I left EMC’s recent CIO Summit in Singapore thinking about Big Data and race cars.
During the Summit, Michael Taylor, CIO of Lotus F1 Racing, referenced that their car has more than 150 sensors that capture 25MBs per lap and 50GBs of data per race that can be analyzed to fine tune the car for the next race. It’s absolutely incredible and is turning race cars into mobile R&D centers.
While I may not drive a race car, I am excited about how the proliferation of sensors and Internet of Everything will benefit us personally and professionally in the future. And, as a CIO, it is also a reminder that we must take a more contemporary approach to IT to unlock the potential of this information.
We need to devise a way to capture and manage this big, fast data and provide a platform for our users to analyze this information in real-time. At EMC, we are creating a ubiquitous data lake where we could ingest a large amount of data, and then put the intelligence on top of it. This goes beyond just visualizing the data to provide our business users with the ability to play with the data and change the variables to drive different outcomes and different behaviors.
However, as CIOs of contemporary IT organizations, we cannot focus just on the technology. To paraphrase one CIO’s comment at the Summit, a technology approach like this enables us to stop thinking about delivering products and solutions, and begin to focus on how we can help our business users achieve value-driven outcomes. While technology is critical, contemporary IT requires that we take a long, hard look at our people and processes and evolve to organization to be business-facing, service-oriented, consumption-funded and, most importantly, value-driven.
Which brings me back to Michael’s session at our Summit. Capturing all that data is important, but only if it helps Lotus F1 get faster, more agile and more competitive after each and every race. How are you contemporizing IT to supercharge your business?
