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Roundtable: A dozen CIOs from the GTA get real about Big Data

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Monday, 04 March 2013 20:01

Despite following two days of the worst weather we’ve seen in Toronto this winter, a dozen IT executives from some of the top companies in the GTA showed up to participate in a roundtable discussion on The Economics of Big Data, hosted by The IT Media Group on Thursday, February 28th, 2013.

While Big Data is the subject of much hype, the session proved that it is real and there are companies today already leveraging Big Data technologies to address business challenges and uncover opportunities.

All of the organizations represented are experiencing rapid data volume growth that presents challenges ranging from data storage and management to recovery of specific content. Much of the discussion, however, focussed on the value and opportunity that the data represents. Several of the participants described current applications that involve real-time data monitoring and social media as well as structured, though massive, data sources.

The most common issues cited by participants seeking to benefit from Big Data were governance, privacy and regulatory compliance.

While much of the focus for data exploitation is around using existing data to improve process efficiencies, the promise most participants see for CIOs and for the businesses they serve is the ability to use Big Data to be proactive; to look beyond the obvious and drive innovation.

Hitachi Data Systems sponsored the session, which provided significant validation for the company’s vision of the future in which advanced storage and data management technologies help customers to move, manage, search and integrate information from different sources to fuel innovation.

Sponsorship of The IT Media Group CIO roundtables enables vendors to share in an open, face-to-face discussion among CIOs, hear first-hand the most pressing issues they face, and contribute insights based on their expertise and client experiences.

Read the roundtable summary report and highlight videos...

Roundtable: The Economics of Big Data highlight summary and videos