Dell executives and customers assembled for a Dell World 2015 panel this week, sharing their thoughts on how we should be preparing for the ongoing Big Data explosion.

CBR collected some of their opinions.

 

1. Understand the individual

Matthew Mobley, Technical Sales Manager, Dell, said:

"How do we understand the uniqueness of the individual that we are actually communicating with? If I am talking to a device, how does that relate to the person that is using it? How do I start to bring all of that data together to understand that individual’s experience?

"Those are the problems that we are solving today with the Big Data world. One is bringing that back in and maintaining the uniqueness of the individual so that they can have a unique experience. Also we need to drive enough insight so that we can have the opportunity to have that unique experience."

2. Allign technology goals with business goals

Paul Walsh, Chief Information Officer, Dell, said:

"We need to move from left to right, from being an impediment to the business to an enabler of the business and from an enabler to being a partner in the business to ensure that we truly understand the value of what the business is trying to achieve.

"It’s not just about being given requirements, building to these requirements and accepting that that’s what they asked for and they’ve got it. It’s about how we think about the customer and work together to create and sustain business value."

3. Reverse your analytics approach

Prasad Thrikutam, President and Global Head of Applications, Dell Services, said:

"Many companies have invested millions of dollars in creating analytics, but started solving the problem at the wrong end. They’ve seen that they have all of this data and asked what they can do with it, rather than saying that they have a business problem and asked how they can solve it with analytics.

"You put the business context first and then look at how technology can help you. Analytics is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself."

 

4. Analytics as a service is step forward but no ‘silver bullet’

Thrikutam said:

"I don’t think analytics as a service is a silver bullet and it has to evolve. You have to go back to being business-specific; there will still be a lot of issues with how you collect data, analyse data and do it in a timely fashion.

"I think analytics as a service is a step forward in creating specific business-focused outcomes, creating a software and hardware service stack that can be more easily deployable. But you cannot imagine all of the business scenarios to build something like that; it has to be very tailor-made."

 

5. Playing catch-up

Mobley said:

"What we see when we look at organisations’ use of Big Data and the level of adoption of it, we see two lines of maturity. One is the capability side, which is far outstripping the ability of an organisation to consume and adopt things like analytics and Big Data.

"The reality today is that you can build the platform that can lead your business into the future but you as an organisation are not ready to actually consume that product because you haven’t changed your business process.

"There is a big catch-up point for organisations to take a step back…to say we know this is ready to go, how can we as an organisation adopt it?"