Dave Laverty, Vice President, Big Data & Analytics at IBM, explored the company’s Big Data go to market strategy with theCUBE co-hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier, live at the IBM Information on Demand 2013 event in Las Vegas.

IBM’s strategy, Laverty explained, “connects back to what we’re trying to do as an organization.” The company has major initiatives around cloud, mobile, social, Big Data & analytics. The Big Data and Analytics market has been estimated at $200 billion market and IBM aims to reach $2o billion by 2015. Laverty said he had seen double digit growth over the last couple of years in the market. Customers are now talking about how they’re getting value from their investment in Big Data and Analytics.

“It’s a boardroom conversation, a CEO conversation,” he added, focusing on discovering new ways to drive revenue, as the notion of monetizing data is taking hold.

Asked to explain what makes the $200 billion market, Laverty said there was a “good representations of software,” the forefront of software being the concept data in motion, with a new focus on applying and bringing analytics closer to the data, driving predictive analytics based on streaming information.

“Another portion is the service system,”  Laverty noted, which is needed to help customers understand what to do not to fall behind competitors, and drive their business forward.

IBM responds to new rivals – shares use case

Asked to comment on GE’s play in the machine data market, as the company is morphing from a huge customer into a competitor, Laverty said machine data is a big part of the IBM data strategy, “it’s one of the things we’ve announced, an offering on how you start to look at machine data.” He mentioned a client case study on monitoring machine data on network operations. “We’re using streaming data in the medical field,” he added, taking “streams of information coming from bed side monitors” and fueling “early warning systems for patient care” that allow physicians to intervene at an earlier stage.

A success use case with the University of Ontario focuses on child care. The neonatal care unit, by monitoring information from many devices and using streaming analytics, helps determine ahead of time if something radical starts to change. “They can predict if the child is starting to see duress,” or there’s an infection happening, Laverty explained.

Big Data is definitely real

 

“Big Data is definitely real,” Laverty said. Organizations use it in areas focusing on customers – how to acquire and retain them, operations – optimizing operations, and fraud and security. Big Data solution adoptions expands for both commercial accounts and the public sector.

• The rise of the Chief Data Officer

As IBM promised to deliver new business models, Dave Vellante asked if companies were organizing to be data driven. Laverty said they were, “one of the key indicators is the creation of the Chief Data Officer.” The CDO is a very unique role and people fulfilling it see it as a facilitator – they understand the value of the data organizations have and how to use it more effectively, they put it in the hands of decision makers, but also need to protect it.

Currently, only 5 percent of organizations have a CDO, but the percentage is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2015. “We need that kind of stewardship over that information,” Laverty added.

Asked to comment on the role of the CDO and how they fit into the organization, Laverty said “organizations need to think about a new architecture. How do you architect for the future, it should play a key role in that.” As there is a lot of data that needs to be brought in and aligned with internal data, that integration of data coming together becomes an IT function to make it effective.

IBM marketing – blending social and traditional efforts

Explaining IBM’s overall strategy and take on social media marketing, Laverty said the company focused on thought leadership, becoming trusted advisers to clients. It also focuses on how to “develop our point of view and how we want to establish that. It is about keeping it simple.”

In social marketing in particular, “one of the key things that we really try very hard to do is align our subject matter experts, make them socially aware,” determine what conversations are happening, and how to join them. IBM also trains people to be more social. Commenting on the move from traditional to social advertising, Laverty said “it’s become more than ever a mix of everything in terms of audiences you need to appeal to, where you need to appear.” IBM aims to position itself as a trusted source and marry the world of social and traditional marketing by creating thought-provoking content.

Asked what has surprised him in the past couple of years, Laverty stated “one that surprised me the most is the interest level and excitement level around Big Data has not died down. Two years later it’s still as strong and it’s gotten even hotter.”