Skip to main content

5 Ways to Gain Operational Insights on Big Data Analytics

Michael Segal

We are starting to see an age where speed-of-thought analytical tools are helping to quickly analyze large volumes of data to uncover market trends, customer preferences, gain competitive insight and collect other useful business information. Likewise, utilizing ‘big data’ creates new opportunities to gain deep insight into operational efficiencies.

The realization by business executives that corporate data is an extremely valuable asset, and that effective analysis of big data may have a profound impact on their bottom line is the key driver in the adoption of this trend. According to IDC, the big data and analytics market will reach $125 billion worldwide in 2015, which will help enterprises across all industries gain new operational insights.

Effective integration of big data analytics within corporate business processes is critical to harness the wealth of knowledge that can be extracted from corporate data. While a variety of structured and unstructured big data is stored in large volumes on different servers within the organization, virtually all this data traverses the network at one time or another. Analysis of the traffic data traversing the network can provide deep operational insight, provided there is an end-to-end holistic visibility of this data.

To ensure holistic visibility, the first step is to select a performance management platform that offers the scalability and flexibility needed to analyze large volumes of data in real-time.

The solution should also include packet flow switches to enable passive and intelligent distribution of big data that traverses the network to the different location where the data is analyzed.

Here are five ways IT operations can use Big Data analytics to achieve operational efficiencies:

1. Holistic end-to-end visibility

A holistic view, from the data center and network to the users who consume business services, helps IT see the relationships and interdependencies across all service delivery components; including applications, network, servers, databases and enabling protocols in order to see which user communities and services are utilizing the network and how they’re performing.

2. Big Data analysis based on deep packet inspection

Deep packet analysis can be used to generate a metadata at an atomic level which provides comprehensive, real-time view of all service components, including physical and virtual networks, workloads, protocols, servers, databases, users and devices to help desktop, network, telecom and application teams see through the same lens.

3. Decreased downtime

A Forrester survey shows 91% of IT respondents cite problem identification as the number one improvement needed in their organization’s IT operations. As applications and business services’ complexity increases, reducing costly downtime will hinge on proactively detecting service degradations and rapid triage to identify its origin, which can be done through the right performance management platform.

4. Capacity planning

Accurate evidence is vital when it comes to making capacity planning decisions for your network and business processes. Benefits of metadata at an atomic level will aid in understanding the current and future needs of your organization’s services, applications and its community of users in order to identify how resources are being consumed.

5. Hyper scalability

Big data analytic tools that can scale to increasing data traffic flows provide key vantage points throughout your IT environment and offer rapid insight to meet the monitoring needs of high-density locations in data center and private/hybrid cloud deployments to help organizations achieve consistent service quality and operational excellence.

Network traffic Big Data analytics, made possible by today’s service performance management platforms, is changing the scope and quality of IT operational efficiencies. These platforms and technologies are not only protecting organizations against service degradations and downtime, but also serve to add new dimensions and context around interactive data making corporate data today an extremely valuable asset.

The Latest

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 5 covers the infrastructure and hardware supporting AI ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 4 covers advancements in AI technology ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 3 covers AI's impact on employees and their roles ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 2 covers the challenges presented by AI, as well as solutions to those problems ...

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025 ...

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

Image
Broadcom

The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

Image
Catchpoint

The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

Image
Datastrike

Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...

5 Ways to Gain Operational Insights on Big Data Analytics

Michael Segal

We are starting to see an age where speed-of-thought analytical tools are helping to quickly analyze large volumes of data to uncover market trends, customer preferences, gain competitive insight and collect other useful business information. Likewise, utilizing ‘big data’ creates new opportunities to gain deep insight into operational efficiencies.

The realization by business executives that corporate data is an extremely valuable asset, and that effective analysis of big data may have a profound impact on their bottom line is the key driver in the adoption of this trend. According to IDC, the big data and analytics market will reach $125 billion worldwide in 2015, which will help enterprises across all industries gain new operational insights.

