Big Data - Big Opportunities

Here is a translation from an article in the daily magazine - pc.co.il (Hebrew):

"Accumulation of massive amounts of data, coming from all sorts of activities in the net, social media, mobile phones, power and water systems, etc. - lays the foundation for creating industry of big data," said Shachar - Director of Data Services, LivePerson.

"The difficulties organizations dealing with this vast amount of data creates tremendous business opportunities and establishment of companies that develop data processing systems and turning them into income manufacturer for organizations"

By Hadas Geifman, 5 February 2012, 16:07

"Big Data field creates many opportunities," says Haggai Shachar, Director Data Services at LivePerson, interviewed to people and computers. For example, explains Shachar, "it creates opportunities for companies that allow dynamic personalization of content based on patterns of historical data and companies that develop systems that identify inefficiencies in processes and non-effective exploitation of opportunities facing the organization. These companies specialize in locating information relevant to specific functions, concentrating in one place and then proposed plan to operate in real time. "

"Big Data technologies currently gaining momentum because of the rapid development of mobile communications, social networking over the past two years, creating tremendous growth in quantities of digital data," adds Shachar. "Traditional tools in the field of databases, such as those of Oracle and Microsoft, are not designed to process and analyze masses of data coming from a variety of sources quickly enough, and certainly not in real time. Combining these two factors accelerates the growth of  technology companies developing appropriate solutions ".

Shachar notes that "many organizations have not internalized yet that new methods of doing business in the data world, and see the need to store and retrieve data - type of burden. The challenges of dealing with Big Data can be classify into three categories, known as the three V: the data Volume, the Velocity in which data is generated and the Variety of instruments and sources.

Consulting giant McKinsey predicts annual growth of 40% volume of data gathered the world. Storage giant EMC estimates, the market for Big Data currently amounts to some 70 billion dollars, and predicts that by 2020 will increase its number of customers, with more than Petabyte of information, about 100,000 compared to only a 1,000 now.

"The difficulty of organizations dealing with huge amounts of data that," says Shachar, "creates business opportunities and establishment of companies that develop systems for processing data and making them a new source of revenue for organizations. In addition, he noted, "new companies are founded to provide tools for organizations to analyze historical data and market trends, and allow their customers to view the information in different cross-sections. For example, a retailer that sells backpacks can get an indication of how many cases of a particular type are in high demand, which cities or malls this past month, past six months, etc. “

"This kind of systems providing real time information helps organization to make decisions when the event occurs - analyzing the data as it arrives and responding to it immediately. For example, if it turns out that at one point in time a great demand for backpacks is made by a particular brand or a certain color, the retailer will be able to receive alerts in real time in order to meet demand, possibly even automatically."

LivePerson, operates as a SaaS company, provides systems that analyze massive amounts of data for more than 8,500 customers such as users activity, habits and trends - enabling site owners to respond in real time using a variety of channels (like chat, content etc.), thereby maximizing the relationship with the customer through the different marketing channels for sales and technical support.