Bill Schmarzo, the “dean of Big Data” and chief technology officer of EMC’s Global Services Big Data Practice, led a roundtable discussion along with John Walls, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE media team, during EMC World 2016.

Schmarzo got the conversion started by asking Raimondo Zizza, CIO of TIM Brasil, what challenges the company faces when pursuing a Big Data initiative.

Zizza said his challenges are two-fold. “The first is network announcement — how is it possible to automize the investment in network with Big Data?” he said. “The second is reduction of churn and increase output. With Big Data, it’s possible to manage this topic in real-time. Big Data is the core of our digital architecture. We’re also looking into product leadership, or data monetization, more closely.”

Turning to John Kenefick, VP of information technology of Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, CA, Schmarzo wanted to know what the casino was trying to achieve with its Big Data initiative.

“From a casino perspective we’re very data driven, and we wanted to take that next evolutionary step,” Kenefick said. “Big Data was a logical avenue to take. Customers are our business and getting to know those customers better was extremely important. Aggregating large amounts of data in a centralized location where we could get a realistic view of the players — not only their gaming habits but where they spend money in other areas of the property — was important.”

Big Data is team sport

Later during the discussion, Kenefick addressed how he helped to engage upper management. “We wanted them to feel like they were part of the process,” he said. “We did a data visualization workshop with EMC, which was a good stepping stone. Having top-level executives interact with line-level team members to understand how Big Data will help that end of the business really helped the project take hold.”

Considering Big Data is a “team sport,” as Schmarzo described, Zizza advised: “It’s important to switch the mindset of the user” when starting out on a Big Data journey. “Every user has a sandbox,” he said. “They work on prototyping for different teams, and we implement a different use case out of that prototyping.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE