The Data Maturity Curve Leads To Microsecond Business Operations
Things are getting smaller. Not just in terms of gadget miniaturization, medical nanotechnology, increasingly sophisticated industrial electromechanical units and the process of so-called shrinkflation that leads our candy bars be thinner or shorter at the same price, but also data – data is getting smaller too.
Data is getting smaller in two key senses: a) we are breaking down the component parts of application data flows into smaller containerized elements to work inside similarly compartmentalized and containerized application services – and b) the time windows within which business needs to react to data events is reducing.
This latter time constraint on data of course leads us to the reality of real-time data and the need to be able to work with it.
In terms of how the spacetime universe we live in actually works, real-time data is something of a tautology i.e. data always has some time disbursement which has to be paid in order for it to exist. Data might travel at light speed, but it’s still a speed. When we talk about real-time, we mean data transports that work fast enough for a human not to be able to perceive any time lag having occurred. Thus, real-time expresses a human perception of time rather than a machine perception or definition.
This is all important stuff because we’re now supposed to be embracing anIndustry 4.0 world where our factories are run by AI-augmented intelligence and smart automation. But manufacturers may not be ready for Industry 4.0 if they are sitting on complex data issues thrown up by production bottlenecks caused by disparate information systems within an organization, many of which will still require human intervention – from manually inputting sensor readings into databases to inefficientClear-To-Build status (i.e. ready to go) monitoring and lack of integration with Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems.
Keen to write a few wrongs in this space is Palo Alto headquartered KX. Variously known as KX and KX Systems, the company is recognized for its work in high-speed real-time data streaming analytics inside intelligent systems that can also concurrently shoulder tasks related to historical data workloads.
Looking at the speed of current industrial data processing and the need to achieve its personal Nirvana state of speedy streamed data-intensive analytics, KX calls any given firm’s state of evolution its point on the data ‘analytics maturity curve’. Marketing-spun try-hard naming pursuits notwithstanding, KX does have a point i.e. the commercial window to create differentiated value is narrowing for organizations in every market and sector. Logically then, the faster they can act on insights derived from data created in-the-moment, the better the outcome.
As KX CTO Eric Raab hasstated before, “The opportunities for streaming analytics have never been greater.
