Becoming a data-driven enterprise requires more than just parking data in a gigantic repository. “There’s big data, and there’s fast data,” said Dave Tang (pictured), senior vice president of corporate marketing and communications at Western Digital Corp.

The true yield from data lakes is the predictive algorithms data scientists build from them. “And we’re able to put them in real-time applications, and that’s sort of been the birth of fast data,” Tang said. Once businesses get a taste of profit via fast data, they want more, and they go collect more data and build more algorithms. The two feed into one another in a virtuous cycle, he added.

Tang spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio during this year’s When IoT Met AI: The Intelligence of Things conference in San Jose, California. (* Disclosure below.) 

Credit card fraud is an excellent case study of the big-data-plus fast-data equation. Fraud detectors study massive numbers of transactions to learn patterns that then go into the algorithms. The algorithms must execute extremely fast at end points in time to prevent fraud, Tang explained.

Special needs apps

The compute and storage technology needed in the data lake or core and at the edge are quite different, according to Tang. “Applications are increasingly specialized and have specialized needs in terms of the type of data,” he said. Sheer volume may be first priority in one app versus a super-fast streaming engine in another.

Internet of Things, mobile and edge apps require small-footprint, high-capacity, low-power technology like 3D NAND stacked flash storage, Tang stated. At the core, huge data sets need high-capacity devices like helium-filled drives. Western Digital is pushing the limit here with helium drives hitting up to 14 terabytes, he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of When IoT Met AI: The Intelligence of Things. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for When IoT Met AI. Neither Western Digital Corp., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE