Big Data, Big Backup, Big Problem?

We all know data volumes are not shrinking, quite the opposite data’s growing and more is expected from it. We are analysing it, replicating it, encrypting it, protecting it, storing it, and archiving it. In fact anything but deleting it. Continue Reading

Lady Backup is pleased to announce that EMC is the winner for the 2^nd year in the V3 Technology Awards.

While EMC was nominated in several categories, readers voted EMC best in “ disaster recovery and business continuity ” solutions.    Also of note is that VFCache was a finalist in the best product of the year.

Check out this video interview with Kelly Brown, filmed from the awards ceremony.   As a small side note, Ms. Brown at times Continue Reading

Andy Tait was kind enough to share some of his impressions of EMC Forum in London 2012.

We caught Andrew Maclaren, head of Big Data for EMC EMEA in the corridor and asked him for a sneak peak of what he will be talking about during EMC FORUM in London on September the 11′th. Don’t miss out, register now!

This year, we’re bringing back EMC Forum to the UK and Ireland. This essential one-day event shows you how cloud and Big Data are transforming our industry — and how you can transform your business to stay competitive.

At EMC Forum you can learn, connect and network. You will hear local and international insights from high calibre keynote speakers and presenters, and case studies featuring the latest integrated solutions from EMC and our partners. A hand-picked selection of partners, such as Cisco, Computacenter and MTI, will be exhibiting their products, and our VLab will offer technical training from EMC engineers.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest solutions, products and services direct from EMC specialists and partners, network with the EMC Community and
discover our vision for the future. Continue Reading

Probably obvious I know but one of the most important aspects of the Olympics has been money. Or more specifically, the ability of consumers, retailers, banks, restaurants, hotels and transport companies to handle transactions without interruption.  Although there have been some signs that systems have been put under strain, key systems have proved to be robust.

London banks had already tested their systems against cyber attack towards the end of last year and the aim was to see how quickly the financial sector could restore services to ‘business as usual’ after major disruption.

The ‘proof of the pudding’ as they say, will be in the delivery of a successful ‘economic games’ and we will be able to claim that all the planning and investment Continue Reading

The atmosphere in London is euphoric, at times electric and totally surreal as the city has completely embraced the spirit of the Olympics.  Key landmarks such as Horse Guards, Hyde Park, Wimbledon, Wembley, the ExCel and Greenwich have been transformed.  But the key site is the Olympic Park and for me the highlights have been the opening ceremony, the way in which spectators have enjoyed and supported such a fantastic international spectacle and of course the athletes themselves, who are proving that world records can be broken. Continue Reading

Well it’s a big question, but certainly one Chris Yiu of the Policy Exchange thinks the answer to is “Yes” Big Data can save the UK Government £33bn per year. I’ve just attended a Policy Exchange event which EMC Greenplum co-hosted with Francis Maude at the Policy Exchange where The Cabinet Minister, Chris and James Petter, the EMC MD, all discussed how this could be achieved. One important recommendation was that the Government should adopt a Code for Responsible Analytics. Something Continue Reading

Whoop Whoop!!!

We’re only a couple of days away of what promises to be an exciting 24 hours of data science bonanza. Official Website

EMC Greenplum, EMI Music and Data Science London have been teaming up to put together an online competition that will the the largest consumer dataset collected for the music industry be the centre stage for what we’re calling a Hackathon.

Data Scientists from the UK and across the globe will be entering a 24 hours challenge to help predict how music fans might like songs released by artists. (see press release)

Over 3 years, EMI have been collecting information from customers around the globe through different sets of surveys. Reaching nearly 1 million entries, this is the largest dataset of its kind in the music industry.

David Boyle, SVP of insight at EMI, has been heavily involved in making this contest a reality, working closely with EMC Greenplum in the UK and the USA. More importantly are the data scientists who will compete to win the £6500 cash Continue Reading

So what do the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments at CERN and the announcement that scientists may have found the Higgs boson  particle have to do with the challenges faced by the UK Government and their drive to achieve savings?  The answer is ‘Big Data’ and the drive to develop new data analytic methods based on the manipulation of huge amounts of data.

The availability of affordable compute power and new platforms such as Hadoop and Greenplum HD designed specifically for big data analytics across unstructured datasets has changed the landscape of scientific research and will ultimately have a similar effect on public sector capabilities.  But the question is – how long will it take before Government leaders recognise the opportunity and act?

It is also worth noting that I believe that many people in Government find it hard to differentiate between the fundamental concept of ‘Big Data’ and the largely politically driven objective of ‘Open Data’.  But in the context of this blog post it may be worth holding this thought for a later article.

So how large is the big data challenge faced by CERN?  Well, apparently this year the LHC experiments will generate 22 Petabytes of data and that’s after 99% of the data from the experiments has been tossed.   That’s a big number with 15 noughts (a million gigabytes) and a big data challenge.

However, although it seems a big number, it is also comparable in size to data held by a number of UK public sector organisations.

But in many instances, the data held by Government is not considered a raw resource in the same way as CERN treats the data from the LHC.  CERN have focused on exploiting this data to complete humanity’s understanding of the standard model of physics and the latest development in our knowledge of the fabric of the universe.  The UK public sector probably doesn’t have such a profound rationale for exploiting big data but it still has a choice – it can either develop a strategy to exploit the value of the data it currently holds and make a real difference to public administration, services and outcomes or continue to cocoon the data it holds in costly retention practices missing the opportunity to achieve big savings.

So how big are the potential savings?  In a report released by Policy Exchange on ‘The Big Data Opportunity’ they estimate that ‘achieving cutting-edge performance could in time save the public sector up to £16 billion to £33 billion a year – equivalent to £250 to £500 per head of the population ‘.

So pretty substantial and an opportunity not to be missed!