What is Big Data?

For most organizations, big data is the reality of doing business. It’s the proliferation of structured and unstructured data that floods your organization on a daily basis – and if managed well, it can deliver powerful insights. Imagine being able to analyze data to determine the root cause of failures. Or detect fraudulent behavior before it affects revenue. Implementing the right solutions to make the most of your big data – from data management to analytics – can be key to your business success.

Big Data Analytics

As data floods your organization on a daily basis, the question is no longer "What is big data?" It’s "What can we do with the big data we have?" The answer, of course, is integral to the future of your business. With big data analytics, you can implement data mining, predictive analytics, text mining, forecasting and optimization to explore options and make the best possible business decisions. Big data is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured. And big data may be as important to business – and society – as the Internet has become. Why? More data may lead to more accurate analyses. More accurate analyses may lead to more confident decision making. And better decisions can mean greater operational efficiencies, cost reductions and reduced risk.

Big Data includes

Volume

Many factors contribute to the increase in data volume. Transaction-based data stored through the years. Unstructured data streaming in from social media. Increasing amounts of sensor and machine-to-machine data being collected. In the past, excessive data volume was a storage issue. But with decreasing storage costs, other issues emerge, including how to determine relevance within large data volumes and how to use analytics to create value from relevant data

Velocity

Data is streaming in at unprecedented speed and must be dealt with in a timely manner. RFID tags, sensors and smart metering are driving the need to deal with torrents of data in near-real time. Reacting quickly enough to deal with data velocity is a challenge for most organizations

Variety

Data today comes in all types of formats. Structured, numeric data in traditional databases. Information created from line-of-business applications. Unstructured text documents, email, video, audio, stock ticker data and financial transactions. Managing, merging and governing different varieties of data is something many organizations still grapple with

At ForceFlux, we consider two additional dimensions when thinking about big data:

Variability

In addition to the increasing velocities and varieties of data, data flows can be highly inconsistent with periodic peaks. Is something trending in social media? Daily, seasonal and event-triggered peak data loads can be challenging to manage. Even more so with unstructured data involved

Complexity

Today's data comes from multiple sources. And it is still an undertaking to link, match, cleanse and transform data across systems. However, it is necessary to connect and correlate relationships, hierarchies and multiple data linkages or your data can quickly spiral out of control

Why big data should matter to you

The real issue is not that you are acquiring large amounts of data. It's what you do with the data that counts. The hopeful vision is that organizations will be able to take data from any source, harness relevant data and analyze it to find answers that enable 1) cost reductions, 2) time reductions, 3) new product development and optimized offerings, and 4) smarter business decision making.

For instance, by combining big data and high-powered analytics, it is possible to:

Determine root causes of failures, issues and defects in near-real time, potentially saving billions of dollars annually
Optimize routes for many thousands of package delivery vehicles while they are on the road
Analyze millions of SKUs to determine prices that maximize profit and clear inventory
Generate retail coupons at the point of sale based on the customer's current and past purchases
Send tailored recommendations to mobile devices while customers are in the right area to take advantage of offers
Recalculate entire risk portfolios in minutes
Quickly identify customers who matter the most
Use analysis and data mining to detect fraudulent behavior

Data Integration

Embrace efficiency. Speed integration processes by up to 85%

The right data integration solution helps you address today’s data problems while giving you a plan for the future.With data integration from ForceFlux, you can:

Boost productivity

Get more mileage from existing resources – and increase your productivity – by working from a single point of control. You'll quickly and easily access the data you need

Share more of the workload

An intuitive interface means you can entrust data to business users, giving them more control so you can get back to your own tasks at hand

Be confident your data is ready for action

Auditing tools that monitor processing and source data lineage let you know your data is primed and prepared for the next step

Data Quality

Achieve better, cleaner data, regardless of volume

Brilliance isn’t based on bad data. For your organization to succeed, you need to create a culture where data quality is valued – which means partnering with a company that makes it a top priority. With ForceFlux Big Data, you can:

Improve data quality where your data resides

There’s no need to extract or move data to clean it. Instead, ForceFlux Big Data profiles, standardizes, monitors and verifies your data where it exists. The benefit? A significantly faster, more secure process

Establish unprecedented levels of data quality to support business processes

A recent report found that up to 40 percent of business initiatives fail due to data quality. So when it comes to performing tasks – from managing big data to preparing for analytics – you need to trust the data driving your organization

Manage your entire data quality life cycle

With data constantly flowing in and out of your business, we help you establish repeatable processes so you can build and maintain high-quality data

Data Governance

Prevent problems before they happen

Your business, your rules. ForceFlux Big Data technology helps you enforce policies so you can trust your data without micromanaging it. Plus, our services help you maintain those policies over the long term. With ForceFlux Big Data, you can:

Establish guidelines and permissions

You’ll know who’s doing what with your business information, and you can control who accesses your data down to the most granular level

Stop problems that could plague your system

The ability to intercept issues often means the difference between business-as-usual and complete chaos. We help you flag issues – and then fix them

Make sure everyone’s on the same page

Our business glossary lets you create a repository of terms and their definitions that can be applied across any system. It's one of the first steps toward team collaboration, establishing standard definitions and giving context to your data

Master Data Management

A complete, customized solution. Operational in a matter of months

When it comes to master data management (MDM), your team is as important as your technology – because MDM requires smart planning. To succeed, you need experts who can help you make the right decisions that will carry your business far into the future. With ForceFlux Big Data, you can:

Create a road map based on your specific needs

A large, monolithic one-size-fits-all approach gets you nowhere. We spend time understanding your organization so your solution solves the problems you need it to solve

Implement new technology that works with your existing system

No reason to rip and replace. ForceFlux Big Data works with the systems you already have, saving you time and money. Plus it grows as your business grows

Achieve faster time to value

Not only do you get a powerful, customized MDM solution, you also can get it up and running quickly for faster ROI. That's because we lay the groundwork first, helping you build a solution that meets your needs

Data Federation

Control access to information. Boost security without moving data

Get consistent, centralized and better-governed data without having to move it. ForeFlux Big Data eases the burden of managing disparate data by enabling you to:

Achieve a clear, virtual view of your data

A virtual business view lets you reference data where it’s actively used and maintained: its source

Control who sees – and manipulates – your data

We don’t just accomplish this on a basic level.With ForceFlux Big Data, you can set parameters – down to the row level – specifying who has access to what information

Get consistent, documented data access

Unify and standardize data access across multiple, heterogeneous systems from a single connection

ForceFlux Big Data Management Consulting

Managing data involves much more than just implementing technology. It takes planning, assessing and strategizing. If you’re like most organizations, you don’t have the time or expertise to know what your business needs – or how to get started. But that’s OK. Because we do