It’s a strange fact that the two of the most common statements about using data are; I don’t have enough data to act, or, I have too much data to make sense of the situation. How can both be true? Obvious answers would include quality versus quantity, relevance versus resources, and of course analyzing big data. These are all answers that come naturally to IT professionals, and of course to many Business Managers well versed in operating their business.
Research report now available: The Foundational Elements for the Internet of Things (IoT)
But how about asking a different type of question: Can you supply Big Data in graphical formats that people can quickly grasp? Do you understand creating real time awareness for people? And how does their personal use of Smart Data relate to Big Data?
Some of the best, and easiest to grasp, answers to these questions come from work driven by Building Management in Smart Cities. Here the Internet of Things really has changed the game with a variety of low cost sensors feeding new real time information to Building Managers. But also the challenges and frustrations of integration with existing IT don’t exist in this environment allowing many challenges and conflicts to be bypassed. The ‘clean sheet of paper’ approach to deploying new technology in new ways offers an excellent illustration of the people centric use of Smart Data linked to Big Data. Please don’t stop reading if you are not in this market as using it here as a use case illustrates some important general principles that apply.
Building Management has benefited from low cost Internet of Things sensors ranging from literally a dollar upwards allowing mass deployment within a building. A ‘Smart’ Building is a small-scale mimic of a Smart City, or even a Digital Business, as it represents any environment defined by real time flows of data. Further is has the challenge of linking to easy to understand graphical displays navigated by intuition with huge amounts of legacy data about the building, ownership of elements, service manuals, and much more as well.
To grasp just how different and exciting this environment has become with its use of graphic user interfaces combined with linkage of huge amounts of existing data take a look at the demo on the home page of Asset Mapping a player in this market.
If you watched the demo you should feel pretty excited. But consider how much ‘traditional’ data is sitting behind this graphical intuitive display of a human centric quasi-real, virtual environment. The Building Manager has been made ‘aware’ of everything that is happening in real-time through Smart Data that literally makes it seem as if they are everywhere at once ‘experiencing’ everything that is going on supported by all the information they well need to act.
This is ‘Smart Data’; information delivered to extend our human senses with increased inputs that allow our personal experience and knowledge to be applied to evaluate and decide on responses, combined with Big Data to ensure we can act based on full knowledge.
As an aside comment for those who now something of Building Automation there is nothing new in providing sensor protection of high value items to protect against failure, even automate failover responses. The game change is the manner in which low cost Internet of Things instrumentation is radically changing what can be sensed and in what volume. Making an experienced Building Supervisor ‘aware’ of the mass of small changes all across their building allows fine-tuning of day-to-day operations through making better use of their knowledge and experience.
Importantly Smart Data renders the chosen slice of Big Data into GUI formats that a human can immediately grasp, rather than more traditional Big Data reporting in less comprehendible formats.
Smarter People are at the heart of the new Digital Business model interacting with the people externally to increase competitive value by addressing their requirements and opportunities better. It’s true for Building Management as this is usually an outsourced set of services driven by the cost of provisioning versus the quality of service provided. As such its an ultra competitive industry with competitors trying to both cut costs, and differentiate, through better services, hence their early adoption of the Internet of Things capabilities. Making your experienced operators able to really deploy their knowledge across a bigger building estate in a manner that will improve the level of service experienced is a big competitive advantage.
Recognize the point now? To succeed in the competitive Digital Business economy means using the knowledge of an Enterprise’s best people to deliver better service experiences based on excelling at using data. Smart People are made so through Smart Data support.
But behind the graphical interface wow factor in the demo you have just watched is Big Data, assuming you accept the Wikipedia definition; ‘an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications’. The real-time environment, in this case is a building, but rapidly is becoming your Digital Business environment, or your Smart City, whatever! All are environments that are generating new forms of ‘real time’ data, leading to an increase in human ‘awareness’ of key situations. Situations where timely smart intervention will make a competitive difference, but can only occur through blending the Awareness with Big Data resulting in Smart Data.
Smart Data creates empowered people, or smart people, and in so doing makes them equally ‘aware’ of the need for further data from the resources of Big Data.
This is the reasoning for the title of this blog ‘Turning Big Data upside down to become Smart Data’. It’s not enough to just apply the traditional approach of enterprise level analytics of Big Data; we also need to start working on how users will gain from Enterprise Big Data by delivering it as Smart Data in new Graphical formats. The link to Big Data as a core part of Digital Business, and environments, is always stressed, but usually in terms of traditional data management. The all important counter side of delivering Smart Data may be less obvious at this stage of the journey into Digital Business but is equally, perhaps even more, critical.
Building Management is a micro example that makes a good use case, but Smart Cities and Digital Businesses are exploding into rich real time environments with many sources of Smart Data. All of which requires individuals to become highly ‘aware’, and, with the awareness comes the need for good quality answers from our Enterprise’s Big Data.
If your enterprise cannot supply answers from your Big Data to your employees then they will find answers else. It’s likely that some of those answers will not support your enterprise views, messages, or values. Smart People working in real time competitive business need your Enterprise to be able to supply Smart Answers from its Big Data!
Research report now available: The Foundational Elements for the Internet of Things (IoT)