Leading Edge Forum Report 2005
Extreme Data: Rethinking the "I" in IT
This is the first of a series of four articles about the 2005 Leading Edge Forum report, describing the four dimensions of extreme data.
An era of extreme data is on the rise, driven by an explosion of new types of data generated by new devices and used in completely new ways, says the 2005 Leading Edge Forum Report, Extreme Data: Rethinking the "I" in IT. [Download the report.]
Extreme data creates a new world for IT organizations, enabling new business processes, interpersonal connections and knowledge. "In this world, organizations need to understand and leverage their data opportunities, putting information to work for them like never before," says the report, an annual look at technology and trends that define the business world.
Data today looks nothing like it used to look. Organizations’ data used to be centralized, sanitized and authorized. It was structured and well defined. Now, the report says, data has broken free. Data is mobile, operating freely outside corporate boundaries. It is messy, informal and unstructured, coming in many shapes and sizes: documents, text messages, pictures, voice snippets, and video clips.
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Extreme data is blurring the lines between consumer and corporate technology. Data from consumer applications, such as instant messaging, voice-over-IP and MP3s, is working its way into the corporate information technology infrastructure. The "I" in IT is changing.
The volume of data has exploded as organizations cope with multiplying documents, presentation slides, e-mails and instant messages. In 2002, for example, enough data was created to fill 500,000 libraries the size of the Library of Congress print collections. Some say all this data is not necessarily a good thing—that it’s more data than we can digest and put to use, and poses security and privacy issues for organizations.
The world of extreme data is one of productivity, innovation, convenience and communication," Extreme Data says. "The "I" in IT has been redefined as a broad swath of data that runs wide and deep." The report examines four dimensions of extreme data, to be detailed in this and three subsequent features on csc.com: data everywhere, time and place, social connections and meaning. These dimensions make today’s data different from bits that have come before and challenge organizations to explore the extreme side of data.
Data everywhere
Data in many places, changing the rules
As computing has moved to ever-smaller devices, data has spread from its familiar homes—the data center, the server room, the PC—to the very edge of the network where we work and play. Now data can be found all around us: in your wallet, in your pocket, in your briefcase, in your car, and even in your own body. "The evolution of computing from centralized and monolithic to highly distributed and small is legendary, and with that has come the dispersion of data all around us, like confetti," the report says.
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| Travelers on SAS can check in for a flight via their cell phones with a system built by CSC. |
With data everywhere, the foundation is laid for a world of extreme data and applications. As data has gotten closer to people and further away from corporate walls, it has become mobile. The simplicity and immediacy of having data where you need it is changing the rules of business and our personal lives.
Consumer devices are helping put data everywhere as employees’ use of consumer devices in the home drives IT decisions in the enterprise. "Everyone should remember the PC, which started out as a toy for hobbyists and was shunned by the enterprise. Consumers led the way," says Paul Gustafson, director of the LEF Technology Programs. Likewise, today’s consumer devices are challenging the enterprise to place data at the edge of the network to benefit customers, partners and employees.
Enterprises must recognize that "edge devices" like mobile phones, PDAs and digital music players are first-class citizens and must be incorporated into business processes. For example, PDAs have emerged as a vital tool for enterprise sales forces and field service technicians.
The report details a question and observation database for Canadian aircraft and transportation manufacturer Bombardier, a pilot system that CSC created using the Pocket PC PDA and wireless (Wi-Fi) Internet. Field personnel can query and record inspection information while disconnected from the local network. When the technician returns to the office, he is able to sync the data with the master database. Such a disconnected wireless database enables the worker to gather and analyze data in the field, and to consult and update large corporate databases while remaining mobile.
Scandinavian Airlines, the fourth largest airline in Europe, is taking advantage of the pervasiveness of mobile phones by letting travelers check in for flights via phone. Working with CSC, the airline has created a system that uses text messages to the mobile phone that alert the traveler to call a voice system for check-in. The process is convenient and cost effective, and decreases check-in lines at the airport. Since the service was launched in January 2004, the number of subscribing passengers has increased by approximately 10 percent per month. For airlines, the service can expand to include booking and rebooking flights, waitlist confirmation, lost luggage handling or a hotline for bypassing queues. [Read a case study about mobile check-in.]
According to the report, the rise of digital entertainment—songs, radio shows, TV programs—is challenging the "one size fits all" delivery model of traditional media industries. With set-top boxes, podcasts and music downloads, programming once served on large platters is being sliced and diced into bite-size segments at the will of the consumer, who orders exactly what song or program he wants when he wants it.
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| Belgium’s new national identity card is a smart card with strong authentication and digital signature capabilities. |
CSC designed and implemented in just nine months one of the top music download services in Europe, FnacMusic.com. FnacMusic features tight connections to both fnac.com and the physical Fnac stores. For example, CSC and Fnac standardized the data that goes with a song and implemented cross references with the catalogs of the physical stores, which helps coordinate marketing with Fnac stores. [Read a case study about FnacMusic.com.]
FnacMusic and services like Apple’s iTunes fundamentally changed how customers buy and listen to music, and how artists get paid. The story of legal downloadable music is a classic case of extreme data driving a new business model. As Ian Clarke, creator of the peer-to-peer network Freenet, once put it, "If your business model is selling water in the desert and it starts to rain, you’d better find a different business model."
Data storage devices have become breathtakingly small, enabling people to carry enormous amounts of data anywhere in the form of smart cards and flash drives. An example cited in the report is Belgium’s new electronic identity (eID) card, designed and implemented by CSC. It is a smart card containing a digitized version of a citizen’s complete identity document, as well as strong electronic authentication and digital signature capabilities. Since the eID card was designed to be used in any circumstance where electronic interactions require strong authentication or signature of electronic documents and forms, an almost unlimited range of applications can exploit the eID card.
"Data is being unleashed from the enterprise to the edges of the network, putting it within our grasp and providing new levels of efficiency, convenience and flexibility," the report says. The data may be unleashed, but the organizations that will succeed are those that can harness it.
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