaders often look at other companies to see what they are doing, it’s usually known as best practice, but what if the entire market is in a state of flux? Some IT companies are now delivering radically different solutions to others. Innovations like the app store concept and cloud based solutions are changing the way that IT services are delivered globally, so how can changes in the Big Data market change how the entire IT industry behaves?

Techrepublic magazine recently outlined some important changes in how IT leaders think about their marketplace. Think of these 5 different changes as examples of what is changing and how it can influence the behaviour of IT leaders:

1.    Off the shelf analytic solutions like Watson from IBM have been customised to be used across many different industry verticals. It’s the same system, but modified for different environments and it can therefore offer immediate results. Everyone is looking for a rapid return on investment today.
2.    Commodity hardware offers a great platform for storage if you are going to keep your data and analytics system internal, rather than in the cloud.
3.    More companies are relying on their suppliers for expertise and innovation today. These are true partnerships now, not just outsourcing arrangements where the cheapest supplier gets the project.
4.    Analytics reporting systems like SAS are still important because they have been tested and developed over so many years, but also because the users are really familiar with the way these systems work. Familiarity is important.
5.    Real time processing systems are changing the way that physical infrastructure is designed and deployed. Look at SAP HANA for an example of how systems using memory in new ways are now feeding back into the design of the physical servers and databases.

What do you think about the lessons from Big Data? Have you seen other ways in which IT is more generally changing because of the way that Big Data is influencing IT strategy?