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IBM Cloud Data Services 2016 Predictions: The Year Open Source Technologies Meet the Enterprise

Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016.  Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Derek Schoettle, GM of IBM Cloud Data Services

The Year Open Source Technologies Meet the Enterprise

2016 will be the year that open-source analytics technologies like Apache Spark start making a real impact in the enterprise. Open source technologies allow enterprises to innovate faster and move quickly enough to stay relevant, without needing to rebuild key infrastructure from scratch for every iteration. Notably, with Apache Spark, businesses will be able to tap the roughly 80 percent of unstructured information stored across their databases that remains untouched-unlocking untold potential.

Open source will also help address the looming skills gaps that IT will face in the coming years. Data scientists trained to write complex SQL queries are few, while DBA and developers accustomed to building core infrastructure from the ground up are becoming increasingly rare. Moving forward, data analytics will have to be accessible to those without advanced data science degrees. Open source begins to level the playing field, enabling users and builders to build on the lessons of a massive community of experts. Moreover, the use of open source will also give developers and DBAs time back to focus on truly value-generated activities.

Open source will start opening data to the masses. You shouldn't have to be a data scientist to understand business data and leverage the power of analytics. The goal should be to train everyone who needs access to data how to input it, analyze it and actually use it in real time to inform business decisions. Open source will allow real-time insights and speed up ROI through accessibility to tools that will simplify the extraction of business insights from massive datasets - a role that would traditionally fall to data scientists, but will in future be available to all. 

This simplified approach to data will be aided by the proliferation and enterprise adoption of open source databases-which enable businesses to get up and running almost immediately, rather than taking weeks to months to create the data infrastructure needed to run a business.

The influx of open source databases and data sources like IoT devices and sensors mean a voluminous amount of new data, and businesses will need to adapt to this. They will need to change the way they use, process and maintain data to stay ahead of the curve.

As companies continue to emphasize new data integrations, merged private and public data sources will also become increasingly common. Companies will look to new datasets from beyond their own walls to increase their productivity, as well as working toward common challenges.

The year of open source also means that CIOs will need to better understand the open technologies at their disposal. We're already seeing CIOs attend meetups to get a better feel for the technologies, but the net result is developers gaining a stronger influence: Developers are the ones on the front lines building and connecting core infrastructure, and because of that they're having a bigger impact on the technologies an enterprise will adopt. The CIO will soon be working hand-in-hand with their developer team, understanding tools-and what's possible with them-in a way that they never have before.

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About the Author

Derek Schoettle, GM, IBM Cloud Data Services

Derek Schoettle is General Manager, IBM Cloud Data Services. He is responsible for the development and revenue of IBM's portfolio of managed, cloud-based services for enterprise developers. Prior to joining IBM through the Cloudant acquisition, Schoettle served as CEO of the NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider. During his tenure as CEO, Cloudant saw a 175% increase in revenue year-over-year, and a 71% talent base increase in the year prior to the IBM acquisition.

Published Wednesday, December 02, 2015 8:03 AM by David Marshall
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