TELONE managing director, Chipo Mtasa says the need for data networks such as the 'big data' concept is now mission-critical for almost all organisations.
Speaking at a data seminar in Harare recently, Mtasa said the need for data for business or social requirements had caused data to be the most exchanged commodity in the world today.
"Fortunately, as a country we have realised that and as TelOne we are proud that we have been able to respond and now offer various data services including cloud services through our data centre which was launched last year. The growth of 'big data' has been catapulted by the widespread use of ICTs across all sectors of the economy. Today, the availability of a reliable data network is now mission-critical for almost all organisations and 100% internet connectivity is now a must," she said.
"Besides our array of connectivity solutions, at TelOne we are also ensuring that ICT education grows among Zimbabweans and as such we have our training institution, TelOne Centre for Learning, which has organised this important get together of minds with a stake in the big data evolution."
She said innovation in the ICT space was accelerating rapidly due to the fourth Industrial Revolution which was characterised by the fusion of technologies in transforming the way people think, live and work.
"Due to the fast paced growth of the 'Internet of Things' there has been phenomenal increase in the speed with which data is now being created, stored, manipulated and used," Mtasa added.
Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data, both structured and unstructured, that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. It is a high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demands cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.
The "big data" concept gained momentum in the early 2000s when an international industry analyst Doug Laney articulated the now-mainstream definition of big data as volume, velocity and variety.
With the growth of technology, businesses and organisations have had to move their operations to secure data networks, such as the cloud, to operate more efficiently.
To that effect, the big data concept allows companies to be able to move and process even larger volumes of data. The benefits of this are cost reductions, time reductions, new product development and optimised offerings, and smart decision making.
According to Hong Kong based analytics, business intelligence and data management firm SAS, the importance of big data doesn't revolve around how much data you have, but what you do with it.
"When you combine big data with high-powered analytics, you can accomplish business-related tasks such as; determining root causes of failures, issues and defects in near-real time, generating coupons at the point of sale based on the customer's buying habits, recalculating entire risk portfolios in minutes and detecting fraudulent behavior before it affects your organization," SAS said.
Locally, TelOne is trying to promote the concept so that companies will be able to use the company's network to create such kinds of data networks.
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