And Vijay Says…

When data becomes big – and it gives pretty cool insights of high value , the big hurdle facing customers will be their own deployment challenges. Where should this magic solution live ? And how exactly will we find out ?

Several factors play into this – and I am just mentioning a few that came to mind first.

1. Hardware is cheap-ish

Cheap is relative . When you have a million dollars to spend in a hard economy , would you buy hardware or will you do something else like hire more sales people , spend more on marketing etc ?

Would you buy or would you rent ? Or will you start small by renting and then buy when you need a scale that makes renting uneconomical ?

If you buy , are you going to buy cheap servers and live with extra redundancy? Or would you rather invest in fewer industrial strength servers with great HA and DR ?

2. Skills , or lack there of

Even if you have cheap hardware lying around , do you have skills and manpower to install and patch on all the machines ? Is it cheaper to hire/train internally or should you hire a consulting company to do your big data technical work ?

What about business users ? If big data tells them something new – are they empowered to act on it ? Or will a real time insight need a batch mode committee of people to act on ?

Does the business user have enough training to understand the context of what big data solution tells them ?

What is the minimum usability requirement ? (Not everyone is a data scientist – and majority of use cases will need stupid simple usability , ideally with little to no training )

3. Ever improving technology

Big data technology is benefitting from rapid innovation from open source world and commercial vendors . How much appetite do you have for keeping up with fast evolution of technology ?

Tactically , when will you replicate and when will you federate ?

4. Quantifying the value

Investments are worth only when value is greater than cost over a reasonable period of time . Cost is a straight forward calculation and so is OPEX vs CAPEX . But do you have the ability to quantify value and benchmark against the best in the industry ?

How does this play with existing strategies on BYOD , security and everything else that you have a strategy for ? Can they all work together ?

5. Platform and Applications

What will you buy and what will you build ? Do you have guidelines on deciding what factors will make you ask a vendor to create an app for you (and others) as opposed to building it yourself ? Do you have criteria for evaluating all the platform options ? Do you expect ERP like security for big data or will you relax it ?

6. Legal , ethical and privacy stuff

Are you aware of what the government thinks of your data ? Do you have ideas on how best to keep your big data solution legal and ethical ? Have you considered opt-in and opt-out scenarios for users ?

In short – there are a large number of deployment considerations for big data . The options available are increasing and improving almost every day . So definitely a good first step is to spend some time deciding on your big data strategy – while remaining pragmatic that your strategy will evolve over time , and probably at a rate faster than BI strategies etc of past .

In my opinion , accelerated value from big data is possible only if all or part of the solution is cloud based . A customer should not have to worry about the deep mechanics of big data – they should be focused on the quality of insights . The mechanics of this should be offloaded to a vendor you TRUST to partner with . Big data comes with big responsibilities – so choose the partner wisely and for long term .

Such a vendor should be able to shield customers from a lot of the flux – and at a cost that is cheaper than if you tried to do it yourself . Of course 100% cloud like deployment is not practical for many reasons as made obvious in the discussion above – but vast majority of big data landscapes will need to be cloud based if value realization had to happen at a big scale . So like it or not – plenty of hybrid solutions will crop up to support big data .

So what is the end game ? Wish I knew – but I do have a dream . A network of big data is my vision of an end game . A network where data is shared across a huge ecosystem where people collaborate securely on data without everyone having to keep a redundant copy and build custom solutions on top . Of course not all data can be shared – but in almost all industries I am familiar with , not even 5% of data of common interest is shared freely . Lets see how long it takes before such a network will show up in our lives – or maybe it never will , and I will have to find a new dream 🙂

Ever since I started working on SAP’s big data initiative , I have been having a hard time defining what exactly is big data . So, my gang and I had many a discussion and figured out that the best way to figure this out is to talk to customers . I called this a “listening tour ” – visiting customers to not sell anything or to solve any problem, but just to listen to them on what they think of big data .

One CIO put it explicitly on my face – the 3V model doesn’t work for him at all . In his eyes – this is just a vendor view of the world . Volume , variety , velocity , etc are all characteristics of data and doesn’t tell him what is the BIG deal . I mentioned this to Doug Laney on twitter and he confirmed that of course it is a data management theme that he meant when he/Gartner came up with it in 2001 .

Other customers also gave me versions of this view – they all are curious about big data , but they can’t see what the big deal is . Doing the same analysis that they do today with just a lot more data didn’t sound like anything worthwhile .

“Real time” and “Right time” access to data resonates with most of them – and they see value in that . This is of course a good degree different from just a few years ago .

As I looked across all the responses – one thing stood out . There is only one big V that matters to customers – BIG VALUE.

Two somewhat related definitions came out in how customers seem to think about the concept of BIG VALUE .

1. insights that cannot be figured out by current options (in techniques, storage , usability etc ) that can some how be made available by BIG DATA

2. “power of one” – if insight can be narrowed down to one customer , one user , one product etc – in the context of a useful transaction , then BIG VALUE is delivered . This is also the aspect where real time and right time comes into play meaningfully for customers .

