Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

The idea that Big Data is the elixir for businesses to thrive and the new job markets to grow to, might need a little more justification. CEO’s and CTO’ need to see the money value and ROI’s of changing legacy systems and having the company adopt Big Data Analytics into their business eco system.

One possible reason for this could be the speed at which adoption and implementation is happening. Many companies are feeling the pressure to keep up with how adapting to the customers needs have changed today and the very near future. No doubt that this is the technological era of speed-of-everything, could there be wisdom in the old adage, slow and steady wins the race.

The race to find the best Big Data solution has apparently brought two sides of a coin in a head to head that could potentially wipe the other one out.

The first is the education of talent meant to fill what some see as a void in data analytics infrastructure. Sharala Axryd, Founder and Managing Director of The Center of Applied Data Science is championing this cause in bringing enough talent to meet demands for the Malaysian market.

At the same time, tech companies on the other hand are building Infrastructure as a Service and making data analytics something that won’t need an IT savvy person to use or find insights. Companies are evolving their technology to meet demands for BDA through total automation; from adoption of the technology, right up until cleaning the data, and delivering insights from them.

This is in direct competition with government agencies and higher learning institutions in educating data scientists. If and when technology becomes as simple as a touch of a button in deriving insights from data analytics, where will that leave the IT department and the demand for data scientists?

According to Sharala, although the analytics can become so automated that you may be able to gather insight by a push of a button, models will still need to be built, data will still need to be identified and this makes the job of a data scientist imperative.

Adding to that she says the fundamentals and understanding of data analytics needs to be there in order to fully utilize the tools available.

“The retail, FSI, and telcos have fully adopted big data analytics into their businesses and are looking for the talent. It is very promising that we have grown from just 75 data scientists locally, to 300 within these 3 years. We have one company asking for 50 data scientists now. Many of  the MNC’s that we have spoken to have also been very open to take on junior data scientists while at the same time hiring those who are able to hit the ground running and therefore allowing the industry to mature.”

The CADS are hard at work making sure people are getting excited about analytics since it will be applicable at every level and in every sector.

“I was surprised to see that the Oil and Gas industry has started adopting BDA. At this day and age, with the prices of oil plummeting, these companies have turned to BDA as a saving grace. They are using analytics to reduce costs by predicting unforeseeable shut-downs or rigging issues. In the O&G industry those costs go up into the billions. So they really have found value in adopting analytics to solve those issues,” she says.

The CADS are also working hand in hand with MDEC and the HRDF to further enhance the adoption of BDA into companies.

“There’s no two ways about it. You need to get into analytics to stay relevant”, she insists.

She says that not just the big MNC’s need to move into analytics, but SME’s need to adopt it into their businesses too. In fact, the SME’s have it easier since being small and versatile gives them the ability to shift paradigms and business strategies to use analytics without having to go through much red tape.

“One thing I always like to say to SME’s is, Rome wasn’t built in a day. What I mean by this is, you don’t need to start with big data to have big data. Start with the small data and the big data will come”.

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