by Bill Ives
July 8, 2011 at 4:43 am · Filed under
Big Data, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Web 2.0
Big Data is a hot topic. I went to a session on Big Data Analytics for Social Media at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference. Computerworld reported on an IDC study that predicts we will see a 50 times increase in the world’s data in the next ten years. In 2011 alone they report that 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion gigabytes) of data will be created. This is the equivalent to every U.S. citizen writing 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years. Then over the next decade, the number of servers managing the world’s data stores will grow by ten times to match the 50 times increase in data. The report adds that IT execs will likely have trouble finding enough people with the skills and experience to manage this increase This is all covered in the fifth annual IDC Digital Universe study.
This data growth is fueled, in part, by the spread of smart devices such as sensors in clothing, medical devices, and structures like buildings and bridges. In addition, unstructured information – such as files, email and video – will account for 90% of all data created over the next decade. Some of this growth is through the rise of high bandwidth data such as videos.
There is some good news as new hardware and software has driven the cost of creating, capturing, managing and storing information down to one-sixth of what it was in 2005. This is likely why servers will only grow ten times while the data they store will grow fifty times. Relative costs have also dropped as since 2005 the annual investments by enterprises in hardware, software and cloud services technologies, along with the staff to manage information, has only increased 50% to $4 trillion.
The cloud accounts for some of the cost reduction and will account for more going forward. Today, cloud computing accounts for only 2% of all IT spending. However, by 2015, though, close to 20% of all information will be attached to cloud services some way, and as much as 10% will reside in a cloud infrastructure, IDC stated.
According to David Reinsel, IDC’s vice president of storage and semiconductor research, the next step is to enable companies to better extract value out of their mountains of data, via big data analytics. “This is where real opportunities lie, and where some folks may miss the boat. As soon as big data success stories are advertised and people see that there is gold in their data … then you will find more companies desiring to put more data online.”
Gartner also weighs in on this issue in a recent report. While the volume within big data is a significant issue, Gartner analysts “said the real issue is making sense of big data and finding patterns in it that help organizations make better business decisions.” I could not agree more.
Yvonne Genovese, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner: “The ability to manage extreme data will be a core competency of enterprises that are increasingly using new forms of information—such as text, social and context—to look for patterns that support business decisions in what we call Pattern-Based Strategy. Pattern-Based Strategy, as an engine of change, utilizes all the dimensions in its pattern-seeking process. It then provides the basis of the modeling for new business solutions, which allows the business to adapt…”
The ability to handle this explosion of data and make sense of it should be a priority of enterprises or they will be swamped in the next few years by both the data and their competitors.
by Bill Ives
July 5, 2011 at 3:35 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, MIX, Web 2.0
The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is “an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while “modern” management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.” I am impressed with their efforts and recently joined the MIX site. It is free to sign up.
MIX leaders include: Gary Hamel, Michele Zanini, Polly LaBarre, and David Sims, and others. I had lunch with Michele after the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston and he filled me in on some of what they are doing.
Here is the MIX Manifesto: “What law decrees that our organizations have to be bureaucratic, inertial and politicized, or that life within them has to be disempowering, dispiriting and often downright boring? No law we know of. So why not build organizations that are as resilient, inventive, inspiring and socially responsible, as the people who work within them? Why not, indeed. This is the mission of the MIX.” I can certainly support this effort.
They refer to this effort as Management 2.0. Consistent with Enterprise 2.0, MIX is using an open innovation model to collect and share ideas to support their mission. Operating under the principle that innovation is a social process they are building a community to support their goals. To encourage sharing at MIX, “every effort will be made on the MIX to ensure that every valuable contribution is recognized, and every contribution fairly credited.” This is a smart practice. They ask that all participants follow these guidelines, be: contrarian, concise, concrete, constructive, collaborative, and colorful. Part of the color side is to encourage more interesting profiles by participants.
One of the MIX initiatives is the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey
M-Prize for Management Innovation. In the first leg of contest (which runs from May 25 through July 18), they are seeking the “most progressive practices and disruptive ideas that illustrate how the governing principles and tools of the Web can make our organizations more adaptable, innovative, inspiring, and accountable.” There are two types of entries: an instructive case study (a Story) or an experimental design (a Hack). The goals is to show how Web 2.0 values (including transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, openness, community and self-determination) can help overcome the design limits of Management 1.0—and help to create Management 2.0.
Here is an excellent blog post by Polly LaBarre, How to Hack Management: A Practical Guide to High-Impact Disruption and Storytelling, that illustrates what they are looking for in the M-Prize but the advice goes beyond this initiative to provide guidance for any new management effort. Polly asks if the idea is: deep, bold, human, clear, and social.
Here is a sample hack, The Deliberatorium, by Martin Klein, Principal Research Scientist at MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. It is s “a software tool designed to help organizations better harvest the knowledge and incorporate the perspectives of their members to identify solutions for complex problems, avoiding the dysfunctional behaviors (such as noise, disorganized content, and polarization) that other social media often produce when applied to challenging topics.” It provides better treading of conversations that offers useful maps of conversation to enable to harvesting of broader input into management decisions.
by Bill Ives
July 1, 2011 at 3:54 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09
Jim Worth has done a very valuable service by setting up a wiki, Enterprise 20 Boston Social Web Coverage June 20 2011, to collect the coverage of the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. It includes:
- tweetlog transcripts of each day
- conference links
- the presentations
- the blog posts
- press coverage
- pictures and videos
- conference tweeters
I am amazed and grateful for what Jim has done. He has done this for other events see his complete listings. It was a great event and here is the record of what was done and the comments on what happen. I also enjoyed spending time with him at a number of sessions and events. Thanks, Jim.
