Real-time analytics is the new frontier for data management and analytics. According to Kathy Schneider, chief marketing officer, Kx, the data use focus has moved from “big data,” which tends to be siloed, slow, and looking backward, to “fast data,” where data is captured and analyzed in real time.
In a session titled, “Unlocking Business Value With Real-time Data Analytics,” at Data Summit 2022, Schneider described how to make “in the moment” business decisions that increase performance and ROI while decreasing costs and failures, in the presentation that covered key analytics trends and why they matter.
Kx specializes in real-time streaming analytics, but as Schneider pointed out, the definition of “real time” is changing.
The question is becoming: How quickly can you use data for decision making or for it to be fed into a business process? It is widely accepted that insights-driven businesses perform better than others, and how fast they can use those insights is more critical than ever. The window of opportunity to make decisions is getting smaller. Schneider said an investment bank customer told Kx that its next data warehouse will not be a data warehouse, since the new frontier for deriving unique business value from data is seconds to milliseconds.
According to the IDC Global Datasphere report released in March 2021, the amount of digital data created over the next 5 years will be greater than twice the amount of data created since the advent of digital storage.
Insights-driven business are different, said Schneider, citing a Forrester report that states:
- They build closed loop insights processes into every core function.
- They marry algorithms and expertise to continuously improve outcomes.
- They make insights available to every employee so they can act with confidence.
- They always look to tap more and more relevant data.
According to Schneider, with this growing real-time pressure, the cloud is no longer “a destination” but instead is “a way of working” due to the scale, flexibility, speed, and innovation it enables for companies.
Along with heightened real-time pressure and cloud-as-a-way-of-working, another interlocked trend affecting faster decisioning is the edge. By 2025, more than 50% of enterprise-critical data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud, said Schneider, citing a 2022 Gartner report.
With these changing requirements and goals, organizations need to think about the kind of architecture that will deliver what they need for the future. The use cases for enhanced real-time data span a wide array of sectors including financial service, supply chain, gaming, utilities, and many others.
Kx is built for a modern data landscape to accelerate the pace of business, said Schneider, who cited how Kx is helping to deliver outcomes in the most demanding data environments.
Many Data Summit 2022 presentations are available for review at www.dbta.com/DataSummit/2022/Presentations.aspx.