BI Meets Big Data Meets Cloud
25 July 2013
25 Jul 2013
ClearPeople Big Data article featured in the latest Housing Technology newsletter.
You can read Gabriel's letter below, or visit the Housing Technology website and register for free to download the latest edition of the newsletter.
BI Meets Big Data Meets Cloud
Dear Sir,
We are finding that many of our customers are sitting on the fence waiting for some clarity around the elusive concepts of “Big Data” and “Business Intelligence” (or BI). It is however not a surprise that many are eagerly trying to make sense of it all and tie these technology concepts into a concise IT roadmap.
Do these three technology concepts collide or do they overlap? Are they even related?
In my view it is certain that the drivers for Big Data and Cloud adoption go hand-in-hand with BI.
BI drives the requirement for current and historical data, which often drives ever growing data repositories. BI also drives the demand for scalable and burstable analysis and reporting infrastructures, which in turn drives the adoption for Cloud technology.
It is however worth reminding ourselves that a BI solution really should be about providing the ability to gain (better and more trustworthy) knowledge to make (better and more informed) decisions.
And start you project with a quick reality check. What reports and self-service features will be most valuable to your association? Identify the real questions and the real requirements, so you’re your project is based on real business cases and real value.
Our advice is to go for pragmatic solutions using battle tested Microsoft technology for Business Intelligence as well as for managing large datasets and large volumes of data. For example, HDInsight (which is Microsoft’s 100% Apache compatible Hadoop distribution) on Microsoft Azure is an excellent example of “BI meets Big Data meets Cloud”.
For those that have been drumming up a BI story for years, the technology is finally available and accessible to most organisations within a reasonable budget and it does not have to take a decade to get some value out of it either.
Kind Regards,
Gabriel Karawani
Director, Co-Founder
ClearPeople
