Many Companies Unprepared for Big Data Boom

Gartner Inc. has identified big data as one of the top 10 strategic trends in 2012. The fact is big data has rushed onto the information technology scene over the past two years. And it seems nearly everyone is looking to cash in on the promise of newly generated revenue streams teeming with profit.

However, as more and more organizations decide to take the big data plunge, many of them realize that they may be unprepared.

Like any technology solution, the return on implementing a big data solution does not come without some investment. Since big data solutions are predicated on processing very large data sets of structured and unstructured data, which is constantly changing, one of the most critical components of the investment is hardware – lots of hardware.

To give some perspective on how much data can be involved in a big data solution, Wal-Mart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour, which is imported into databases estimated to contain more than 2.5 petabytes of data (the equivalent of 167 times the books in America’s Library of Congress). This would not be possible without a significant investment in hardware.

As mentioned earlier in the article, big data has rushed onto the information technology scene and in that rush many organizations have not been able to sufficiently plan for this surge in new hardware demands. As a consequence, there has been a trend in leveraging external data centers to accommodate the demand.

Big data has come on fast and furious with demands that far exceed the resources of most companies. Without an implementation plan that includes a significant investment in hardware, many organizations will find themselves unprepared for the big data boom.