Over the past couple years I have had the opportunity to work on a number of Big Data initiatives. As one would expect, having a well-defined business case is key to success. However, in a number of companies, I am seeing pure IT business cases, generally focused on cost reduction, to justify Big Data investments versus the typical business-focused, revenue generating use cases. There are three common IT-centric use cases that I typically see clients leverage. They are:
Data Warehouse Extension is where IT leverages the low per TB costs of open source Big Data to defer investments in more costly, proprietary EDW solutions.
Data or File Hub Replacement is another common case. The uses case is based on obtaining significant cost savings by moving data off a SAN/NAS onto a Hadoop cluster.
System Optimization is a third use case. With tools like Splunk on the market IT can easily analyze their vast amount of machine data to provide a view of how systems are operating. This view allows IT to target their limited infrastructure dollars to those systems that could benefit the most.
These are only three IT use cases for Big Data. Many times, they can be combined with business-focused use cases to justify a Big Data investment.
If you would like to learn more about the importance of a well-defined Big Data Strategy, I will be hosting a webinar, Five Attributes to a Successful Big Data Strategy, next Thursday, May 8, at 2pm Eastern.
