Intel revealed one secret about Big Data on Thursday. The chip maker said many firms are investing big money in the building tools and engineering capabilities to analyze Big Data, but the problem is, they don’t know what to do with the data they collect.
Intel sees big opportunity in Big Data
“This is the dirty little secret about Big Data: No one actually knows what to do with it,” Intel’s VP and GM, Jason Waxman said in a webcast for investors.
The huge collection of sensor and process data is termed “Big Data,” and its analysis helps in understanding customer behavior and device methods for improving operational efficiency. Intel is very interested in the Big Data market as it needs a lot of processing capabilities, hence, creates more demand for its chips. Presently, around $13 billion of IT spending is directed toward Big Data, and by 2018, the number is expected to jump to $41 billion, including at least $2 billion toward hardware, Intel estimates. Despite the rising use of cloud-based software services, Waxman believes many firms will want to keep their Big Data operations in-house, and this is where Intel could help.
“People want to own their own data. If they give away their data, they don’t have much of a company left,” Waxman said.
Few hurdles in extracting value from Big Data
Waxman noted that to derive value from Big Data, companies will have to overcome many hurdles. Intel talked to a number of firms about their use and anticipated use of Big Data. The biggest problem, the chip maker found, was knowing how to derive the maximum value from the data.
It’s a tough task, and it requires the right talent to assemble and run Big Data systems. In addition to programming and system administration, other skills required are statistics and analytical reasoning. Intel has worked with many companies, helping them to get value from their data, the executive said.
Another challenge is to easily deploy Big Data systems. Presently, these systems are being installed piece by piece, which needs a lot of configuration and integration. To make this easier and less time-consuming, the chip maker has invested in numerous Big Data software providers. In 2014, the company invested $740 million in a company involved with the Hadoop data processing platform, Cloudera.
