 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific III 2015 |
| Article no.: | 2 | |
| Topic: | Big Data – Transforming the way we live, work and think | |
| Author: | Mark Ablett | |
| Title: | Senior Vice President & General Manager, Asia Pacific | |
| Organisation: | Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) | |
| PDF size: | 170KB |
About author
Mark Ablett joined Hitachi Data Systems as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, on January 2015. He is responsible for providing strategic direction and leading the company in its drive to capitalize on the fast growing opportunities in the Asia Pacific region, boosting revenue growth and expanding the business.
Before joining Hitachi Data Systems, Ablett was Vice President, South Asia for Juniper Networks and was responsible for revenue growth and profitability in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) and ASEAN. Capitalizing on the synergy and opportunity that existed across these markets, Ablett focused on building a South Asia strategy and team that best accelerated growth for Juniper Networks and its customers and partners. .
Ablett has over 15 years of IT industry experience spanning ANZ and Asia Pacific (APAC) senior sales roles. He joined Juniper in 2008 and led the ANZ Enterprise Business for three years, prior to moving to Singapore to lead Commercial Sales for Juniper APAC. He was named Vice President of ANZ in 2012 and in this capacity he was responsible for driving the strategic and operational elements of sales development and growth across Juniper’s Service Provider and Enterprise business. He assumed his current role in May 2014.
Prior to Juniper, Mark Ablett served as Managing Director for Asia Pacific at SpectraLink where he led the company’s push into new markets throughout the region. He was also Director of Sales for Australia and New Zealand for Telxon.
Mark graduated from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently based in Melbourne.
Article abstract
Mark Ablett, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific at Hitachi Data Systems, shares his thoughts on how big data is changing the world around us.
Full Article
We all know that change is constant, and that businesses, individuals and governments must innovate to keep pace with global and local trends. Today, the pace and breadth of change is on a different scale. The world is more interconnected and shifting faster than ever. Disruptions are more common, pressures are bigger and business opportunities are greater. In fact, the Internet of Things is driving the biggest market opportunity in history, what many are calling “the next Industrial Revolution.”
Critical questions for organizations today are: ‘how can I respond to the astounding rate of growth in connected devices?’ and ‘how can I to take advantage of the trillions of dollars that the Internet of Things will bring to the global economy?’ In this highly pressurized environment, how do we innovate faster, make smarter decisions, build a more successful business and ultimately assist the world around us?
The answer lies with data. The rise of the Internet of Things and connected devices means that data is everywhere, from smartphones, and cars through to trains, wind turbines, farms and more. Although IDC estimated the big data market in Asia Pacific to be worth US$1.2 billion in 2014, it is growing strongly with a CAGR of 32.0% through 2018, when the market will reach US$3.6 billion.
Ultimately, the value of big data comes in gaining insight from it through analytics. Though analytics solutions are not new, with big data we now have a much wider array of data sources that can drive and contribute to these insights. New technologies like Hadoop, object stores and in-memory databases, along with increased economies of scale, have enabled organizations to process unprecedented volumes and varieties of data, providing new levels of insight much faster than ever before.
New data, new technology challenges, and new opportunities – this is the world of big data.
Changing how we live
The world’s population has doubled over the last 50 years and will reach about 8.8 billion people by 2030, with a clear majority (6.3 billion) of those living in urban areas by 2050. According to a report by market research firm Navigant Research, investment in smart city technology in Asia Pacific will total US$63.4 billion by 2023, with more than 100 smart cities planned in India alone.
These and other significant demographic changes will create challenges in healthcare, opportunities for smart city planning, sustainable energy, improved transportation solutions and other infrastructure innovations.
Today’s modern healthcare facilities are faced with an explosion of medical images and other digital information from numerous clinical departments; often within disparate information silos that prevent easy access. Simultaneously, healthcare providers are under pressure to better manage an increasing number of patients in more diverse settings than ever before. They are expected to increase productivity, while improving clinical outcomes, particularly in regions like Asia Pacific as aging populations continue to grow the reliance on healthcare increases.
