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April - 2013 - issue > CEO Spot Light
More Verticals will start Leveraging Big Data in 2013
Satya V. Gupta
President & CEO-Kwaark Inc
Monday, April 1, 2013
Massachusetts based Kwaark offers software development and QA tools for small, medium and large Software ISVs.

Big data and business analytics were a hot trend in 2012. We saw businesses in the healthcare, financial, manufacturing and intelligence to name a few, leverage big data to accomplish what was considered impractical previously. Financial enterprises are detecting frauds faster; retailers are influencing customers through behavioral analysis, while manufacturers are tweaking products to meet customer expectations.

In 2013, even more verticals will start leveraging big data creatively. Data will be collected either by tracking customer behavior directly, or in return for free services, or even by tracking their social media footprint. One vertical that can easily benefit from big data is software development. Too many vendors have bit the dust on account of not being able to deliver features customers want and managing defects strategically.

Even though Hadoop has leveraged clusters of computers for crunching big data to great effect, there is a need to move away from the map-reduce style computing model. This model forces application developers to create structured algorithms even though big data can be highly stochastic. Newer big data applications should leverage adaptive techniques such as machine learning to better deal with large streams of unstructured big data.

Creative thinkers will lead the Pack

Businesses that do not produce high quality and interesting content that can grab the typical multitasking, short attention span customer will see their revenue being flattened. Creative thinkers will lead the pack; by leveraging massive computing power they can easily compete with the traditional brick and mortar enterprise and drive it into oblivion. For example, a highly creative artist, operating out of their basement, will be able to produce a movie that can net millions of dollars. Traditional salesmen will find it very difficult or almost impossible to connect with the very well informed prospect that will have extremely easy access to information about the products they desire.Consumers will be able to put together products they desire simply by downloading content that stiches commodity hardware together.

With the size of metal oxide layer rapidly approaching the size of the silicon atom, CMOS will not be technology delivering the next breakthrough in computing. Instead ground breaking technologies such as quantum and analog computers that have orders of magnitude that can compute more bandwidth, will take over. The age of "erlang-style" or concurrency driven software development paradigm will also give way to an adaptive learning software development model since it is better suited to handle unstructured data.

Large doses of Creativity are more likely to be Disruptive

The rules of entrepreneurship have not changed as much as the products have. Entrepreneurs still need to honestly assess exactly what in their product is creative. Products with large doses of creativity are more likely to be disruptive, last the course, survive copycats and therefore have a potentially big exit.
Will the product be habit forming for customers or is it a nice to have product? The entrepreneur should seek brutally honest feedback from trusted parties. The "nice-to-have" product will have a short lifespan and thus needs a carefully orchestrated exit strategy.

The entrepreneur will still need to find the best way to connect with potential customers. Is there a well thought out and disruptive go-to-market strategy? Can/does this strategy leverage social media and in-bound marketing techniques which are inherently cheaper than outbound marketing techniques? Are business analytics and industry trends available for understanding the typical customer's behavior?
Lastly, the entrepreneur must have the zeal or dedication that borders on the ridiculous while still being able to handle honest criticism.
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