“Big data” projects can lead to short-sighted IT
Written by James West
IT leaders that throw money at Business Intelligence (BI) projects risk losing sight of their long-term aims and challenges according to analyst firm Gartner.
The current obsession with handling ‘big data’ - the ever-growing stockpile of electronic customer and business performance information - is too narrowly focused and causes IT teams to look intently on immediate, obvious issues and miss the finer details, according to analysts.
Gartner warns that falling into this trap will force businesses to reinvest time and money into their data arrangements within three years to deliver the sophistication required.
“IT leaders must educate their business counterparts on the challenges while ensuring some degree of control and coordination so that the big-data opportunity doesn't become big-data chaos, which may raise compliance risks, increase costs and create yet more silos,” says Mark Beyer, research vice president at Gartner.
Data volumes are growing at 59 per cent annually according to Gartner. Research from IDC, reported yesterday shows that businesses will spend $4 billion on BI projects in an attempt to make sense of the growing data pile.