Big data can ease these pressures, analyzing vast amounts information on diagnoses and treatments, identifying patterns that to can help with issues like pandemic planning and staff placement. Enterprise-class medical repositories that can accept nearly any data type, parse it, index the metadata and make it available for enterprise-wide access and distribution will change the experience for doctors and patients alike. By integrating records from departments like radiology, mammography and cardiology, medical staff have access to a patient’s full history – preventing errors and increasing efficiency.
Advances in technology are also delivering unprecedented volumes of data to public safety officials. This data comes from a variety of sources, such as video surveillance cameras and gunshot detectors that can aid crime investigations. Likewise, sensors on traffic systems, public transportation and other critical infrastructure can bring attention to equipment malfunctions, unsafe conditions and gridlock. In fact, IDC identified the collection of citizen data and Smart Cities initiatives in the government sector as key area of investment in big data analytics in Asia.
However, for most public safety organizations, this flood of information is more than any agency can effectively review with its human resources alone. To act swiftly in the face of community events and crises, public safety officials need more than fast and easy access to data from all of their disparate surveillance systems. They need data compiled, correlated and delivered as actionable information in real-time—right at their fingertips.
Efficiently viewing and analyzing data from numerous public safety systems requires a new generation of innovative tools. These tools run on top of existing, disparate systems and have the power to extend their reach and usefulness while providing deep insights. They simplify the user experience by putting data from your disparate systems on a common platform and associating metadata with millions of evidence clips that can be retrieved for analysis.
For example, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department uses solutions that enable hundreds of personnel to view integrated video feeds, sensor data and information from third party public safety systems. All information is overlaid onto a map of the relevant area and analytics software can tap into information from public sources such as social media and online news to search for correlations and anomalies. Governments and organizations can use all this information to respond remotely by repositioning cameras, sending customized alerts to appropriate personnel, and storing data for evidence.
Changing how we work
Businesses everywhere are trying to harness and analyze growing amounts of data, with the goal of outpacing other industry players in today’s competitive business environment. However, every company struggles with data growth, complexity, rising costs and the need to do more with fewer resources and budget.
According to IDC, the most common objective of big data initiatives in the Asia Pacific region is behavioral profiling and modeling. For example, in financial services, which invested the most in 2014, with customer analytics and personalized services expected to dominate investment for the next few years. Though the end goal with big data is to gain insight, it all starts with an effective way of capturing, storing, managing and controlling the underlying data, making the right infrastructure critical.
In commercial sectors, businesses are seeking to remain competitive by constantly learning from insights gained through analytics. Insights businesses gained by analyzing the data generated by products and services can be used to improve production mechanisms, deliver innovative products and services, and reduce time to market.
In consumer sectors, businesses can offer better products and services by learning from human and social behavior, buying and spending patterns, living patterns, and affinity for products and services. By constantly improving customer service, businesses can change buyer perception and increase demand for their goods and services, translating to higher profits and a healthier industry.
Regardless of sector, companies require one platform for all data that can deliver performance, scalability and reliability, providing the right foundation for big data whether it is on-premise or in the cloud.
Changing how we think
For big data to truly have an impact on society we need to understand all the areas of our work and lives that it touches, and shift our thinking to a big data mind-set.
By 2020, Asia Pacific is expected to account for over half of the world’s connected mobile devices, with almost 5.6 billion devices in the region. All of these devices will continue to churn out big data: data that is generated faster, in greater variety, and in greater amounts than we have ever seen before. The challenge will continue to be identifying the data that matters, analyzing that data, uncovering patterns, and using the findings to make better and faster decisions.
From a business perspective data will not only be collected from the expected sources, like sales and manufacturing, but across all departments including call-centers, IT, R&D, marketing, operations and distribution. Insights will be gained from log-files, social media, sensor data and customer information. CEOs will be required to look at all areas of the business for useful data that can be tapped and used to create a full picture of successes and shortcomings.
In the near future, systems will be able to help predict where crimes are likely to occur, analyze the reasons for increases in traffic accidents, act proactively to avoid problems with critical infrastructure and more.
Through innovative technologies and total solutions for sustainable urban development, big data can help us to address critical global issues, improve business, and the lives of people around the world.
