Report On National Seminar On Managing BIG Data - Challenges And Opportunities

Online, May 3, 2013 (Newswire.com) - Every day, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data - so much, that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records and cell phone GPS signals, to name a few. This data is 'Big Data'.

As per tradition at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indore, the National Seminar on Managing Big Data started with the worship of Goddess Saraswati and the lighting of the lamp. Addressing the industry experts and students, the Director of the institute, Dr. J.P. Upadhyay denoted this April as a BIG April, since all of us were growing together while sharing knowledge and information. He said that over a period of time, the capacity of Information Technology has increased to an enormous level as a result of growing IT professionals and IT architecture. He said that data has grown vast - so huge, in fact, that we can't even come to an accurate conclusion until we have gathered, analysed and interpreted it. Sharing his experience, he said that today's business organisations are crowded by huge amounts of data and managing that data is of critical importance, which is where IT plays a major role. He stated that the objective of the event was to create awareness and educate the attendees about the anatomy and physiology of BIG data available, and its relevance to business organisations. He then went on to quote, "Big data needs a big judgement". It was his belief that appropriate analysis and accurate judgement were the challenges that would crop up when dealing with BIG DATA. He also raised questions about the sustainability of the present IT scenario, in which we are losing human intuitive ability, since all decisions are based entirely on data.

Giving an idea of the sheer scale of big data, Prof. Nitin Merh and Prof. Jagdish Bhagwat said that it has grown to a capacity of peta bytes and zeta bytes. They added that big data is not just confined to the IT sector; it has implications in every domain across the globe. There were other guest speakers to discuss whether big data is really that big a deal or, as many people correctly say, it is nothing new except for the focus now being broadened to almost all sectors. The speakers shared their expertise and knowledge on "Managing Big Data- challenges and opportunities'. Mr. Abhishek Sanghvi discussed what data is, in respect to its qualitative and quantitative dimensions.He said that in any business organisation, big data gives insights which allow heads of companies to take better decisions and thus gain higher profits. He talked about the characteristics of data, viz. volume, variety, velocity and value. He referred to big data as the next frontier for the present and the future. He also shared some cases relating to business models and the role of big data in those models. Some of the sectors he touched upon were 'Retail: when and what to order where', 'Airlines: how to price tickets', 'Web Analytics', etc.

Vishal Dakoliya, National Head Business Development, Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd., shared his experience with the students. Stating observation as the key factor for the management of big data, he took examples from the basics of home management, television and the automobile industry. He saidthat ina world of information, the challenge lies in how we can simplify, identify the purpose for data collection and make the best use of big data. He took us back to ancient times, when languages and astrology originated, where everything was based on data. He added,"Information selling is a yet to come into India as abusiness model. Data has increased and will continue to increase, and availability and storage are challenges no more."The purpose for the data and information are what he referred to as the key factors in analysing big data. He said that it was not just data management but what lay beyond that had value, which is to be extracted, analysed and put to use. Putting it in in a simple message to students, he said that to make a career in data analytics, one has to become a data scientist.

Prof. K.R. Pardasani from M.A.N.I.T. focused on "Big Data challenges for data mining". Throwing light upon the technical aspects, he said that data is the value given to an attribute of an entity. He discussed it at three levels - data, information and knowledge, and their linkage to the different levels of an organisation. Referring the term 'BIG'in big data as a fuzzy term, gave the example of the human anatomy cell genome to show the extent of big data. He explained data mining as 'knowledge discovery from a large database'. He also talked about data warehousing as a subject-oriented, integrated, time variant, non-volatile collection of data used to support the decision making process in management. He also discussed why organisations require data warehouses and their various models. He said that human intervention is always required in mining of data to separate data of relevance from all the data available. He added that sometimes information grew bigger than was manageable and this is where human intelligence was applicable in bringing it down to an appropriate size for analysis. He also talked about the vague set theory, fuzzy set and soft set theory. As a statistician, he believesthat bigger is better. In his view, the bigger the data, the better its analysis and interpretation.

After the thrilling presentations by industry experts were over, it was time for the launch of the Go Green Campaign, a student driven activity, wherein trees were planted on the campus by the director of the institute, assembled guests and students. This activity also included an awareness campaign, in which students went to village Dakachya, along with Deepshikha Chavan, to educate the locals about health and safety measures.

With the beginning of the paper presentation competition, students presented research papers on different aspects of big data. There were participants from M.A.N.I.T. Bhopal; J.I.M. Indore; Bundelkhand University, and many more. The joint winners for the competition were Rishu Gupta, Saurabh Chaudhary, Pratibha Singh and Kamlesh Chand Saini from M.A.N.I.T., Bhopal and the joint runners up were Aman Kumar, Raja Solanki, Namrata Gwal and Pawan Singh from J.I.M. Indore.

The seminar, which focused on practical applications and utilisation of big data, aimed to cut through the marketing hype and help participants understand the competitive advantage of utilising it effectively. Participants also got a chance to interact with industry experts and academics currently working 'Live' on Big Data analytics.