Big data's future: predictive analytics, Internet of Things

IDG.TV | Aug 21, 2015

At the HP Big Data Conference 2015 in Boston, we asked speakers where big data technology was heading over the next few years.

Presenter 1: Looking at the future, down the line, what's going to happen with big data?
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Presenter 1: I think you are going to see things like real time streaming analytics. It's going to be a big thing because, again, that's compressing and shortening the time to get meaningful answers. For our A/B testing, if we can get real time indicators on how those tests are going, that's even better than waiting a day for the turnaround.
Presenter 2: Everybody's definition of real time is a little bit different, because it basically means faster, and faster is important. The other thing that I think is really starting to take hold right now, and it's a topic that people have talked about for a long time, but when you actually look at who is doing it, the number is rather small, is predictive.
Nate Silver talked a lot about predictive modeling and the need to think more stochastically, as opposed to deterministically, and build models of what's going to happen. Obviously, any future model isn't perfect. When you talk to customers and you say, "Are you actually doing predictive analytics?" the vast majority of them still say, "No, not really."
Maybe they're building something like, "If I change my price, I expect my sale to go..." Fairly simple stuff.
Presenter 1: There's this thing called the Internet of Things, which is, basically every device out there is now going to be connected to the Internet, because they are all going to be reporting back, and that's a huge amount of data. For example, jet engines on aircraft, those record thousands and thousands of data points per second.
Those all go back to the engine manufacturer. They run analytics on that and predictive analytics is really the game going forward, because they can start to predict when there's going to be an engine failure. The jet engine is one of the most reliable devices of the past century and it takes people all over the world.
But it is a mechanical device. It will have failures, and big data is going to help make sure that those things are fixed up before they fail. That applies to every other type of device out there.