If data sits on a desk somewhere and is not being used, it’s an opportunity wasted
Sanjay Mirchandani believes IT has to take the lead in adding value to the business in the form of big data “addictive analytics.” Mirchandani is Chief Information Officer and COO, Global Centers of Excellence, at EMC Corporation. He has been recognized as one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders and Boston Business Journal’s CIOs of the Year. The following is an edited transcript of our recent phone conversation.
What would you say to a CIO who dismisses big data as just another buzzword?
I would say that for too long we have been trying to manage down information. The IT world that we have become comfortable with for many years was mostly within the enterprise, maybe connecting to some partners and customers. It was also mostly structured, basically revolving around transactional data. Today, the volume, variety, velocity and complexity of information have changed the IT landscape. These are the four things I challenge CIOs to really think about. We all know how to do structured information. But the moment you throw in unstructured and semi-structured information, life changes. This is where the value is for organizations today.
Does this also change the relationships between IT and the business?
Only IT has a complete picture of all the data in the enterprise. At the same time, IT today cannot have a monopoly on information. That changes the role and responsibilities of IT and the business. We in IT want to deliver more as a service and the business wants to consume more as a service. And IT and the business increasingly share tools and capabilities. For example, I can offer a tool like Greenplum Chorus, which is a community-based BI-data warehousing-analytics tool, where data scientists in IT work collaboratively with data scientists sitting in the business. If there’s something we can do better, we’ll take it on ourselves; if there’s something they can do better, like creating their own wrappers around the analytics, they will do it. What’s clear is that IT and the business have never been better aligned. Continue reading →
