Big Data Is Big Business
Businesses strive to be smart, but often fail. As the saying goes, businesses "don't know what they know".
Their staff, their processes and especially their data hold an immense amount of useful intellectual property, but it's hard to find when you need it and hard to use when you find it.
And, after more than a decade of work and investment on data warehouses and business intelligence software, the whole field is being disrupted again as boffins and entrepreneurs alike eye a new and exciting frontier: big data.
Auckland-based business incubator the Ice house has helped nurture several big data start ups. Chief executive Andy Hamilton says it takes a while to get your head around what makes big data so different.
"The geeky end of data is historically data mining," he says.
"Big data traverses mobile, analytic, machine learning and takes it from being a static, geeky thing to something real-time, a live learning system."
Among other benefits, it promises better product development, vastly improved and even automated customer service, and increased sales conversions through the ability to create more personalized offers.
"It's a really exciting space. There's going to be a lot of disruption and a lot of opportunity too," Hamilton says.
In New Zealand there are a couple of more mature firms, such as data warehousing specialist Where cape and mobile loyalty application developer Mob, and then a lot of early stage firms looking at market opportunities.
But the activity in New Zealand is especially exciting, Hamilton says, because its focus is very different from in the US, where aggregating data is the main game. Here, making big data analytic more widely available is the opportunity local start ups are focusing on. for more info visit: http://www.iprediq.com/
