3. Big value is equally obtained by figuring out what “mistakes” happened it past that no one found so far , and by forward looking predictive and prescriptive insights

So how do customers expect this BIG VALUE to be delivered to them ?

1. Via a Platform – that lets them store and compute without worrying about an upper limit , at an affordable price point . Security and other “enterprisey” things are a given – big data doesn’t get a big pass .

2. Via special skills – as in data science skills .

3. Via applications – apps that give users easy access to insights in an interactive and visual manner , without having to know how data is organized behind the scenes , or learning special technical skills to use the app .

Listening tour will continue , and if there is anything interesting I can share , I will post it here

First things first – individuals own their career , not companies or bosses or coaches or anyone else . Others can help , but only you can execute . I had this conversation about mid career crisis situations quite a few times recently in some variant with my mentors , and with people that I mentor . I thought I will jot down a few points that came up – mostly for me to come back to for a refresher from time to time . Feel free to add , challenge etc as needed via comments .

1. What got you here won’t get you there

Nothing changed my career for the better than this one lesson that I learned from Bill Smilie , at an executive training program few years ago . The essence of the idea is that you need to constantly evolve your thinking and approach to get to the next level . If you are an ace sales person , just doing what you do best year after year will maximize your commission – but won’t get you to be a sales leader who manages many sales people .

2. Hard/Smart work is required , but nearly not enough if you don’t know where you are headed

You should know where you want to go. Ideally with a plan B and C . If you can’t clearly define what is it that you want – certainly don’t expect your boss to do the thinking for you . Run ideas by everyone you trust – and do it periodically . But decide for yourself .

And for those of us who help others – we might not have the ability to solve all problems that are brought to us . So be prepared to coach your mentees to the level you can and hand them off to another mentor who can take them to the next level . This happens in sports coaching all the time , and is easy to do in career situations too .

3. Don’t wait indefinitely for things to change for better

Loyalty is a great trait – but don’t let that be a one way street all the time . Give time for decisions to be made and processes to finish . If it doesn’t happen at first shot, try few more times if there is some thing to be added to the approach . If all reasonable approaches seem to not work – stop wasting your time and go to plan B . Just don’t get yourself tightly wound up by repeatedly doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result .

4. If things don’t work and you have to move on , ALWAYS leave on pleasant terms

Be it a customer who never gives you business , a boss who never gives a raise or a vendor who is habitually late on delivery – if you are getting out of a business relationship , do so without a big fuss . I can say from first hand experience – time and distance heals most hurt and disappointments in business . Learn what you can from the relationship and move on – save yourself an ulcer in the process 🙂

5. Plant those saplings every chance you get and pay it forward

We all need help from time to time . But you will need to establish the support system before crisis hits you . This is another reason why leaving on pleasant terms is so important . Also – never hesitate to pay it forward . It is not always possible to reciprocate help – for example , your CEO might help you with making an important customer introduction. But your odds of doing that for him is low . But if you nurture that relationship and make an intro to someone else coming after you – it will be very useful . Don’t try to keep a count – make time to help .

I try my best to give time for anyone who asks – and as long as they are genuine , I will give them time again and again . It didn’t come to me naturally – I learned it from my mentors . And they taught me to not waste their time .

6. When things are going well for you , learn to present better and negotiate better

I very rarely meet people with poor ideas , or who don’t deserve what they ask for . However – in many cases , they can’t articulate their ideas and they don’t have good negotiation skills . The time to learn is when you are on a roll – but if you didn’t do it then , do it now . Take classes , practice , meditate , watch it on you tube – whatever works for you . But do it .

The whole idea of effective presentations and negotiations is simple – make it personal to who you are dealing with , and give them options to choose from wherever possible . Yes and No are not the only options I am talking about here 🙂

What would convince a CFO won’t convince the AP clerk . And listen – usually they will give you enough clues on what will work with them . My way of making a presentation or negotiation simple is to avoid slides and use a piece of paper or a white board . Try a few different ways and see what works for you and polish it .

7. Align your goals to a higher purpose that others can relate to

No , not world peace or anything of that proportion . I just meant it in a more tactical way .

In corporate world , I am surprised how many employees don’t think outside their narrow responsibilities . I had a difficult sales situation once with my management not willing to accept my idea on how to close the deal . And the customer chose to stand their ground as well . I could not close the deal that quarter as I had committed , and had to take a week off to keep my sanity . That was the first time ever that I failed in such a magnitude and sort of in such a public way .

In that time , I caught up on reading a lot of business magazines and so on and quickly it dawned on me that if I recraft my proposal to help in an area that was a strategic concern to the company – I might get it approved . So I went back to my bosses with a new plan – and put it in context of the strategy of the company . I got approval in 5 minutes – and they even offered additional concessions I didn’t even ask for . And the very next day – I closed the deal with customer . You bet it changed my whole approach to dealing with my superiors .

This is one point I need reminders on – I knew how to do this with customers for a long time . It just didn’t occur to me till this incident that I should have done it with my own employer too . You live and learn , eh ? Icing on the cake was a few weeks ago , one of my mentors called me to thank for this approach which he learned from me and used successfully in negotiating something big.

That’s it for now – my dogs are pawing me to go play with them . Off I go