It’s not just the Amazon’s, Facebook’s and Google’s of this world that need to constantly process data at huge volumes and derive insights at speed. Belgian companies ranging from Delhaize and Mobistar, to Ecover and bPost also face similar issues. Big Data is becoming a big challenge for most businesses, as mentioned, for example, in ZDnet last year.
Hyperscale data centers, comprising millions of servers, are the answer. These may seem out of reach for most Belgian businesses today. But leading global Internet brands are driving innovation among the creators of Big Data hardware, and this is making the technology a viable option for smaller companies across multiple industries closer to home. For example, consumer goods company Unilever and tire manufacturer Pirelli are just two industry leaders already benefiting from hyperscale computing, which can have a direct effect on business processes, strategies and money saving. Both use in-memory database management from SAP HANA, the same system previously used by Amazon Web Services.
Accenture believes that companies in Belgium & Luxembourg can already get ready for this hyperscale boom by researching real needs, testing the latest technologies, identifying the data producing devices in their network, and exploring communities such as the Facebook Open Compute Project, which aim to make hardware innovation open source and shareable.
Early adopters will be able to invest in the right technology, create a dedicated hyperscale team within IT and begin updating their business processes to reflect the new possibilities opened up by their hyperscale hardware. A case in point is Belgium’s pharmaceutical industry, representatives of which will meet at the end of September to share examples of the potential of Big Data in their sector at the Big Data In Pharma conference in Brussels.
For videos and more insights into these trends, visit the Tech Vision website.