Effective integration of big data analytics within corporate business processes is critical to harness the wealth of knowledge that can be extracted from corporate data. While a variety of structured and unstructured big data is stored in large volumes on different servers within the organization, virtually all this data traverses the network at one time or another. Analysis of the traffic data traversing the network can provide deep operational insight, provided there is an end-to-end holistic visibility of this data.

To ensure holistic visibility, the first step is to select a performance management platform that offers the scalability and flexibility needed to analyze large volumes of data in real-time.

The solution should also include packet flow switches to enable passive and intelligent distribution of big data that traverses the network to the different location where the data is analyzed.

Here are five ways IT operations can use Big Data analytics to achieve operational efficiencies:

1. Holistic end-to-end visibility

A holistic view, from the data center and network to the users who consume business services, helps IT see the relationships and interdependencies across all service delivery components; including applications, network, servers, databases and enabling protocols in order to see which user communities and services are utilizing the network and how they’re performing.

2. Big Data analysis based on deep packet inspection

Deep packet analysis can be used to generate a metadata at an atomic level which provides comprehensive, real-time view of all service components, including physical and virtual networks, workloads, protocols, servers, databases, users and devices to help desktop, network, telecom and application teams see through the same lens.

3. Decreased downtime

A Forrester survey shows 91% of IT respondents cite problem identification as the number one improvement needed in their organization’s IT operations. As applications and business services’ complexity increases, reducing costly downtime will hinge on proactively detecting service degradations and rapid triage to identify its origin, which can be done through the right performance management platform.

4. Capacity planning

Accurate evidence is vital when it comes to making capacity planning decisions for your network and business processes. Benefits of metadata at an atomic level will aid in understanding the current and future needs of your organization’s services, applications and its community of users in order to identify how resources are being consumed.

5. Hyper scalability

Big data analytic tools that can scale to increasing data traffic flows provide key vantage points throughout your IT environment and offer rapid insight to meet the monitoring needs of high-density locations in data center and private/hybrid cloud deployments to help organizations achieve consistent service quality and operational excellence.

Network traffic Big Data analytics, made possible by today’s service performance management platforms, is changing the scope and quality of IT operational efficiencies. These platforms and technologies are not only protecting organizations against service degradations and downtime, but also serve to add new dimensions and context around interactive data making corporate data today an extremely valuable asset.

The Latest

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 5 covers the infrastructure and hardware supporting AI ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 4 covers advancements in AI technology ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 3 covers AI's impact on employees and their roles ...

Industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 2 covers the challenges presented by AI, as well as solutions to those problems ...

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025 ...

E-commerce is set to skyrocket with a 9% rise over the next few years ... To thrive in this competitive environment, retailers must identify digital resilience as their top priority. In a world where savvy shoppers expect 24/7 access to online deals and experiences, any unexpected downtime to digital services can lead to significant financial losses, damage to brand reputation, abandoned carts with designer shoes, and additional issues ...

Efficiency is a highly-desirable objective in business ... We're seeing this scenario play out in enterprises around the world as they continue to struggle with infrastructures and remote work models with an eye toward operational efficiencies. In contrast to that goal, a recent Broadcom survey of global IT and network professionals found widespread adoption of these strategies is making the network more complex and hampering observability, leading to uptime, performance and security issues. Let's look more closely at these challenges ...

Image
Broadcom

The 2025 Catchpoint SRE Report dives into the forces transforming the SRE landscape, exploring both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Let's break down the key findings and what they mean for SRE professionals and the businesses relying on them ...

Image
Catchpoint

The pressure on IT teams has never been greater. As data environments grow increasingly complex, resource shortages are emerging as a major obstacle for IT leaders striving to meet the demands of modern infrastructure management ... According to DataStrike's newly released 2025 Data Infrastructure Survey Report, more than half (54%) of IT leaders cite resource limitations as a top challenge, highlighting a growing trend toward outsourcing as a solution ...

Image
Datastrike

Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2025 and beyond. Gartner's top predictions explore how generative AI (GenAI) is affecting areas where most would assume only humans can have lasting impact ...