Grant Vine (image supplied).
Big data is virtually unlimited, but presents both challenges and opportunities for players in the ICT industry, according to Grant Vine, technical director of South African IT solutions company Cybervine.
“Big data, much like cloud computing, has been present in some form for quite a while, under various names such as analytics and BI (business intelligence), but much like cloud computing, the greatest differentiator is scale, which in turn has driven new thought processes on how to handle data of such magnitude,” said Vine.
He added: “There are already organisations running analytics and reporting against vast amounts of data. However, they may not necessarily be using big data thinking to handle this. One thing to bear in mind is that current big data products are primarily designed to look at static, historic data – the traditional approach to analytics.”
Vine said the landscape is changing quickly and companies are beginning to seek out potential uses of real time analytics of big data, “where frameworks are built for specific purposes, pulling data from multiple feeds for a real time view of trending subjects or market sentiment”.
According to Vine, Storm and other open source products similar to it are at the forefront of real time analytics. He believes there is “unlimited potential” for this sort of information.
Furthermore, he said businesses will be able to make decisions faster by using streams not previously used. It could also help businesses to use as a civil defence early warning system and track large world events. “The possibilities are endless,” he said.
“Real time big data principles have the potential to catalyse massive changes in information analysis. Information is power, at the end of the day. Supporting this new demand for high performance computing, to enable real time big data processing and analysis, is where both the challenges and opportunities lie.”
He added: “In South Africa, it is likely in the future that we will have to keep our data within the borders of the country. In addition, the cost of taking petabytes of data offshore, then making it readily available for accessing and use, could prove prohibitive.”
One of the challenges facing South Africa is the significant investment required for building an infrastructure, capable of producing this performance in a country such as South Africa where data volumes and support are limited as well as the looming economic downturn.
