Last week Ryan Anderson (Big Data recruitment specialist), Ben Fisher (Business Analyst recruitment specialist) and myself (Business Intelligence recruitment specialist) had the pleasure of attending the Big Data LDN 2017 event. It was a great couple of days with many different data analytics vendors exhibiting, in fact we were surprised by just how many new names (to us) that there were… It really is no wonder that companies struggle to select the most relevant and beneficial products for them is it.
There was a real buzz around the place, data analytics professionals from all over the UK and beyond attended, from graduate/ junior data analysts, to Heads of BI, CTOs and entrepreneurs, it really was an excellent sign of an industry with such a huge part to play in the future. There were key note speakers, smaller talks on specific stands and a lot of general chat between people all over the event, sharing experiences and ideas in the quest to solve real life problems.
One topic that was prevalent throughout the event was the Internet of Things (IoT) and the value that IoT data holds.
For those who maybe don’t know, IoT is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enable these objects to connect and exchange data.
We’ve known about Big Data now for some time, but a very interesting comment I heard was; “IoT is the use case for Big Data we’ve all been waiting for”. With the number of devices that are generating this data rapidly growing, the digital universe is expanding at a phenomenal pace.
It’s estimated that there will be more than 20x the connected devices per person on the entire planet by 2020, anything from 50 billion up to over 200 billion IoT devices*, that’s an enormous amount of data being generated. The real challenge here is getting to the data and generating the real value. Another term that was mentioned several times is:
Dark Data: This is the data that is captured, stored and never touched! It’s estimated that on average, between 80-90% of data in organisation’s data repositories is dark data, crazy!
To truly gain the Insights from your data, you must ensure you build a strong and successful IoT strategy, and this is achieved by a correct delivery architecture. IE how the data is collected, managed and maintained but maybe most importantly, how value will be created from your IoT data. To do this, you must ensure that everybody across your organisation has access to the data and is able to explore the data and uncover those unknown insights that can lead to true innovation!
To conclude, it was a brilliant event with many of the industry’s leading professionals sharing their knowledge and thoughts, and one thing it did reiterate is that 2018 is set to be yet another ground-breaking year for the Data Analytics industry.
If you, your company or someone you know is interested in knowing more or wants to join in the conversation, get in touch.
*Source: Gartner, IDC and Cisco.
*Source: Qlik Tech International AB.