Whether it is a billion-dollar hardware company, a mid-sized departmental store, or a stationery shop, big data is helping businesses grow in a systematic manner with zero or minimal wastage of resources. Ram Prasad Mamidi, head, IT, and chief information officer, Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL), talks about the potential of big data in India, the key challenges associated with it and the way forward. Excerpts:

What are the key drivers for the adoption of big data tools by enterprises?

Businesses, both small and large, are churning out huge amounts of data at an unprecedented rate. This data can originate from a multitude of sources – posts to social media sites, application downloads, digital pictures and video uploads, mobile GPS signals, etc. The ability to integrate the different sources of data and shape them in a way that enables business leaders to make informed decisions is an important aspect of big data.

Superior customer experience, cost-effectiveness and profitable growth are priorities for businesses across the world. Big data solutions allow companies to meet these objectives by optimising the usage of existing resources to create an intelligent and responsive enterprise that understands its customers and provides real-time, insight-driven services and support.

What is the current level of adoption of big data solutions in India? How has this space evolved over the past two years?

Indian companies are catching up with their global counterparts in tapping the true potential of big data. Desktop analytic tools are no longer sufficient as the volume, velocity and variety of data are growing exponentially. Advanced analytics is the key to providing companies with the ability to analyse and simulate all business transactions while presenting a model that is concise, relevant and accurate.

What are the challenges impeding the mass deployment of these tools and solutions?

Awareness about big data and its impact on businesses has just started seeping into the fundamental workings of companies. Sev-eral businesses enter into the big data space without a thorough understanding of their requirements, goals and data policies. This often leads to wastage of resources and the insights derived from data fail to add much value to the company. There is a need for big data specialists to help effectively run and manage the implementation of these solutions across functions.

Other barriers are the same as those that arise during the adoption of any new transformational technology. These range from determining ownership within the organisation to building a business case for recommended implementations. In addition, the current database is too unstructured for effective automated analysis.

How are you leveraging the big data opportunity to better serve your customers? What are your plans for big data monetisation?

We generate massive amounts of data. Therefore, as an operator, it becomes critical for us to mine customer data across multiple dimensions to capture and analyse customer behaviour so as to improve customer experience. This becomes even more important with the rise in the number and reach of mobile network roll-outs. As volumes grow exponentially, so does the need to understand customer behaviour and experience across geographies. Big data technology offers the necessary tools and mechanisms for real-time generation and application of insights to cater to rapidly evolving customer needs, and to improve profitability.

TTSL has been using big data solutions for quite some time now. The predictive tools we use are based on SAS technology. We also have data warehousing. While these solutions help us better leverage structured data, going forward, we are looking at how best to mine unstructured data.

Big data also plays a crucial role in addressing legal and regulatory requirements that are mandated for longer retention periods. Given the growing volume of data and the time sensitivity attached to such requirements, organisations look to procure additional storage and servers, thereby incurring high expenditure.

What is your outlook for the adoption of big data analytics by Indian enterprises over the next two to three years?

There is already an increasing sense of urgency around big data and as businesses establish faster and stronger connections with their customers, the case for big data becomes stronger. Big data enables enterprises to delve deeper into more varied and voluminous records to yield actionable insights that could not be accessed earlier. As it is emerging concurrently with a host of complementary trends like cloud computing, social media and enterprise mobility, we can see the beginning of a new kind of convergence that brings all these trends together to create the enterprise information architecture of the future. It will be quite different from today’s landscape of disjointed applications and databases somehow connected together. Therefore, big data is here to stay and grow. It is going to be a key driver in enabling enterprise growth, as well as its sustenance.