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.
##
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.